Although not unexpected, it is most unusual that the cautions and qualms about the televised debates of candidates for senators and deputies have to be repeated, like the elections themselves, only six months later.
If in the spring of this year four elections (general, European, municipal and regional) in two dates, in April and May, caused indigestion to the benevolent spectator of this kind of exchanges, this time the weariness comes, if anything, only because it is the shortest campaign, although the most disconcerting, since 1977.
A campaign in which there seems to be only a The debate, hailed by the TVs as a Eurovision final or a Champions League clash. But this columnist has seen at least five on three different channels and his observations are dictated by all of them. This article is not intended to be the only one, but only the first in a series.
With three main criteria: judging on the basis of what candidates should and can (best) do in a debate, on the basis of a comparison with the performance of their rivals throughout the debate and, finally, on the consistency between what they have done in the debate and the rhetorical or dialectical strategies needed to convey their messages and programmes.
Side A
So, although it is scratched, very scratched, this record, more of failures than of successes, has its A side and its B side.
On side A, last night, 4 November, in Madrid, in the Pabellón de Cristal de la Casa de Campo, at the Television Academy, on almost all the channels, the debate was entirely male, entirely alpha male (and it showed), in the debate the bearded men won numerically over the hairless (3 to 2), the right-wingers over the left-wingers (also 3 to 2), there was only one shirtless man and he was not from the extreme left but from the radical right.
Worse than the debate
Such a leaden or lively outlook was not resolved politically at all. In this respect, this was the most counterproductive occasion in living memory: the pessimism of the spectator voter did not come from having witnessed a division of fire and ashes in which, despite everything, it was possible to be moved to vote and move the vote, but from a confirmation that, even when voting, given the distribution and divisiveness of the options, the deadlock, it seems, will persist. This is depressing, not because of the debate itself, but because it does not reveal any governable solution.
However, even in its negative qualities, the debate displayed at times a not inconsiderable liveliness and a greater number of paradoxes than the number of contenders.
Verbal formulae weaknesses
Who said anything about the "most voted list" governing? Casado? No, Sánchez. Who was it who kept on saying "constitutional order" every now and then? Rivera? No, Abascal. Who referred to "the cowardly right"? Abascal? No, Sánchez. Who doesn't drop the Constitution out of his mouth? Casado? No, Iglesias. Who said that "yes, we can", Iglesias? Yes, and Rivera too!
But Obama said it first, one could argue... It is notorious, though for the moment not very transcendent, I think, that the formulas of American politics are now being imported by Vox, some of whose affirmations seemed to come straight out of Trump and Bannon's campaign manuals (for example, with regard to Bruelas). In a previous debate, Espinosa de los Monteros spoke of "taking back control", picking up the expression, both fallacious and effective, of Farage, Gove and Johnson in the ill-fated Brexit fray.
It is also worth noting that Vox has brought out its four main leaders (Abascal, Espinosa Ortega Smith and Monasterio) to take part in the debates, and the dialectical results have been stimulating for the party and worthy of detailed analysis. We will come back to this.
Strange ways not to lose positions
On the contrary, the pitiful spectacle of the final part of the debate, in which an acting prime minister refuses to respond, summarily questioned and interrogated by Rivera and Casado and, bordering on the passive-aggressive, does not look up from his papers, pretending to underline and write, and gets out of the mess by moving on to other questions, confirms something worrying: Pedro Sánchez lacks dialectical ability. Or he did not want to exercise it, which is not much better. And furthermore, it is not so much a matter of concern for what happens in this kind of debate as for (future) parliamentary activity.
Rivera does not shirk from the use of graphic elements and supporting materials, even indoctrinating with cobblestones, and providing great amusement to social networks.
But for that (it also happened to Casado) you have to make sure that the TV production is going to pick it up with the right technique. In the first candidates' debate on RTVE the previous Thursday (31 October), the camera did not focus in close-up on the evidence that some of the candidates wielded. They were neither seen nor read. In this one, the camera reached them, but the lighting was reflected in a dazzling way and hardly anything could be deciphered.
Iglesias came with a formula that had been successful in his last appearance: the constructive motion to the destructive debate, the virtuous circle. That is why it is difficult to understand why his "golden minute" technique was so clumsy, ideal for losing focus, or disconcerting the receiver of his message, by referring to a particular case, however exemplary it is believed to be, to a dramatic "slice of life". And this at a time when Irene Montero and Noelia Vera had already failed in this endeavour, and in the same minute, with the same approach (plus the one launched at Florentino Pérez) the previous week.
Casado has sharpened his manners, but he lacks a winning formula: the one he has is also a blocking one. At least he avoids all the errors, surely of character, of his spokesperson, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, a model in so many things of what not to do in a debate. But this is what we will focus on in the next instalment.
Pablo Carbajosa
Head of the Public Speaking Department of Proa Comunicación