PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Political commentator Elizabeth Drew asked and answered that question in a piece that ran in the Washington Post over the weekend. Here is a summary of her view:

“The debates test qualities that have virtually nothing to do with governing. Governing requires thoughtfulness, study, depth, patience, the ability to draw the most useful information out of advisers and arrive at the wisest policy.

I agree with her.

Here is a further excerpt of what she wrote as we sit on the cusp of a presidential debate Monday that may set viewership records, even if, as Drew contends, it contributes almost nothing to the process of governing.

“Consider the qualities that enabled John F. Kennedy to prevent the discovery that the Soviets had stationed nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba from escalating into a calamity. During that tense showdown, Kennedy most definitely didn’t utilize his considerable wit and zealously avoided publicly humiliating Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

“Yet employing wit and one-upping an opponent are the two qualities most prized in the debates.

“Worst of all, the supposedly most important thing that happens in a debate is a candidate delivering an effective one-liner. Now, we all know, or should know, that the one-liner has most likely been proposed by the candidate’s advisers and that it has been rehearsed. It has all the spontaneity of a can of tuna. And it has nothing to do with governing.

“It’s nice if a president is clever, but that’s not required. Yet the night usually goes to the deliverer of the best one-liner. It’s what is most anticipated and most remembered.

“Actually, the first televised presidential debates, between Kennedy and Richard Nixon, were nearly devoid of one-liners. Now they’re the be-all and end-all of the encounter. What a weird way to decide who should be president.

“Probably the most famous one-liner in modern debates was challenger Ronald Reagan’s saying to President Jimmy Carter in 1980, “There you go again.” Carter was raising a real issue: Reagan’s opposition to Medicare and Social Security when he was governor of California.

“No matter — that one sentence blew any discussion of those issues away. Reagan also scored the runner-up: his attempt, on seeking reelection in 1984, to dispatch questions about his mental acuity after one of his responses during the previous debate wandered down the Pacific highway. Reagan dealt with this potential block to a second term by saying of his nearly two-decade-younger challenger, former vice president Walter Mondale, “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

The line I remember also was one of the best. Uttered by then Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, it skewered his opponent, Dan Quayle, with a line that said: “I knew Jack Kennedy and you are no Jack Kennedy.”

But, to follow up on Drew’s piece, that is the very problem with debates as measures of someone’s ability to serve in the nation’s highest political office. It’s a horse-race mentality, one that doesn’t contribute much to a perspective about which candidate actually deserves to win on the merits of his or her ability to perform.

Here’s the way Bryan Garsten, professor of political science and the humanities at Yale University, put in a piece for the Wall Street Journal:

“Debates, at their very best, are the diamonds of democratic politics—crystal clear in argument, sparkling with wit, free from the discolorations of petty self-interest and shaped to focus light on the great issues of the day. But diamonds are rare, and no one is expecting a jewel on Monday night. The problem isn’t only that our candidates are lackluster, tempting as that explanation may be. Nor does the fault lie mainly in the quality of the questions or the skill of the moderator. The forum itself is flawed. How many ways are there to say, ‘Vote for me’? That line will always be more advertisement than argument.

“The American Presidency is too great an office to be subjected to the indignity of this technique. Though the televised debates returned and eventually became a regular part of the campaign, it is hard to think of even one that stands out as a model of informed and informative discourse.”

Garsten and Drew make very good points. My response will be to listen or watch the coming debates, but work hard to avoid what is natural – focusing only on the smart line or unintended gaffe.

I’ll work to find the kind of substance that can contribute to a reasoned vote come November.