This kind of goes to my issue with political debates in the first place, especially for the president. Debating is not a skill heavily used by an American President at all.
It is essentially the wackadoodle job interview question that has zero relation to how or why you would be a good employee.
Once you are President, you have a very lopsided power dynamic in pretty much every single discussion you participate in, and you almost always get the last word. “Debating Skills” have no relevance to that.
Of course a trial lawyer would do better because they are one of the very few people who have ANY need for “debating skills” in their day to day existence,
We should definitely switch from a debate to an NFL combine style skills contest. It would be one way to help prevent another Trump from happening and we might get better leaders that way. I would do a 200 dollar PPV of Donald Trump completely humiliating himself over and over again.
Honestly it would be a really good way to push out the elderly in general. There are exceptions and they should be celebrated, but if you’ve declined you don’t have a right to hold an important decision making position that impacts the whole planet.
If @skydiver8 doesn’t see how this would have helped Pete and like this post I’m going to be really sad lol.
It is possible to fake authenticity for a single debate or single speech.
However, that is not how the authenticity of political candidates are judged. It’s judged by everything public thing they do. Faking that is much harder. Unless you’re like Christian Bale in The Prestige, it’s not something most are going to have the determination to do. Faking authenticity is especially hard as you really have to be on all the time. It’s not like faking being a Christian. Lots of politicians pull that off with ease.
The best a candidate for president can do in a single speech is try to be the most plausibly authentic version of himself. If you try to overdo it you will be worse off than if you didn’t even try.
On the other hand, if you are a candidate for some local city council slot and no one knows who the fuck you are, then going hard on faking authenticity well in a single speech or debate performance is probably optimal.
I disagree that authenticity can be faked. I tend to think of it as the sum total of everything that can’t be faked basically. You can be authentically a fake like Trump, who is a bullshitter from the top of his head to the bottom of his shoes, but you can’t fake authenticity if that makes sense. Trump and AOC are both defined in my mind by what they authentically are.
Biden too tbh. I don’t think he’s putting on a fake decency act.
I’m also saying that authenticity can’t be faked because you basically have to live a completely fake life to do it.
I’m also saying that someone you’ve never seen or heard before can fake authenticity for 5 to 10 minutes in such a way that it would be impossible for you to be sure that is not how they really are. Is this the part you disagree with?
For me authenticity is the quality of actually caring for the causes that you are supporting more than you care about political power/advancement. Enacting the policy is the ultimate goal.
For most politicians, what they really want is power. So they champion the causes that they think will improve their standing. That’s not to say that the don’t care about the policies. They do at least a little, but it’s secondary to gaining political power.
It’s not always easy to make the determination because politicians generally like power and at least care a little about the policies they espouse. But in my view, there are very few authentic politicians. Bernie would be one for sure.
Madness. She cut trump off every time like she was a kindergarten teacher and he a babbling toddler at naptime. It was awesome and incredible and provided all the subtext necessary.
