It has become an essential, an imposed figure, there is no escaping it.
I’m talking regarding the debate regarding the debate: who “won”, who “lost”?
This is a somewhat futile exercise for three reasons.
all good
First, because everyone judges according to their own criteria.
Then, because everyone tends to think that the one he already preferred before the debate was particularly good, and that the one he didn’t like too much before was particularly bad.
Finally, you are only obliged to question your initial prejudice if there is a real knockout, a final knockout.
However, there were none yesterday.
In terms of being knocked out, nothing will equal for me an exchange that occurred during an old debate today completely forgotten: that of 1988 between the two candidates for the vice-presidency of the United States, the democrat Lloyd Bentsen and Republican Dan Quayle.
To counter the criticism that he was too young and too inexperienced, Quayle says he is the same age and background as John F. Kennedy when he ran for president.
Bentsen looked at him like one looks at a poodle and sprayed him with a simple, “Senator, I knew JFK, JFK was my friend, you’re not a JFK.”
Boom! The lights had just gone out and the healers entered the ring. It was over… which did not prevent the Bush-Quayle duo from winning.
Nothing like last night.
Traditionally, the debates favor the one who is the least known, the one who starts from the farthest.
Honestly, following Thursday night, who can deny that Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is running a superb campaign, and that this calm and balanced young man is in politics for the right reasons and in the right way?
But the other four were also excellent, each dragging, inevitably, the pots of his party.
Duhaime marked out his ideological territory by putting the other four in the same left field.
The Prime Minister has logically played the role of the wise, reassuring, moderate, responsible, who understands that doing is more difficult than talking.
Nadeau-Dubois concealed the radicalism of QS well and presented a positive image of his party.
Dominique Anglade was pugnacious, fired up, combative. His tribute to Pauline Marois for the creation of the CPEs was of rare elegance.
Somewhere else
We can quibble regarding the format, the occasional cacophony, the lack of time to develop, the face-to-face between two chefs on a subject where they think the same.
But the perfect formula does not exist, and this one is the best to date.
I have seen I don’t know how many televised debates in the United States, France, Spain, Great Britain, the countries whose political scene I follow with the most attention.
We are wrong to maintain any inferiority complex.
Thursday’s debate was on par with the best I’ve seen elsewhere.
