Richard Whalen

In the November 15th Las Vegas debate, my wife and I tried an experiment. She watched the debate on television and I listened to the debate on the radio in another room.

The result: She thought the frontrunner, Senator Hillary Clinton, had definitely recovered from the last debate and presented herself as aggressive and well-prepared.

Listening to the candidates’ words on the radio, undistracted by images and body language, I was more impressed with veteran Senators Joe Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut.

Biden noted that he as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had spoken on the telephone to Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf and India’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto before President Bush had.

Dodd wowed a Hispanic questioner and the audience with a burst of fluent Spanish. Earlier he made a cogent case for laying out the arithmetic involved in “reforming” Social Security. Each spoke thoughtfully about the long war in Iraq and the imminent danger of war spreading to Iran.

Finally, a third seasoned politician – New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson – drew on his experience as he explained why heavily Hispanic New Mexico issues drivers licenses to undocumented Hispanics.

Voters are smart and “hip” to high-priced media managers’ slick moves. Presidential debates should not be simply entertainment. While the debates reveal the candidates’ intelligence and mental acuity, they are also our opportunity to discover how the candidates’ experience and moral character qualify them to become the single most powerful leader on this planet.

Who won? My radio, of course.