Reading on last night’s debate, and watching clips of it, I cannot help but wonder why debates are held in the first place. The debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden may prove useful, in so far that it will show us whether both are ready to be vice president.

But with John McCain and Barack Obama everybody knows that they are fully capable of repeating the standard talking points, taught them by (ideological) experts.

PoliGazette’s own Jason Steck and Michael Merritt both live-blogged the debate – an initiative greatly appreciated by most of you, I have been informed. Michael’s approach to the debate was more serious, whereas Jason made a bit fun of the entire situation (the post was written in the name of ‘ElectionSnark’ for instance). Reading both posts I could not help but wonder to myself why the debate was held in the first place.

Michael summarized what was being said very well, and offered a great post-debate analysis as did Bal(t)imoron. The conclusion of both was basically that it was a tie; both men repeated their standard talking points, no major gaffes were committed.

That is certainly true, but that was to be expected. Both men are no (longer) rookies. They’ve been drilled perfectly. Obama was not a great debater when he started to run for president, but he had to do so many debates during the Democratic primary season that he would be a very slow study indeed if he would still come across as a man incapable of responding directly to questions instead of merely giving a great speech.

McCain, of course, is a man with a long career in politics. If he’s not able to debate, and to repeat the standard talking points, he has no business running for president in the first place.

So what’s the use of it all? Did they say anything new? Did they share deep thoughts on certain complicated subjects? Did they offer any original thoughts and ideas (original as in the academical meaning of the word; meaning a theory or vision wholy new).

No.

Nothing new was suggested, no deep thoughts shared. It was, as such, the average ‘debate,’ which was not much of a debate at all (considering that the men seldom directly responded to what the other said, except for when they thought they could score an easy point).

Bal(t)imoron concluded:

 Hank Paulson gave us the October surprise in September, and now America can watch as all candidates reprise the best lines from this horrendously long, incredibly- and now foolishly- expensive, ultimately pointless election. The next four years are mortgaged to irrelevance.

It’s a statement I can agree with you to a very large degree: elections are less important than some pretend. If McCain wins he’s not going to liberate the world from ‘evil,’ and if Obama wins he’s not going to make anyone happy.

There are some policy differences, though, especially with regards to foreign policy that make me think ‘there is something at stake here.’ It’s not as big as some pretend, but a general direction of the U.S. in the world. I think with Obama in charge, the U.S. will move more – not entirely but more – towards Europe. With McCain, less so.

What does this mean for debates? It means they are utterly irrelevant. We knew the above before they ‘debated’ each other yesterday. We were fully aware of those differences. No debate will crystalize that more, no debate will help us understand their exact views better.

So, lets just stop asking them to debate each other. They are irrelevant, and do not add anything to the larger political (policy) debate.