Does television tyrannize the presidency? On the TV you watch and listen as the crowd laughs, and the people you listen to rant and rave on their own opinions. People watch in shock and awe finding great amusement for these fantastic events. Although you might think of a game show, these events are on TV regularly televised on debates. These debates made a mock of the presidential election and turned it into a race of publicity over politics. At its essence, televised debates had innumerable capabilities to transform the public into well informed masses, though the stigmatism alongside the party system and the comedical joke of debates have distorted this ability. This corrupted form of television has taken the great potential of televised …show more content…
As more and more networks covered the debates, the ratings dropped to an all time low in 1996 with a rating of 31.6(“Nielsen Tunes into Politics”). This clearly and factually shows the decline in televisions debates and the standard to which they are held. The golden age was a period of great growth and expansion which only took place for twenty years before a drop which I believe continues to today. This high point of media of the debates became corrupted by things like wanting views and ratings. These led to a decline in the standard of debates and how useful they are to the public. People like Louis Menand and Ted Koppel speak out against the mockery that has become of the debates. The race of presidency is being dumbed down by the televised events. It requires that presidents answer immediately and with little forethought into the questions (Menand). This lowers the standard of which we know about the president’s plans. They are required to answer without thinking which causes them to be caught off guard at times, lowering the standard of the answers or requiring the candidates to make up bull shit on the …show more content…
Presidency and Television,” Hart and Triece bring up three major points as to what is wrong with the new system of debates and presidency. They point out that; the presidency has turned into a celebrity role, the party system is being trashed because the parties are no longer needed to get to know the president, and that this new system causes people to turn from politics completely due to the fact that the presidency is such a public figure (Hart). Hart and Triece address the excellent point that the presidency is becoming a joke. The presidency no longer carries just the weight of being a political leader but also is a celebrity leader. Someone who is meant to be making executive decisions for the betterment of our state and its people is now being concerned with how he looks in the eye of the public past his policies. This same publicity is causing the party system that our government is based on to be considered futile to those who follow the president’s celebritism. The parties themselves allow for people to follow people with similar values to them and for the people to elect a candidate to run under that party. People no longer feel the need to use this when they can learn about the people themselves. This also destroys people’s belief in politics. They lose interest in the repetition of similar presidencies and people who want actual politics lose interest in the repetition of the celebritizing rather than the