Culture isn't on the debate agenda

Questions during the three planned debates will likely include the crashing economy, the Iraq occupation, taxes and healthcare. Climate change, pretty much ignored in both the Democratic and Republican preliminary debates, might even make it to the podium.

Lipstick on a pig may or may not come up. But rest assured, at tonight's planned foreign policy debate, PBS anchorman Jim Lehrer will not ask: "Sen. Obama, should the United States pledge specific funds to rebuild the Iraqi National Museum, looted during the 2003 invasion, as a diplomatic measure of reconciliation?"

At next month's domestic policy debate at Hofstra University, CBS reporter Bob Schieffer will not inquire: "Sen. McCain, should an artist be allowed a full tax deduction when donating a painting she made to a public art museum, just the way a private collector who buys the very same painting can?"

Cultural infrastructure, foreign and domestic, will not be on the radar screen. But the reason these questions won't be asked is not because they are trivial. Quite the contrary. The debates, which aren't really debates but elaborately scripted reality television shows, are designed to be trivial.

Their goal is not to elicit serious public policy discussion from the man who will be the most powerful human on Earth for the next four years. Policy chats don't draw eyeballs; car wrecks do. The aim of a TV debate is to see whether a candidate under pressure will stumble or utter a gaffe. The goal is to manufacture dramatic conflict.

"Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy!"

As a species of political theater, a TV debate is always evaluated on the quality of the performances, not the script. That, you can look up.

Beyond the websites

Sen. Barack Obama's "Blueprint for Change" is posted on his campaign website. It includes several cultural proposals, mostly in the harmless realm of support for arts education but also calling for a critical change in the tax code. (He supports the artists' tax deduction, now reserved for collectors.) Sen. John McCain's campaign website includes no mention of cultural policy in its issues overview. Isn't that enough to know about where the candidates stand?