Terry: Debate less entlightening than entertaining

With a glass of iced tea at my elbow, a tribute to my late political wonk of a friend Kirby Rowan, I consumed the Republican debate like a deep dish pizza.

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My first impression about the debate was “Holy Moley that ain’t your fathers’ Oldsmobile.”

With help from bombastic candidate Donald Trump, Fox News took a page from General Motors and attempted to re-brand presidential debates as we know them.

It was entertaining and the atmosphere was like a Super Bowl or a big prizefight. But did it enlighten us on who is best qualified to serve as president? It was so great I had to break out the chips before it was over. I should have popped popcorn before they started.

Back in the first presidential election I really took notice of, Jimmy Carter was among a field of some 15 Democrats vying for the party’s nomination. Sound familiar? I believe there were 17 Republican candidates in the race on Thursday night.

My good friend Kirby was in political Nirvana that year. We watched the debates over iced tea and we hashed out the candidates’ political fortunes at work over a stack of newspapers in the mailroom.

Over the years, organizations sponsoring debates have gone out of their way to be objective, fair and treat each candidate exactly the same. That idea went out the window from the beginning. Fox News didn’t wait for Trump to make a headline. They served one straight at him and bounced it off his rug-covered forehead.

I was pretty sure that was the direction Fox would take things with the debate, objectivity would go out the window and they would go for the sizzle. I think maybe it worked; it kept me interested for a full two hours and I haven’t done that in quite a few years.

It’s sad that our election cycle starts so early. It’s still 10 months until the primary and 15 months until the general election. Some of those 17 candidates will no doubt call it quits next week.

My wife and I both declared our favorite candidate before the debate started and they were two different guys. Without revealing who each of us likes, I’ll just say that we both still favor the same candidate after the debate and neither of us thought our candidate moved up or dropped down much because of the debate.

With that said, we both agreed on which candidates dropped the ball and which ones gained ground.

So to answer my earlier question about whether I was enlightened to who is best qualified, I guess the answer would have to be no, I wasn’t all that enlightened. Even if much of it was distasteful, I was entertained enough by it to stay tuned in — maybe that’s progress, and then again maybe debates will soon go the way of the Oldsmobile.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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