To hell with debates, put them on Jeopardy!

“Her ad lib lines were well rehearsed.” Rod Stewart

Last week the public let out a weary collective yawn when news broke that Sleepy Joe and The Donald had agreed to subject us to two more bunkathons mislabeled as “debates.” Real debates have been part of the political landscape ever since Marc Antony exceeded expectations and bested Brutus. Webster replied to Hayne, Lincoln took on Douglas, and Kennedy beat Nixon: sort of. And that’s the point.

People who watched the first Kennedy/Nixon debate on television gave the win to Kennedy, who was well-tanned, well-rested and well-dressed. Nixon, who had campaigned earlier in the day looked wan and drawn thanks to the aftereffects of a knee injury. His light gray suit looked shiny under the klieg lights and unlike Kennedy, he skipped the makeup. Kennedy looked good. Nixon looked awful. In 1948 the first debate between presidential contenders took place on radio when Thomas E. Dewey took on Harold Stassen on the eve of the Oregon Republican primary. Dewey was declared the winner because he got off the best line. Answering whether the Communist party should be outlawed Dewey replied, “You can’t shoot an idea.” Thus the formula for winning Lincoln’s office: 1) look good, and 2) get off some zingers.

Of course, zingers don’t work if you’ve got no zing. In 1988 Bush the Elder tried to zing Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis with “That answer was as clear as Boston Harbor.” Dukakis struck back by deriding Bush’s “flexible freeze” budget plan as “an economic slurpee.” Since both had the comic delivery of undertakers, neither punch line landed. It was a battle of wits between the unarmed.

The time has come to quash the debate canard and replace it with something more substantive, revealing, and helpful. Put them on Jeopardy! Reason number one is obvious. Knowledge of History, World Geography, Business & Industry and, of course, Presidents is a definite plus on the resume. But general knowledge of the things the citizenry has on its mind like Movies or the Weather demonstrates a familiarity with the zeitgeist. If there is one thing the voters pine for it’s someone normal, not someone who lives in a tower named after himself. (If Robert Kennedy, Jr. gets invited he will no doubt uphold family tradition and run the category in Potent Potables.)

Another key insight comes with how a potential president plays the daily double. Presidents do sometimes have to take a gamble like Obama did when he ordered the raid on Bin Laden. How can we expect to trust a leader who doesn’t trust himself and says “a true daily double?”

Jeopardy! is a place where being wrong has consequences. You say something stupid and it costs you. When Trump says that Hungary borders Russia or that George Washington and the Continental Army “took over the airports” his fans dutifully shrug it off or deny it. On Jeopardy! the winner is not decided by a post-debate panel of talking heads, or if you’re watching Fox, empty-heads. The winner is the one with the most points on the board. A Jeopardy! showdown presents the ideal forum for Trump to prove his “very stable genius” and for Biden to disprove his dotage. It’s got to be better than ghostwritten insults, shouting matches, and rehearsed question avoidance.

One possible outcome of a Jeopardy! showdown will benefit the nation immensely and spur a nationwide sigh of relief: a landslide write-in vote for Ken Jennings.