Government

Perhaps Comedians Could Provide Viral Moments For Politicians In Debates?

Most moments that go viral these days are nasty ones. We don't need our national discourse to become nastier than it already is.

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Political debates are not about policy. No one cares about policy.

Political debates are a little bit about politicians’ height and weight and hair. People love to talk about that.

Political debates are a great deal about whether politicians seem like the kind of people you’d like to have a beer with. Political scientists say that matters.

But, more than anything else, in today’s environment, political debates are about politicians’ ability to create viral moments. If a politician can say something — anything — that can be caught in a 30-second sound bite and circulated around the internet, that’s victory.

Unfortunately, most moments that go viral these days are nasty ones. One politician says something vindictive about another, pulling the second person up short; the internet loves it. That might be good for one of the politicians, but it’s bad for America. We don’t need our national discourse to become nastier than it already is.

Here’s a thought: Why don’t politicians hire comedians to work on their staffs?

Jokes go viral all the time. If a politician told a good joke, the politician would be almost certain to go viral.

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Surely a good comedian could come up with three or four short, pithy, jocular, and meaningful one- or two-liners for politicians to hold in their back pockets during a debate. If the opportunity arose, a politician could spring one, creating a viral moment that showed them to be clever, friendly, funny, and just the sort of person you’d like to have a beer with.

I don’t mean nasty humor; that defeats half the purpose of this. I mean clever, funny, nice, or perhaps self-deprecating humor. I’m thinking of 73-year-old Ronald Reagan, accused of being too old to run for a second term, telling Walter Mondale that Reagan wouldn’t hold Mondale’s  “youth and inexperience” against him in the 1984 campaign.

Or, perhaps not as memorably, Al Gore telling Jack Kemp during the 1996 vice-presidential debate that: “If you won’t use any football stories, I won’t tell any of my warm and humorous stories about chlorofluorocarbon abatement.”

Those debates were before the age of social media, so you can’t be sure that the one-liners would have gone viral. But I suspect they would have; they’re perfect for the medium.

Funny one-liners would win attention for politicians, show the politicians to be affable and witty, and surely raise their standing in the polls.

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Politicians can’t do much about their height or appearance, but they could do an awful lot to make the public think that they were personable. Aren’t they missing a trick not putting a comedian on the staff?

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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