Thoughts on Debates

There was news this week that the campaigns of the two (ineffective, ancient, doddering, serially dishonest, and in at least one case, felonious) major party candidates had agreed to circumvent the tried and true and cosmically-flawed method by which Presidential debates had been conducted for some time. There will instead be two debates, both quite early by recent standards, and if the reporting is to be believed, there will be no audience present and their microphones will be turned off it they speak past their allotted time. This was the first bit of good news I’d heard in the world of Presidential politics since 2015, and I hope it signals the diminishing of emotive, performative politics on the national stage. Yes, I know. I used the world “hope”. There is still hope.

Presidential debates have become circus acts in the Age of Trump. Don’t get me wrong—there were signs of debate stature fraying before the Orange Duce made his escalator ride into our lives, hearts, and stools. In the Age of Trump, they have become unwatchable, and the performative nature of the politics they encouraged have taken over both parties, as this embarrassing exhibition last week reinforces.

Cameras in legislative chambers feeding content- hungry outlets everywhere for the entertainment of uninformed mouth-breathers should be sufficient rationale for limiting their presence in anything approaching a place of serious governing. Any time I hear calls for the Supreme Court to be televised cause me to shudder, although I do prefer listening to audio of their hearings to reading transcripts. Both listening and reading pale in comparison to the majesty of actually READING their opinions, but most cannot be bothered with this commitment of time, what with Pickleball, Bridgerton, brunch, and pro-terrorist activism taking up so much of our time. But, I digress.

I will not watch the debates. The first takes place on my birthday and I will be with my sweetie-pie vacating on the Danube, and so will not partake. The second is some time in September, and since I cannot be convinced to vote for either of the two candidates, what they have to say will be of little interest.

But that they will—if all goes as planned—debate each other a la Kennedy/Nixon 1960—I think this will be good for the Republic. And if said Republic survives a second term of either man, it would be my hope that this approach to debates in our country would convey. No more political pep rallies more about how loud and numerous your supporters in the room are, but conversations about policy where men and women seeking public approval put their ideas and policies before their opponents and defend them against principled attacks.

Again. I guy can dream, can’t he?

Ah. Yes. I did slip in there that I cannot be convinced to vote for either of the two major candidates, didn’t I. Many of you who have been with me for a while (including the old school Conservative Wahoo Blog) know that I reached this same decision in 2016, and so voted third party. In 2020, I voted for Joe Biden as I had one and only one expectation of him (knowing I’d disagree with virtually everything his domestic agenda comprised), and that was to beat Trump. He did, and he has governed as I expected. Because I remain a Reagan Conservative, little of the Biden Domestic Agenda has appealed to me. His early support for Israel was encouraging, but he’s begun to dance with the loonies of his party on that question. His support for Ukraine has been generally good, though at virtually every decision point on whether to supply Ukraine with some manner of military power, he’s made the wrong decision until forced into a corner where he has to make the right one.

I cannot vote for him this time because he is simply physically and mentally unfit for the job. Period. After that, nothing really matters. He could go around sounding like a Paul Ryan Conservative for all I care, and I still wouldn’t vote for him. I am a month short of my 59th Birthday and I wonder about my own mental and physical fitness for such a job. He’s got 23 years on me.

So I’ll vote third-party or write in. If you’d like my vote, I’d be happy to entertain doing so if you comment with your qualifications below. And I will not cotton to your “it’s a binary choice” bullshit. It isn’t. I also get to choose not voting at all, which is a legitimate choice. So pedal that stuff elsewhere.

A Baseball Game

I have a potentially shocking revelation to make. I’ve never sat through an entire UVA Baseball game (sorry, Narls). I attended one once my fourth year in college, but I stayed for maybe two innings or so (it was the spring of the year I was graduating, and there were other pressing matters to attend to).

One for the ages…

The pitch clock has resurrected my interest in baseball, and so I cast about this spring in my friend group to find a college game or to worth attending. I looked at meeting my buddy Todd at Annapolis to watch a Navy game, but my travel and work schedule so thoroughly conflicted with the limited home game offerings that I simply couldn’t find one that worked. With my Wahoo buddies, I went through the same scheduling drill, but we were able to fix on a game that happened yesterday (Saturday 18 May). Three of us signaled intent, and Rob bought the tickets.

As the day approached, weather (the other college baseball bugaboo—March and April are foul months at best, and so MAYBE you get some good weather in May in these parts) became a problem, and it two of the three online services I checked called for steady rain throughout the day, even as late as driving to the park.

One of our three dropped out, and so I drove to Richmond to Rob’s house and he drove on to Charlottesville, but not before we downed (ok, I downed) a gluttonous lunch. We put our faith in the Minority Report of the weather, the one that said 15% rain diminishing to 9% throughout the game, and headed to the park. To be honest, I was really sort of dreading sitting through rain delays and getting soaked to the bone for a game I thought they’d probably do everything possible to get in, as it was the last home game of the season against the dread Hokies of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

UVA has a sweet set of venues for baseball, softball, lax, and soccer just across the street from where I used to watch basketball games, a venue which has since been expunged from the Earth. We arrived just before the 5PM start of the game, as finding parking was complicated by the late in the game realization that it was graduation weekend. What followed was sublime.

First of all, the rain did not come, and it was a pleasant evening in the low 60’s. The hated Hokies got off to a really quick lead, shelling our starting pitcher and getting a 7-0 lead by the fourth inning. We clawed back two runs, then five more. Tech scored late, we tied it, then it went into extra innings. They took a one run lead. And then this in the bottom of the 13th inning (watch THIS video).

I realize that it as just a regular season game. But it was the HOKIES. And it was the third game in a series sweep. And it was a walk-off, extra inning dinger to win.

I put it in the top 3 UVA sports moments that I have witnessed in person. Number 3.

Number 2 was the 1995 Peach Bowl win over Georgia (in Atlanta!) on a kickoff runback for a touchdown.

And of course the #1 was the win over Purdue in the 2019 Men’s Basketball Natty season, the game that sent us to the Final Four, specifically the basket that tied it and sent it into overtime: