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News on debates – indeed, news about any subject – is always after-event reporting. Every observant reporter and columnist knows that a modern debate, federal or state, and a report on a debate are two different events.
Most scholars agree that widespread coverage of the Lincoln/Douglas debates – note the plural – was broadly “fair” precisely because newspapers at the time were partisan. Carrying on a tradition since the first raucous presidential debate between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the two principal combatants in the Lincoln Douglas debates could rely on a party committed media. To put it in rude terms, Lincoln had his media and Douglas his.
There were seven Lincoln Douglas debates impartially disbursed throughout Illinois. The media at the time was stenographic. Debates were reported nearly in full, but the Republican media touched up Lincoln’s remarks while leaving Douglas’ remarks as they were. The Democrat media did the same. When modern scholars and historians wanted an accurate rendition of what had been said during the debates, they turned to the unvarnished debate record of candidates, the Republican media reporting on Douglas and the Democrat media reporting on Lincoln.
The modern debate experience is essentially different because modern political debates are not debates between two candidates overseen by an outwardly partisan, stenographic media. They are elaborate and sometimes confusing press conferences between two or more candidates for office. The narrative line of the debates is not set by the candidates themselves but by press reporters whose impartiality is presumed by the audience.
During one of Lincoln’s speeches a heckler, probably planted, called out that Lincoln was “two-faced.” Lincoln’s response: “If I had two faces, do you think I’d be wearing this one?” Nearly everyone during his day – including Lincoln himself – agreed that he was no Clark Gable. Such an audience response and Lincoln’s laughable rejoinder are nearly impossible in modern day politics; it would be verboten in a debate led by news reporters whose political prejudices, unlike those partisan reporters of Lincoln’s day, are carefully hidden in the reportorial shrubbery.
In Connecticut’s gubernatorial race, much of the media’s reporting is favorable to incumbent Governor Ned Lamont precisely because he has been governor for two terms, now heading towards a third term. It is from incumbents that the media gets its news. Incumbents generally are political chefs, meal makers, news outlets serving as their wait staff, and modern incumbent politicians are masters at making the servings delectable. Rare is the news outlet willing to antagonize its well-developed news sources. Political propaganda can be very convincing coming from friendly politicians. Then too, the whole of New England has been for decades a political property of the Democrat Party, which is why there is only one Republican congressperson in the whole of New England. A few decades ago, a reporter was asked why every several years he blew off his sources. Because, he said, he did not wish to be cuckolded by professional politicians. The reporter was a heroic exception to the rule.
I asked Ryan Fazio how many debates with Lamont have been scheduled. His response was sad but not surprising: “I have accepted nearly 10 different debate invitations while Gov. Lamont has accepted only 2, hosted by WFSB and WTNH, in the last 10 days of the campaign after early voting will have already begun and likely over 100,000 people have already cast their votes.” The rule regarding incumbents is: Leave your campaign to subordinates if possible, and avoid or reduce direct unscripted encounters with your opponent. Debates, even a tightly scripted debate, may be a mare’s nest of possible avoidable errors. Less said is best done. Such is the advantage of incumbency and profitable, longstanding warm relations with a friendly media.
In an unscripted encounter, it would be very difficult for Democrats to pin a donkey’s tail on a Republican elephant. But they never stop trying to do so.
In a recent pre-debate encounter between Lamont and Fazio, Lamont’s Republican opponent valiantly attempted to reclaim from Lamont the issue of middle class unaffordability. Much of the unaffordability crisis in Connecticut, has occurred because dominant Democrats in the General Assembly have for decades steadfastly refused to cut taxes, a workable solution to government debt President John Kennedy asserted in an address he gave before the New York Economics Club about a year before he was assassinated. Connecticut Commentary covered Kennedy’s astonishing address last April 2024 – “A Word to the Wise in Connecticut: Cut Spending, Reduce Taxes.”
Lamont boasted concerning his “influence over electric rates” during a pre-debate encounter with Fazio at a State Bond Commission meeting, “I appoint PURA [the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority], and those are the folks who are holding Eversource and U.I. [the state’s energy distributors] accountable. The last commissioner — the utilities thought she was holding them too accountable.”
The last Commissioner of PURA was Marissa Gillett, forced to leave her position following a successful suit brought against her by hard pressed energy distributors. The PURA Grand Guignol was covered by Connecticut Commentary in the link provided above.
Fazio responded to Lamont’s boast, “I heard the governor take credit — ‘I’ve eliminated the public benefits charge’ — even though he just signed a bill into law that will increase the public benefits charge for the next 20 years. We all know that the public benefits charge is very volatile. Sometimes, it is zero. Sometimes, it is as high as 30%. But it averages 15 to 20%, and will continue to do so in the future.”
Fazio knows whereof he speaks. The public benefits charge has been Fazio’s bete noir for most of his term in Connecticut’s state senate. The public benefits charge is a mandatory fee added to electric bills to fund state‑approved programs such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, low‑income assistance, and other public initiatives, with recent increases also covering new projects like home electric vehicle chargers. To put it in terms voters might better understand, the fee is an off-budget tax collected by energy distributors rather than legislators from their customers. In Lincoln’s day, the media might have called the devise a honeypot or an off the record budget reservoir deployed by clever politicians to fool some of the people all of the time.
Tax charges belong in state budgets, not in electric bills.
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