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Ah, now that was a debate worth watching...

IN BRITAIN, we simply don’t do on-screen politics as well as the Americans. That’s not to say that we don’t have good writers and actors. Yes, Minister was brilliant. Anybody who’s ever worked in a large Government department may agree that it’s more of a documentary than a satire. The Thick Of It is savagely wonderful. But neither of these ever reached the inspiring heights of The West Wing when it comes to engaging people with the positives of politics.

Fiction’s one thing. What of an election, you say? The point of real-life television debates is that they should add to our knowledge of the political choice, and inspire us to take part in the process. Of course. The problem was that our television leaders’ debates did neither.

At the risk of a tangent into Grumpy Old Men, I ended up hating these debates with a loathing I usually reserve for ‘Less than Ten Items’ signs, or drivers who believe that the yellow ‘Baby on Board’ oblong removes the imperative to use the car’s indicators. If auditioning for Newsnight Review, I’d muse that the format tries to overlay a presidential campaign onto a parliamentary system.

My biggest gripe is that the candidates couldn’t make it work. Two of them tried and failed to imitate televisual giants of the presidential debate. The other has unwittingly succeeded in recreating a President who eschewed the format altogether. The rehashed result is like comparing tasteless microwaved Wimpy-mush to a 16oz Omaha bison-burger.

The only man who remained stubbornly, authentically himself, who didn’t consciously imitate a presidential candidate, was the Prime Minister, encouraging me to muse that Gordon Brown could well be emerging as the Lyndon Johnson of our time. There are strong parallels, even if they are unintentional. Both immensely capable politicians. Reputations for forceful persuasion. Real intellectual ability. A reputed sense of paranoia that at times is largely justified. A core of strong, progressive, personal principle. And both LBJ and JGB are poster children for a palpable lack of comfort in mass communication. That means inevitably that they can struggle to harness a national leader’s bully pulpit to engage with the public mood. But as the great Civil Rights address to Congress and Brown’s Central Hall speech showed, they can come into their own outside the television format.

Leave aside the politically toxic inheritance of an unpopular war from a charming predecessor. There’s another big difference. GB agreed to do television debates, LBJ refused. And that’s what I still cannot fathom: Labour’s decision to participate. In which possible universe did the PM or his team believe he could appear better than his opponents on television? It’s not exactly political disloyalty or a sage professional insight to say that Gordon’s isn’t an attractive screen persona. It’s a statement of the bleedin’ obvious. LBJ rightly declined to engage in debate with Barry Goldwater. Of course, the President’s huge lead of early 1964 was not Gordon Brown’s happy situation when the debates were agreed. But neither was Brown in the nadir of Gerald Ford, consistently thirty points behind in the polls. So why do it?

Sky's poster of the movie...

While that point lingers, let us flick to the Dave and Jack Show, for Cameron clearly sees himself as a JFK. When the campaign started he delivered a self-conscious pastiche of Kennedy rhetoric in front of the cameras on the Embankment. The braying Central Office rent-a-crowd behind him loved it. I’m the first to admit that there is a superficial resemblance. Both Cameron and Kennedy had a background of privilege and unearned wealth, a sense of entitlement to power. In a ungallant moment I might add that both had a slightly odd-looking aristocratic wife, whose ardently-publicised ability to produce offspring, apparently on demand, was translated by a supine media into evidence of her husband’s electoral virility. But Cameron’s earnestly-constructed inventions – that Britain is in the grip of a rising crime wave and an un-absorbable immigration surge – appear only partially to have had the effect of an imaginary Soviet missile gap. In my own Lloyd Benson moment I found myself telling the LCD-enhanced Mr Cameron that “You’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Nick Clegg’s team had clearly done their YouTube research on debates past and should have given a nod to Google in the programme credits. His moderately successful, if rather obvious, tactic was to follow Ronald Reagan. The basics were good. He was wearing a decently cut suit for a start, unusual itself in British politics. He is unquestionably an attractive screen figure. A square jaw creates a good impression when a politician is flickering in the corner of the electorate’s living rooms. His “There they go again” catch-phrase was pure Reagan.

It would be unkind to point to out to Mr Clegg that Mr Reagan’s aspiration to be a second-rate screen presence was behind him, rather than the height of his political career. But it would be fair to say that Clegg lacked the conviction and cohesion of a Reagan performance. That’s because Reagan’s appeal was down to the fact that he had something to say, not just how he said it. A well-rehearsed line in the first debate on ‘cleaning up politics’ was well crafted and well delivered. But there was precious little else, and the cynical disavowal of the Liberal Democrat position on the Euro will upset both his betrayed supporters and the patronised sceptics.

If television’s the problem, the short-term answer is to change the format. Each party leader does an hour-long radio interview, one on one, with a broadcast journalist. Not the rude and consistently counter-productive style of the Today school of interruption rather than interview. If a journalist stands for election then I want to hear his views. Until then, I really don’t care what John Humphrys’ opinion is or what Nick Robinson has been doing with his day. I’d rather know the views of the person being interviewed, thanks. So let’s have Martha Kearney, or the excellent Ross Hawkins.

Each leader will be asked the same questions. Economy, Defence, Foreign Policy, NHS, Welfare State. And then the programme is edited together. One question, three answers. Next question. And so on. It’s broadcast on consecutive nights. We hear, consecutively, what each party thinks about each issue. And each then gets a rebuttal PPB.

Without the visual distraction of judging the leaders on appearance, let’s listen to what they have to say. We might end up picking a Prime Minister because he lays out intelligent plans for our future, rather than because he looks good in a nice tie.

Going for Gold is currently rerunning on UKGold

But this solution may expose a deeper problem. Our major parties are struggling to come up with decent rhetoric that encapsulates their idea of who we are, a principle for government and the programme that follows. This election has been fought between a clumsy, grammatically painful encapsulation of a strong idea – “A Future Fair For All” – against vague transatlantic pastiches which are as vacuous as they are cynical, whether the confused “Big Society” or the wholesale transplant of “Change” from the Obama playbook. The latter in particular is an attempt to gain momentum by whacking an American bumper sticker on a British bandwagon. It isn’t working, I’m afraid.

In 2010 the poverty of our political debate has been painful. Why should this be? Our system should be able to provide a platform for statesmen and women. Parliament is an institution in which senatorial giants can emerge, an independent platform on which figures can gain national prominence. It’s not because our politicians are generically less capable, even if this election the central party organisations appear to have selected many parliamentary candidates by separating the wheat from the chaff…and keeping the chaff.

The Americans are simply doing the rhetoric better. The New Deal, New Frontier, Great Society, Reagan Revolution, Contract With America: all were clear statements of principle from which distinctive policy evolved. Take my own party. Labour campaigners on the street can readily say that Dave is on the side of the rich toffs. His mates are the Bullingdon bankers. He’s on the side of “them” not “us.” But none of slogans used by any of the “progressive” parties have the punch of “He’s for Wall Street, not Main Street.” And there’s our problem.

Anyway, that’s all we’ve got time for. Thanks to the producer and especially to you, the viewers.