Do Debates Tell Us Anything?

Televised debates are on one hand the best opportunity most citizens have to get an extended, longer-than-a-soundbite view of presidential candidates, and on the other hand impossibly trivial and inane. For instance, in last night's debate in New Hampshire, Tim Pawlenty looked anxious and tentative, while Michele Bachmann was confident and crisp. Does that mean Bachmann would be a better president that Pawlenty? Hardly. So I'm reluctant to make too much of anything that happens in a debate. But it's worth highlighting one set of comments, which started with Herman Cain bumbling through an explanation of his prior position that Muslims ought to take special loyalty oaths to serve in the government. Among other things, Cain said that he had to treat Muslims differently because there are supposedly cases in which "Muslims did try to influence court decisions with Sharia law." Then it was Mitt Romney's turn:

Well, first of all, of course, we're not going to have Sharia law applied in U.S. courts. That's never going to happen. We have a Constitution and we follow the law.

No, I think we recognize that the people of all faiths are welcome in this country. Our nation was founded on a principal of religious tolerance. That's in fact why some of the early patriots came to this country and we treat people with respect regardless of their religious persuasion.

Obviously, anybody who would come into my administration would be someone who I knew, who I was comfortable with, and who I believed would honor as their highest oath -- their oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States.

There -- was that so hard? He dismisses the foolishness that is Sharia panic, then offers a simple and straightforward expression of the fundamental American values of pluralism and tolerance. But then we get to Newt Gingrich:

I just want to comment for a second. The Pakistani who emigrated to the U.S. became a citizen, built a car bomb which luckily failed to go off in Times Square was asked by the federal judge, how could he have done that when he signed -- when he swore an oath to the United States. And he looked at the judge and said, "You're my enemy. I lied."

Now, I just want to go out on a limb here. I'm in favor of saying to people, if you're not prepared to be loyal to the United States, you will not serve in my administration, period. (APPLAUSE)

We did this -- we did this in dealing with the Nazis and we did this in dealing with the communists. And it was controversial both times, and both times we discovered after a while, you know, there are some genuinely bad people who would like to infiltrate our country. And we have got to have the guts to stand up and say no.

Um...what? It's hard to understand what Gingrich means when he says "we did this" with Nazis and communists. What did we do? Did we have some kind of special loyalty-proving procedure for Nazis joining the federal government? And if those crafty Muslims are going to lie about being loyal to America, what exactly is Gingrich proposing? Maybe a round of waterboarding as part of your application to work in the soybean assessment agency in the Department of Agriculture?So here you have it: Given the opportunity, Gingrich gives expression to the worst impulses, and Romney, oddly enough, gives expression to the best. But you might have noticed that it was Gingrich who got the applause.