News that there's going to be a series of televised debates between the potential next leaders of the country - Gordon Brown, David Cameron and that other one - has met with a predictable series of objections. Politicians fear they won't get a fair crack of the whip. Politics is going to be "cheapened" by being given the TV treatment. We'll all be listening to empty soundbites, apparently. Style will win out over substance. We will be like the Americans. Imagine it - British society being influenced by the US!
Nobody wants a general election conducted like a reality TV show. We don't need to see Cameron telling the nation that he "doesn't know what he'll do" if he loses. We can live without Dermot O'Leary putting a consoling arm around a tearful Brown, and introducing a Coldplay-soundtracked montage of his "best bits" as a fresh-faced chancellor.
However, the much-quoted fact that more people vote in The X Factor than in the general election is telling. It's not, as conservative critics sometimes make out, a sign that we've become a nation of morons. It's just that TV, for those who still haven't cottoned on, is rather popular. As inventions go, it's been quite a success. Trying to treat it as an impostor that might undermine the democratic process is an attitude that's 50 years out of date.
But also, when did we start sneering at the idea that politics is full of shallow soundbites? That's been the essence of politics for as long as any of us can remember. The three-word slogan "Labour isn't working" is often credited with winning the Tories the 1979 election. Harold Wilson pipped Alec Douglas-Home in 1964 partly because he looked good on TV, whereas Douglas-Home looked, in his own estimation, "like a ghost". What was the "fight them on the beaches" speech if not a brilliant collection of soundbites?
The fact is, hardly any of us is going to read every page of every political manifesto in May - and even if we did, there's no differentiating between the bits that are realistic promises and the bits about which, in a year's time, the relevant party's leader will say: "Ah, well, when I said we'd do that, I meant we wouldn't do that." Party politics has never had much to do with real life; it's about who talks a good game, who puts on the better show. In other words, it's like The X Factor. By inventing the prime-time presidential debate, the US was simply ahead of us in admitting what politics comes down to: do you prefer the look of this guy, or that guy?
So, as far as I'm concerned, the Cameron-Brown-Clegg showdowns can't come soon enough. I'll probably buy the DVD box set with out-takes afterwards. And now, to get in the mood, I'm off to watch ITV4's new series Make Me the Foreign Secretary. All right, I'm joking, but I'll bet you were about to google it to make sure.
Mark Watson's column runs fortnightly
