Newt Gingrich's 'Lincoln-Douglas' debate with Jon Huntsman sent its audience to sleep as the candidates agreed to agree
If the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates had been as insipid and smug as yesterday's self-styled copy – a debate between Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman – slavery would probably still be legal in America.
In reality the long-winded discussion in New Hampshire between the two 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls was more like a warm bath than a hot-tempered dialogue.
In 1858 Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas clashed over slavery, equality and what Lincoln called "the eternal struggle" over right and wrong – "The two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time," in Lincoln's words.
By 2011, Gingrich and Huntsman politely mused alongside each other's thoughts, largely agreeing and when they didn't agree they merely agreed not to disagree. How agreeable.
The high point of the night came when Huntsman, in the middle of a windy reply, spotted a family member in the audience falling asleep. "I see my daughter nodding off, so let's move on," he said.
Note to politicians: when you are boring your own adult children to sleep, it may be time to reconsider the wisdom of your longshot run for the presidential nomination.
Rather than serving up an intellectual feast for Republican voters, the pair offered up arguments "as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death," as Lincoln said of Douglas's rhetoric, back in the days when Lincoln-Douglas debates meant fighting talk.
Trailing badly in the polls, Huntsman could have used the opportunity to put some clear blue water between himself and the baggage-laden former Speaker of the House. Instead the two men united against their sworn enemy: Mitt Romney.
On the subject of Iran, for example, the only difference was in tone. Gingrich described the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran as "a holocaust" while Huntsman merely called it "the transcendent issue of this decade".
Certainly, historians don't recall Lincoln or Douglas offering each other the vice presidency*, as Huntsman did to Gingrich. And thank goodness.
* For historical accuracy: Lincoln and Douglas debated while competing for an Illinois US Senate seat, although both men did later run for the White House in 1860. And of course they couldn't have offered each other the vice presidency since they were both residents of the same state, something prohibited by the constitution.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/dec/13/newt-gingrich-jon-huntsman-debate
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