STAFF EDIT: Debates crucial to democracy

This year’s gubernatorial candidates did a good deal to make Massachusetts residents resent political debates. Democrat Shannon O’Brien and Republican Mitt Romney irritated us with meaningless attacks and put us to sleep with redundant messages during five debates over the course of about one and a half months. But despite their lack of entertainment value, this year’s debates fulfilled their purpose and showed how valuable formal debates among our candidates are to our republic. The state’s voters should continue to demand that candidates for state office debate as much as possible so they are forced to clearly and openly disseminate their respective campaign platforms.

The gubernatorial debate season came to a close last night at Suffolk University, where O’Brien and Romney used the hour-long forum to attack each other’s records and elucidate their respective differences. It was the fifth debate of this year’s gubernatorial campaign, the third to include only O’Brien and Romney. Two of the race’s five debates included all five gubernatorial candidates.

This year’s debates gave Massachusetts voters a taste of several different arrangements, using varied moderators and designs and including a diverse array of candidates, and each arrangement gave voters a different look at the candidates for the state’s corner office. The five-candidate debates showed how the race’s front-runners reacted when attacked from the same side of the political spectrum, while the debates including only O’Brien and Romney gave voters a more in-depth view of their plans and values. The candidates reacted differently to each moderator and each varying debate style, giving the voters a good look at the breadth of their personalities. And the candidates spent nearly five hours on television personally comparing ideas and plans for the future of the commonwealth, allowing voters ample time to see each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. Undoubtedly, voters will be much better informed for this year’s November elections.

The candidates do deserve blame for wasting a large amount of debate time on irrelevant attacks. Future candidates should focus on comparing their solutions to state problems and plugging their records during debate time. To best use voters’ time, candidates should leave political attacks to advertisements and press conferences.

Though they may have been boring and annoying at times, debates should continue to be a central part of every statewide campaign. Their contributions to democracy are still important.