“It’s silly season here in the ACT. The beauty of the tulips in the park is spoiled by the clusters of noxious corflute weeds along our roadside verges. The three big parties are hard at muggery and we mugs are their targets,” bemoans columnist HUGH SELBY.

“Mug” is a word with five meanings: your coffee or tea served in a mug-sized cup; a not so beautiful face; to rob someone; to be easily duped and “a mug’s game”, which aptly describes our chances of winning on anything upon which we gamble our hard-earned coin.

Internet based scamming, a highly profitable criminal enterprise, and about to be the subject of new federal legislation, is the apex example of a mug’s game: the sophisticated mugger preying upon the emotions and ignorance of the hapless mug victim.

Sorry, I misled you. That internet scamming is not the apex. It’s up there, but still a poor second to how we voters, a mass of mugs, are treated in the political process.

It’s silly season here in the ACT. The beauty of the tulips in the park is spoiled by the clusters of noxious corflute weeds along our roadside verges. 

The three big parties are hard at muggery (yes, it’s a new word and you saw it first in CityNews) and we mugs are their targets.

The Liberals have told us that there will be a new Convention Centre and, as well, a world-class stadium down on the lake’s edge. Given our unprecedented level of debt are they going to drain the lake to find a hidden treasure to pay for these structures?

Labor has a foolproof strategy. Ignore any criticism and the problems disappear because the news cycle is so short and so superficial: enormous and increasing public debt; problem gambling; underfunded, short staffed health services; a housing debacle; lack of public amenities at sports grounds; court backlogs; and, police wanting more resources. The list goes on and on, as readers of CityNews know all too well.

The Greens are persisting with spraying magic “amnesia dust” everywhere. Forget about their lacklustre performance in the Labor-Green government. Not their fault. Look not at what they did not do, look instead at their shiny promises.

KEEPING UP THE ACT

We was fooled

But muggery is not a scrappy local game. It is played elsewhere too in much bigger arenas.

Remember the second presidential debate that took place in Philadelphia earlier this week. According to online reports some 67 million people tuned in to watch it: mugs (including the author of this piece).

What we don’t know is for how long that audience stayed tuned. How many watched and listened from start to finish? At what times did numbers of viewers choose to leave? How many came and went and came again?

We also don’t know how many of that audience were swing voters and how many of them were influenced by what they saw and heard to shift their support from Trump to Harris, or even to move from “not voting” to “voting” or vice versa.

Polls are clear that a majority (in the range of 52 per cent to 63 per cent from different polls) said that Harris “won”. 

But that doesn’t trouble Trump: he and his cronies invented an alternative narrative that has him as the winner. 

His diehard supporters never doubted that he would win. But what about those swing voters who didn’t watch any of the debate, or didn’t last the distance to the end of it? Will they, as tens of millions of voters did in 2016 and 2020, take this weird man at his word?

As of two months ago the number of registered voters in the US had dropped by almost seven million in the two years after Biden’s 2020 victory. In 2022 there were about 161 million registered voters.

Of the 67 million debate viewers there were an unknown number who were not registered voters, or do not want to vote, along with those outside the US who were keen to see the debate.

Given the imprecision, as a best guess let’s assume that about one third of next November voters tuned in to at least some of the debate.

What do we know about their likely attention span? It is alleged, though on what evidential basis is unclear, that the ability to focus on a single task (such as watching and listening to a TV debate) for those over 16 years ranges between 32 and 50 minutes. It gently declines with age.

This week’s debate (including the ad breaks) went for over 90 minutes; hence, much beyond anyone’s attention span.

Even when they were watching, what did the content have to do with deciding upon the potential ability of either candidate to be president? Little or nothing.

Each speaker was behind a lectern. Memory aids were not allowed. Each was allowed only to make notes of what was being said during the debate. Unlike this debate, the job of being President of the American Empire is not a superficial memory challenge.

As president they will have many advisers, and they must be able not only to encourage teamwork, but also to reach decisions – reflecting many inputs – on issues that can have world-wide ramifications. Nothing in the debate touched on those attributes. We are none the wiser.

Which brings us to the content. A decision was made that quantity, not quality of information would be the guide. Whatever the question, the speaker’s answer time was absurdly short. It permitted broad claims but excluded anything by way of a reasoned explanation.

We do not know what, if any, pre-debate information was given to the two speakers about the topics that would be raised. Nor do we know if any attempt was made to prioritise among those topics. If so, what were the criteria for such prioritisation?

It would have taken only moments to share with us, the audience, the proposed topics and their intended order for the debate. It didn’t happen.

What we got this week was a squawking cock fight, nothing more. Two birds, trained and fed elsewhere, let loose on a stage, and encouraged to pick at the other by questions designed to encourage a spectacle of feathers flying.

What might have been, but never will be

A fair dinkum commitment to helping voters decide their preferred candidate would have had at least the following:

• A series of pre-recorded shows, each of up to 30 minutes, in which each candidate summarised their approach to a particular policy issue and were then questioned on that approach by one or more interviewers expert in both asking questions and in the policy variables. Both Trump and Harris could appear remotely, and both could be assisted by their chosen advisers. Each such show would be edited before being shown to the public, with the “edits” being moderated for “fairness” by an independent third party.
• Any commercial breaks during a 30 minute show could have no connection to the subject matter of that show.
• Viewers could register their voting preference immediately after each show using a methodology that ensured that only viewers could vote and they could only vote once. The survey questions would show voting patterns that changed from one show to another. The results from recording these voting preferences would be released within 72 hours of the show, and before the next show aired. 

Don’t pin your hopes on the fair dinkum, not in our local election nor in the presidential. The political game of muggery is a mug’s game and we fall for it every time. That’s not going to change, so grab a mug of your beverage of choice and chill. It’s a comfort to be an ignorant, tribal mug voter.

Hugh Selby is the CityNews legal affairs commentator. His free podcasts on “Witness Essentials” and “Advocacy in court: preparation and performance” can be heard on the best known podcast sites.

Where he looked back, she looked to the future