The History of Bad Ideas: Televised Leadership Debates

12/08/24 • 59 min

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To finish this series of bad ideas, David tries to persuade Gary Gerstle of the futility of televised leadership debates. From Nixon vs Kennedy to Harris vs Trump, do the voters really learn anything from these supposed exchanges of ideas? Are they ever much more than a competition to avoid gaffes? And what did British politics gain when it introduced prime ministerial election debates (apart from a brief attack of Cleggmania)?

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Next time: The Great Political Films resumes with Z (1969)

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To find out about our gift offerings for Christmas and beyond visit the gift page on our website https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts

The latest edition of the PPF newsletter is out now - sign up to get it every fortnight https://www.ppfideas.com/newsletters

Next time: The Great Political Films resumes with Z (1969)

Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network

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Previous Episode

The History of Bad Ideas: Party Members Choosing Leaders

For our penultimate bad idea in this series, David talks to Robert Saunders about what’s gone wrong with British politics since party members got to decide who leads the party – and in some cases who gets to be prime minister. Is the problem the principle of the thing or the people who end up in charge (Corbyn, Truss)? How did reforms undertaken in the name of democracy manage to undermine democracy? And what are the alternatives?

A new bonus bad idea is available to accompany this series: David talks to Lucia Rubinelli about what’s gone wrong with the idea of sovereignty. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

To find out about our gift offerings for Christmas and beyond visit the gift page on our website https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts

Next Bad Idea: Televised Leadership Debates

Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network

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Next Episode

The Great Political Films: Z

We resume our series on the great political films with Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969), the quintessential late 60s movie about assassination, conspiracy, street politics and police brutality. How could a film shot in Algeria and starring French actors so faithfully reconstruct a recent Greek political killing? How did it capture the spirit of the times? And what does it say about the relationship between politics as violence and politics as story-telling?

To find out about our gift offerings for Christmas and beyond visit the gift page on our website https://www.ppfideas.com/gifts

Next time: The Candidate (1972) w/Chris Smith

Past Present Future is part of the Airwave Podcast Network

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