Do the Americans really have it? (No more than us!)

After Tuesday evening’s debate between the two aspiring American vice-presidents, many analysts could be heard exclaiming: “How refreshing it was, full of civility, finally we weren’t just insulting each other.” Indeed.

But given over to our current American passion (which really seems limitless), we too often end up being inattentive to our own politics, to our own debates.

The elephant

Of course, we have to be interested in American politics. It is the most powerful country in the world. It is the (shaky) empire of our time which, moreover, borders us: “Being your neighbor is like sleeping with an elephant: however gentle and placid the beast may be, you are subject to its every movement. and grunts”: a nice phrase that Pierre Elliott Trudeau said in 1969 in Washington.

In addition, the current presidential election is of particular importance since this flagship country of modernity will perhaps fall within a few weeks into a form of post-democracy, or even authoritarianism.

Common world

But I insist: by the standards of Quebec political culture, the tone of Tuesday’s Vance-Walz debate contained nothing impressive or exceptional. There was something rather normal about it.

Our debates are as much, if not more often, focused on the issues. I would even say that we invoke arguments of fact more spontaneously. We also have the impression, most of the time, that the protagonists of our debates live in a common world, discussing the same reality: “Freedom of opinion is a farce if information on the facts is not not guaranteed and if it is not the facts themselves that are the subject of debate,” says the philosopher Hannah Arendt rightly.

This common world seems to me to be present most of the time in our electoral debates. Even in the National Assembly where, I admit, question periods are often disappointing, where sometimes twisted questions are followed by non-answers. But there is an underlying common desire to resolve our collective problems. Without applause or clapping. Some even believe that our debates are boring for this reason. As if we had to design them as entertainment products.

Elvis impersonators

Out of fascination, some would like us to adopt American rhetoric: “The Americans have it!” Bring on insults, ready-to-wear jokes worthy of schoolyards (“Laffin’ Kamala”, “Sleepy Joe”)!

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in particular seems to make it a point to draw inspiration from these argumentative nonsense, these childish techniques, when he hammers out his “Sellout Singh” type formulas. Maybe it works in the ROC, which is very Americanized. But there is something in Quebec political culture that resists it, and that is so much the better.