LSE debate eschews old policies, but embraces old politics

I’ve just left the debate at the London School of Economics’ mock presidential debate, between the LSE Democrats and the Republicans Abroad (I’m blogging from my mobile, so bear with any poor spelling).

Given that it in the heart of socialist London, rather than the heartland of more conservative America, it wasn’t hard to guess that the debate would take a slightly less market-friendly line that the actual line that the candidates would take.  To allow them to drift from the party line and present a slightly more audience-friendly (read: ’socialist’) debate, the sides were required only to present the positions of the ‘party ideology’, however they decided to interpret it.

That meant that the Republican representatives were broadly in favour of free markets with certain nuances and qualifications, and meant that the Democrats were fully in favour of universal healthcare and wanted to send social workers to Iraq.

I laughed myself silly when the Democrats said that more regulation was unquestionably a good thing, to keep in check HMOs (which are the product of government regulation).  I cried to myself when the audience believed their lies that the financial crisis is capitalism’s fault (it’s actually the governments, again).  I became suddenly morose when the Republicans did nothing to counter these propositions.

Of course, none of this was hard to foresee.  With a crowd asking left-wing questions and applauding left-wing statements, and none of my pertinent questions being called upon, there was no reason for the Republicans to challenge the Democrats.  They simply played along to the same old tune, but jousted only to prove whose performance was more virtuoso (in the event, it was the Democrats).

That is just like in the actual presidential election.  I can’t help but feel that perhaps the mock debate tonight would have been marginally more interesting if there had been a representative of the Libertarian Party or Hayek Society debating: just, for that matter, as I find it hard to believe that the absence of the Libertarian candidate Bob Barr from the real presidential debates has done the American public anything but a disservice.