Donald Trump descended down the golden escalator of Trump Towers in June 2015 to announce his candidacy for the presidency, Hillary Clinton announced hers in April 2015. 

The first debate between the two eventual nominees was Sept. 26, 2016.  That makes an entire year-and-a-half of campaigning, press conferences, rallies, T.V. news appearances, scandals and gaffes before the two candidates even met face-to-face. 

Now we are through all three. 

There is very little evidence that debates have a significant effect on voters even in previous election years. The purpose of debates is to contrast the two candidates’ policies and ideologies to sway swing voters to their side. 

In this endless election cycle that began what seems like forever ago, it is difficult to imagine that there could possibly be any undecided voters left.  Every news cycle since last summer has been dominated by election horserace coverage and quite frankly, everyone is sick of it.  These debates amount to nothing more than a dog and pony show for the networks, CNN, NBC and Fox, to attract viewers in suspense.   

Thanks to advertising like the CNN ad that resembled WWE pay-per-view promotion, “Trump vs Hillary: it all comes down to this” the non-stop horserace coverage is paying off for the news networks.  The first debate attracted the most viewers of any presidential debate in history, according to Nielsen ratings.  While the polls show that both Clinton and Trump are largely disliked and distrusted by the voters, the first debate was watched by roughly 84 million people. 

Did these people tune in to hear Clinton discuss the nuance in her tax policy?  Have they been waiting eagerly to hear Trump’s strategy to deal with the humanitarian and terror crisis in Aleppo, Syria?  The simple answer is no. 

We wanted to hear if Trump would bring up Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades of the 1990s. We were yearning to see how Clinton would react to Trump’s bombastic, rambling rhetoric. 

After watching all three debates, the viewers got what they hoped for. Shifting through the character attacks and personal barbs to uncover substantive policy exchanges in any or all of these debates is akin to finding a needle in the haystack. 

From a pure democracy standpoint, we, the electorate, would be better off if these debates were much more boring and more closely resembled a C-Span panel discussion. No new information on either candidates’ positions were uncovered nor did Americans become better equipped to choose the next president of the most powerful country on Earth. We were, for better or worse, entertained. 

Many people rightly complain about the current political discourse in America being devoid of policy substance or any sense of objectivity.  While that is a legitimate criticism of the media landscape and campaign process, it is somewhat misguided. Only about 65 percent of people vote in presidential elections and experts suspect even less will vote this year given the two candidates. 

So why did so many people tune into the debates? 

As much as we say we want to hear about their plans for the future of the country, most people simply do not care.  We are far more interested in the head-to-head sporting-event-style campaign coverage.  It is much more exciting to watch that way. 

Unfortunately, the main purpose for these cringeworthy debates is to attract eyeballs to the television to ultimately drive up advertising revenue for large news networks to make a bunch of money. In that respect they were ultimately a huge success. But in terms of deciding the next president, as has been the case for this 18-month campaign, the debates  continued the devolution of the United States’ sacred election process, reducing it to nothing more than a reality TV contest. The good news at least, if there is any, is there is only 2 weeks left.  Then we will only have to see one of these people on TV and in the newspaper for the next four years.