In the wake of the recent Democratic debate, commentators have been identifying the Democratic candidates as cordial and respectful of one another, particularly in contrast to the Republican debates, which seemed to exude more antagonism and hostility. There is then the strong proclivity for the folks who made this observation to conclude that Blue Team is more polite and civilized and thus better than Red Team.
That may or may not be true, but the debates aren’t much in the way of proof one way or the other. The politeness is more the result of how the debates were set up than an indicator of personality types among the Parties at large. You have a couple major differences between the debate set-ups.
The Republican debate had 11 candidates compared to the 5 for the Democrats. I believe the Republican debate went longer, but not commensurately. So even based on the number of people alone, the ability to get in a word at the Republican debate was far more strained.
Polling position and campaign viability are also massively different between the two Parties’ debates. The Democrats at this point already have a chosen successor. It’s not a sure thing, but presuming Clinton the nominee is not so much jumping the gun as it is a fairly reasonable assessment. Sanders is the only one who seems remotely close to challenging that spot, and he’s still much further away from that possibility than his supports tend to think or hope. The other three really don’t have a shot unless Clinton gets removed somehow. Essentially, the nomination is Clinton’s to lose. She just needs to not do anything completely stupid and she’s fine. And by the same extension, Sanders has so much to overcome to overtake her that him being too harsh may likely hurt him more than help, to an extent. The Republicans are in a completely different boat. The two front-runners, Trump and Carson, are very unlikely to win, and are enjoying early success, but realistically aren’t going to be neck-and-neck with anybody by the end of the race. While one of the establishment candidates like Bush or Rubio will be the likely nominee, his position is not as guaranteed as Clinton’s is, and there are/were others in the race with a viable shot at moving up. In order to keep advancing though, Carson and Trump need to drop down, and the otherwise close candidates need to distinguish themselves. Any number of them would have a decent shot at the eventual nomination. Rubio, Walker, Cruz, and Bush for sure, and even then Christie and Paul would have an outside chance, maybe akin to Sanders’. That is, the onus for a number of them to distinguish themselves is considerable, whereas there was no equivalent onus on the Democratic side.
The variety and vocation of the candidates is also markedly different between the Parties. The Democrats were all politicians or former politicians, and 4 of the 5 were politicians in the federal government (O’Malley the exception). 3 of the 11 Republicans (Trump, Carson, and Fiorina) had no political experience whatsoever. Two of the Republicans are media personalities (Huckabee and Trump), which effectively means they get paid to be shitty to other human beings. Trump’s celebrity is based predominantly on the fact that he is an asshole. So the frontrunner in the polls was a guy who has no political experience, is extremely unlikely to win the nomination, and a professional asshole. Even if the media didn’t stoke the ever-loving shit out of the fires, that alone is going to make the Republican debate more vitriolic. Had the Republican debates featured candidates comparable to the Democrats in vocation, say, Bush, Paul, Walker, Rubio, and Cruz, I’m sure the tenor of the debate would have been much more civilized and cordial. I’m not sure Americans realise how extraordinarily polite our politicians, in particular our federal legislature acts towards one another, especially on the job. There is a very considerable sense of decorum. This is a clip from the European Parliament that I will never tire of watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bypLwI5AQvY
Absolutely none of that would fly in the States. Farage’s insults nor the subsequent boos would be tolerated in the least bit. They would all be hanged by the court of public opinion. The only time you really get anything approaching confrontation is when there’s a disagreement in political philosophy– which happens a disturbingly smaller amount than it should in these debates. People with more substantial differences in opinion, such as Paul and Sanders, would be the most likely to be disharmonious. To their credit, both seemed pretty respectful of their opponents. Paul was probably less so, but on the other hand, he has more to gain by being aggressive–not to mention he watched his father go nowhere by being extremely polite to his detractors.