I think what the paragraph was saying was that sure there have been boring debates before, but this was by far the dullest and least pleasing debate within memory because only a fraction of the candidate's actually fulfill their promises, and follow through with whatever they promised the country. 

I somewhat agree with the paragraph in the sense that the debate wasn't very interesting because most of it was all lies, but it was also a bit more exciting because of the format. Instead of the candidate's standing at their podium's, they were free to walk around. I think that not many new fiews were expressed and the questions were pre written and approved, so therefore the debate was not very interesting or exciting.