Sit Down and Shut Up -- How Bob Schieffer can make this year's final debate interesting.

[jefferson_dem]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot moderator Democratic Underground)

Sit Down and Shut Up
How Bob Schieffer can make this year's final debate interesting.
By Jeff Greenfield
Posted Monday, Oct. 13, 2008, at 4:58 PM ET

When I listen to the complaints that follow just about every presidential debate, I'm reminded of the well-worn joke about the Jewish mother who buys her son two shirts. When he shows up at dinner wearing one, she says: "What's the matter? You didn't like the other one?"

If the debate features "issues" questions, as did the "town-hall meeting" format moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw last week, it's boring and predictable. If the moderators focus on political or "process" questions, as ABC's Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos did during the primary season, it's slammed as trivial. Time limits? Stilted. No time limits? The candidates filibustered.

So widespread is the discontent that some people are getting desperate. In Indiana's highly competitive Ninth Congressional District, Republican Party Chairman Larry Shickles actually proposed last week that the candidates be hooked up to lie detectors for their scheduled Oct. 21 debate. The Republican and Libertarian candidates said yes while the Democratic incumbent had no comment. Thankfully, debate organizers passed.

I confess that I'm drawn to Shickles' idea, not just because it tracks closely with my own notion of slipping sodium pentathol into the candidates' drinking glasses. It's out of frustration: I have my own longstanding yet universally ignored ideas for better debates. (How about a few topics that no spinmeister could possibly anticipate, like a math question: "A train leaves New York heading west at 8 miles an hour; another train leaves Chicago heading east at 75 mph. How much should Amtrak subsidize them?" Or how about a question that would offer genuine insight into a candidate's philosophy: "Do you like the designated hitter rule?")

<SNIP>

http://www.slate.com/id/2202179/pagenum/all/#page_start

[Cha]

1. Jewish mothers aside..I don't care what Jeff

Greenfield says there are bad and not so bad moderators at Presidential debates. And, we'll decide, not him.

When has there even been a decent one who wasn't carrying corporateass water?

Round Table, eh? Good, mccain can look Obama in the eye with a straight face and repeat palin's "terrorist question".

[osaMABUSh]

2. How will McLame not be able to look at Obama

when they are sitting right next to each other?

[votetastic]

3. I'm sure he'll figure out a way!

[intheflow]

4. jefferson_dem, please be aware that DU has strict copyright rules.

From the rules:

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Thanks for adhering to this in the future. :hi:

[calmblueocean]

5. Our debates are spectacles by design. Why not one day of C-SPAN with Lincoln-Douglas style debates?

1984 was the last year we had anything even remotely resembling a true debate. That was the last year the League of Women Voters organized them. In 1988, they resigned from the process and issued a press release:

The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates...because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.

Now the "debates" are negotiated by the Commission on Presidential Debates, an essentially corrupt organization, made up of the former heads of both major parties, with the shared goal of making sure that third parties do not get to debate, and that the actual events are simply riskless pageants where both parties can declare victory.

It's funny to me that the author of the OP doesn't seem to identify this as the problem. His solutions are still focused on more personality-based spectacle instead of demanding a true policy debate, where each candidate describes their positions and defends them.

I think devoting a day of C-SPAN to one exhaustive Lincoln-Douglas style debate would be great. Simulcast it on PBS.

Or we could have a series of Mace debates on the candidates major policy differences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate#Mace_Debate

What we have now, though, is a joke. It's part of the dumbing down of America. There's no room for substantial argument in the debates we have now. They're just a brief moment of political celebrity where we can see how each candidate bears up against the other. Superficial as heck. That's not going to change until the people demand more from both parties.

[truedelphi]

6. Is it not very interesting that the countries that have

Single Payer Universal Health Care, that have respect for all persons regardless of who they want to shack up with, that allow for money to come INTO the pockets of the middle incomed person, all these coutnries have mroe than two parties at the debates.

When we have a really valid political process, then we will have a great country. Otherwise, life will go on inthe rather awful manner of Corporate theft and chicanery, such as the BailOUt bill that BOTH Obama and McCain voted for... Yes things will improve under Obama, should his election not be stolen.But the changes he will make will be minor compared to what could occur inside a true democracy.