De-what?: Injecting actual debate into the "debates"

The hour and a half would have been more notable if each candidate had taken turns simply reading phone book entries off the teleprompter while the other walked in front of it.

But boringness was not its greatest crime. During a week in which the global financial crisis has gotten more crisis-y by the second and campaigning on at least one side has reached a fever pitch of demagogy, Americans needed to hear about the issues. Instead we heard what amounted to 90 minutes of watered down and declawed campaign ads.

The candidates themselves can't be blamed for sticking to safely prepared talking points. Isn't that what follow up questions are for? Rebuttals? You know, like in a ... what's it called ... debate!

The debates should be a chance to corner the candidates, to cut through the campaign crap, let them at each other, and let the public (via the moderator or questioners) at them. The format of this debate fundamentally failed to do that. The stringent time restrictions and lack of follow-up questioning led to no accountability for the candidates to address the questions or each other. The result was complete irrelevancy.

Saturday Night Live's satire of the debate gets to the essence of the problem.



On slate.com, Jack Shafer decried the phoniness of this presidential incarnation of the town hall debate, saying it fails to maintain either half of its hybrid identity:

"In a genuine town-hall discussion, anybody can ask a real, unvetted question to inject sonic chaos into the proceedings. The crazy questions, the impolite questions, and even the left-field questions about such things as the price of a gallon of milk push candidates out of their comfort zones, away from their talking points, and to some uncultivated acre of their psyches where voters can observe their thinking processes ... Likewise, an authentic debate demands more rigor from its participants than the Q and As the Commission on Presidential Debates like to stage. In our presidential "debates," candidates decant their two-minute sound bites, dodge the tough questions, and tell the best lies they can get away with. But real debaters observe rules of logic and persuasion. They stick to the topic, they answer the questions, and they talk to one another."

Politico reports that a bi-partisan coalition of activists is suggesting some antidotes "to avoid the stiff and scripted answers that many critics said deadened their earlier exchanges."

The Open Debate Coalition, made up of diverse members from across the political spectrum, has written to the candidates asking them to agree to the following improvements to facilitate, as Politico put it "improvisation, intellectual engagement, and truth-telling":

1) That the debate moderator has broad discretion to ask follow-up questions after a candidate's answer, so the public can be fully informed about specific positions.

2) That after a "town hall" debate full of questions handpicked by the moderator, none of which were outside-the-box, you will allow Bob Schieffer to ask some Internet questions voted on by the public in the fashion outlined in our previous letter - which you agreed to. Existing technology will make this easy.

3) That, as a stipulation of the next debate, the media pool must release all 2008 debate footage into the public domain - as you agreed would be in the public interest. CNN, ABC, and NBC agreed to release video rights during the primary, and CBS agreed more recently. But Fox threatened Senator McCain for using a debate clip during the primary, and NBC invoked copyright law against Senator Obama to stifle political speech recently. The public deserves to know debate video can be reused without fear of breaking the law.

4) That you agree to work with the Open Debate Coalition after the election to reform or create an alternative to the Commission on Presidential Debates, so that the debate process is transparent and accountable to the public. Despite both of your agreement with the open debate principles, the Commission did nothing to implement them - or even to engage in dialogue about potential implementation. Also, the "31-page memo of understanding" with debate rules is nowhere on the Commission's website, and has not been turned over despite requests.

With less than a month until the election, and oh yeah, some pretty pressing problems to deal with, let's hope that the third and final debate cuts a little deeper than the previous two.

Part of that responsibility falls to the Commission on Presidential Debates and the two campaigns to negotiate a format and set of rules that will not facilitate uninterrupted recitation of talking points. Some of that responsibility also falls on the moderator, Bob Schieffer.

The media have had a tough time in this election, struggling to combat charges of liberal bias, sexism, and elitism. In the debates so far the moderators have steered clear of aggressive follow up questioning but in this final debate, it would best serve the intention of debate for Schieffer to keep his eye less on the clock, and more on the hardball.