Want real answers? Change Presidential debate formats
The four debates are history and generally speaking, they did not produce the results the voters expected. Common sense should tell us that if something does not work or does not serve a purpose any longer, change it or do away with it. What are we talking about, you might ask and you should. Let us explain how Common Sense Politics views this: For many years now, portions of the Presidential campaigns were debates between the two Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, they would be scheduled and agreed upon by the two parties as to location, time and moderator(s). Without digging deeper into the history of such debates going back to the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon in 1960, they are part of the campaign calendars.
As in previous years, everybody is waiting for campaign-altering statements by the candidates and then everybody is disappointed when they do not occur. This is absolutely ridiculous when one thinks seriously about it. The moderators control the topics through their questions and are also the timekeepers. How many times have we seen these supposedly impartial moderators ask complex questions about a topic of major proportion and then allow only sixty to ninety seconds for an answer. A classic example came during the 2004 Vice-Presidential debate when moderator Gwen Ifill asked Richard Cheney a very difficult question and gave him thirty seconds to respond. Cheney told her that he could not possible respond to her question adequately to which she said: “Sorry, Sir, you’ve got thirty seconds!”
And it was no different this year. The four moderators, Jim Lehrer (PBS), Gwen Ifill (PBS), Tom Brokaw (NBC) and Bob Schieffer (CBS), all rather liberal members of the mainstream media, selected the questions and decided who would have to respond to them in a very short period of time, at a maximum, two minutes long. And so, the candidates had to limit their statements against a timer and the results were predictable: The answers were incomplete or vague at best. And then we wonder why we do not get sufficient answers to questions we want to ask. The debates in their current format are useless and we here believe that major changes should be made for the next go-around in 2012 and thereafter.
From history we know that in 1858, Stephen A. Douglass and Abraham Lincoln engaged in direct dialogues without moderators where they debated many topics of the time at great lengths, some such debates lasted for many hours. The two candidates were vying for an Illinois seat in the United States Senate and held altogether seven such debates. The format for those debates was one candidate spoke for 60 minutes, then the other candidate spoke for 90 minutes and the first candidate had 30 minutes for a so called ‘rejoinder’ for a total of three hours.
We are not suggesting that this should be repeated per se but at least seems much more plausible as it allows the candidates to adequately detail their respective plans for the future instead of answering complex questions with sixty to ninety second sound bites. Since a three-hour debate might be too long, especially when it is televised, reduce the time to two hours. The current debates with the immediate analysis by pundits on every television network last that long as well. If you were to give the two candidates one hour each, they should be able to make their cases respectively and conversely, if they would not do so, the voters could decide for themselves whether or not they had heard truthful statements and realistic proposals by the two contenders. The format for such debates could be a 40 minute long opening (for candidate One), followed by a 60 long minute time slot (for candidate Two) to be concluded by a 20 minute rebuttal (by candidate One). The debates could be pre-determined to deal with specific topics between domestic and foreign policy and even list sub-topics to be included. Should the candidates not address or ignore such topics, they would be judged and evaluated by the voters watching these debates and would have to live with the consequences.
If nothing else, we, the people of the United States of America, would have a realistic opportunity to hear from the candidates vying for the highest offices in this country and then could determine for ourselves who to give our precious vote to. And it would be without influence and spin by moderators and political pundits.
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