Experimenting with the Fall Presidential Debates
The media is at work offering the candidates advice for the fall debates. In particular, the Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau's Jim Tankersley weighs in with a list to guide the traveling road show proposed by McCain. Some of the ideas have merit; others would raise more debates among the campaigns and the media.
The meta-message of this advice is: (1) the Commission on Presidential Debates is not a factor, never even acknowledged in the post and (2) despite careful wording the campaigned is framed as a two man race, the proposal implicitly "assumes" McCain vs. Obama.
Specific suggestions from the entry "Traveling debates for McCain, Obama? Here's how."
The "road show" format could change that with a few simple guidelines that wouldn't favor either candidate - only voters.
- Let the candidates pick a number of debates in advance and promise to stick to them - no calls for more debates later if someone is trailing in the polls or media exposure. We'll use 10 for our example, but it could be any number the campaigns decide on.
- Draft venues. Ten debates? McCain picks five sites, the Democrat picks five sites. No objections allowed. If they wanted to get fancy, they could each have to pick a site in one of five regions - the Northeast, the South, the industrial Midwest, the Southwest and the West Coast.
The Swamp's suggestions continues below the cut
: format, road show debates, media advice, CPD
- Set the schedule. The tighter the better. Allow reasonable time for travel and recovery, sure, but if you group 10 debates over, say, 15 or 20 days, you'll make it hard for reporters to "score" every one and put more focus on the issues that arise in them. You might get better question variety, too.
- Pick your format. The campaigns can get creative here. They could alternate taking questions from the audience. They could get a stack of questions on index cards beforehand, shuffle them, and take turns drawing and answering. They could both answer the same questions. They could go one hour or two. They could agree on one standard format for every debate, or they could do it World Series-style with the "drafted" venues - home team sets the rules. We would suggest three requirements: Keep the format simple, draw the questions somehow from the audience (more on that in a second) and reserve at least a quarter of the time for truly "local" issues. Fate of the auto industry in Michigan, salmon protection in Oregon, hurricane insurance in Florida, etc
- Agree on the audience. Either choose a nonpartisan group to hand out tickets everywhere, or let each campaign pick half the crowd at each event or the whole crowd at alternating events.
- Shutter the "spin room." Seriously - no traveling entourages at the debate or immediately outside, no surrogates dispatched to the networks to claim victory after each event. Keep the focus on the issues.
- Call your own fouls. By which we mean, let the candidates decide what's fair game to address and what isn't. McCain doesn't want to talk about the Keating Five? Obama doesn't want to talk Rev. Wright? OK - they'll have the voters to answer to in the end.
The flexibility is laudable, but there are also problems. The most obvious: Too many debates too close together.
