I think the Presidential race needs a real debate. We need one that runs for 3 hours.
We need the first hour to be the two canidates questioning each other. No time limits, no commercials and a moderator to keep the peace.
The next two hours would be the real fun. The canidates would be questioned by the people.
The tickets for the event are first come first serve. The canidates get no tickets to give out. No screening of questions. No getting your own people in the hall where the event is held. In order to get a ticket you must present a valid form of ID showing you live in that town. That way the campaigns can not stack the audience with their own fans.
The audience members can ask followup questions. It would be a hoot. You would get very serious questions and you would get some of the dumbest questions in the world. I would like to see how the canidates would handle a free for all like this. Then we could get a better feel for who these people really are.
Of course I am crazy and this will never happen, but I can dream.
2 comments:
Sounds somewhat like old time politics where the candidates would travel from town to town together debating the issues and fielding questions from the local voters. It was called stumping, I believe.
The problem these days would be with instant communications. How do you keep the candidate's local supporters from stacking the deck by being in the audience and asking prepared questions. Before the event was announced to the public, the party machines would already have things in place.
Darn good idea Mark, and it would probably work at local level politics. But with so much money at stake, nothing can be left to chance. The voters must be convinced to react without thinking. It worked in 2000, and worked even better in 2004. It's the American way, sad as it is.
It would be tough to do withiut keeping the party machine at bay. It would require the canidates team to keep quiet about the whole thing. Then they could have a joint press conference anouncing the event and say tickets were being given out at a specific location seperate from where the press conference was being held. They could have an independent company just go around town and hand out tickets. Something like that.
Post a Comment