Quote:The candidates want more control over the debates, which is understandable, given the useless disaster of a debate they had on CNBC. My suggestion is that they all produce a 5 minute commercial, and get one of the networks to run them all back to back. Then have an interviewer record a 5 minute interview and run all those back to back. Standing on stage answering dumb questions about irrelevant stuff and seeing who can pivot into their campaign talking points most seamlessly and most smoothly is not really a good test of who should be President in my opinion.
John Kasich had a point in his CNN interview on Sunday. Discussing a comprehensive plan to reform healthcare in 30 seconds or less is not the way to choose a President. I actually like your idea, Marty, but with a bit of a twist: set aside three commercial-less hours for a "debate". Rather than having a dog-and-pony show by bringing all 82 Republican candidates on the same stage so they can argue with each other rather than talk about the issues, interview each candidate separately and in advance. All candidates are presented with the same questions, and they are given three uninterrupted minutes to answer, with a hard cut at three minutes. The answers are then broadcast one at a time, lowest-polling to highest-polling, clear through to the end.
Oh, by the way, for this to work, they'd have to cut the field in half. That means only Trump, Carson, Rubio, Cruz and Bush would participate in the main event. Maybe do a second session either earlier in the day or the night before for Fiorina, Huckabee, Paul, Kasich and Christie? I get that debates are about presenting all the candidates, but realistically, no one outside of those top five (ok, no one outside of those top three) stands a chance at this point. If you were to go about this format with all top ten candidates, including a guy polling at less than 2% and another just above it, you'd only get to ask six questions. If you cut that field in half, you get twelve. You'd also eliminate all Jim Webb-style complaining about not getting equal time.
Of course, we'd never go there, because half the fun of these "debates" is watching Trump sit up in his tree eating bananas and throwing poo at everyone else in the field. An "interview debate" that focuses solely on the issues wouldn't garner nearly the ratings that a shooting gallery-style debate with moderators asking loaded, biased questions to humiliate the field rather than garner information from it would. And the media's ok with that. The more they can make Trump look like a buffoon, the higher their ratings. By having ten candidates on the stage, they get plenty of back-and-forth from the bottom feeders. They'd also lose some of their spin by presenting unedited answers from each candidate on identical questions. I mean, it would have been a lot harder to proclaim Hillary Clinton the "winner" of the Democratic debate over Bernie Sanders if we'd been more focused on the issues and less on Hillary's demeanor, right?
I think one thing we'd (mostly) all agree on is that debates, as they exist now, are broken. They're little more than The Real Housewives of the GOP, focused more on petty sniping than answering the damn questions. The real test will be if/when someone out there eventually decides to dramatically alter the format of "debates" to allow a focus on issues rather than arguments. If the ratings are good, it sticks. If the ratings tank, educated decisions by the American electorate will, once again, take a back seat to mindless entertainment.
And, I'll give credit where credit is due: my disdain for Ted Cruz as a politician aside, his takedown of the CNBC moderators was epic, warranted, and brilliant.
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