Replies

NEW YORK -- The four Democrats competing in next week's mayoral primary found themselves trying to explain in a debate seen live on NBC4 and WNBC.com . . .

. . . The hour-long debate did not allow for lengthy answers. The candidates were asked about education, affordable housing, terrorism, crime, race relations, gay marriage, unemployment and disaster preparedness and in most cases had just 30 seconds to respond . . .

You see, that is just the trouble. They have, understandably enough, four candidates to winnow down to one nominee - and they have no principled way to choose among them, since the one who polls the worst could in principle be the one who is the second choice of the all the voters in the primary. So what do they do? They run a "first past the pole" race with a runoff against "second past the pole" if the winner doesn't get 40% of the vote.
And how do they inform the public on the candidates and the issues? They broadcast a brief live, competitive joint TV ~~debate~~ press conference among the whole lot of them.

Let's just suppose that what they actually wanted to do was inform the public enough to get a good candidate for mayor. What would they do? IMHO they should:

conduct actual debates, without the presence of any "moderator" other than a chess timer to allocate equal time to the microphone of each participant in each debate.
Conduct the debates on radio, so that
- the facts and logic of the debaters are more important than their hairline or waistline, and
- cost considerations do not limit the number and duration of the debates unduly
allow candidates to use notes and/or laptop computers in the debates.
strictly limit the number of participants in each debate - preferably to two.
conduct enough debates to vet each candidate against each other candidate
make each debate long enough that the no candidate can hide their actual agenda

IMHO that process would seperate the wheat from the chaff - candidates who aren't ready for prime time would probably realize it by the time they got their clock cleaned by three different people in three seperate three-hour radio debates.
I thintk that method of debating in the general election would enable Republicans to blow Democrats away - Democrats depend so heavily on being protected by journalists (see Hillary Clinton, poster child).
Democrats Debate, Asked 'Why Is Bloomberg Popular?' (NY) WNBC Television ^ | 9/8/2005 | Puppage

My #19 links all my discussions of the issue of presidential debates; the above sample is from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/523109/posts?page=899#899