I would settle for a prohibition against asking anyone to know the names of foreign leaders with oddball names, and that all moderators for democrat debates be from Fox.
And then the candidates should lose all financial incentives to run to weed out the ones just padding the retirement via contributions.
Why not invite the Smithsonian Institution to arrange a debate, with a panel made up of Nobel Prize recipients?
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That’s laughable. The Nobel Prize has long ago lost any meaning. Obama has one, let him moderate?
Who should moderate instead? Why not enlist some of the nation's finest teachers to pose questions to the candidates? Why not invite the Smithsonian Institution to arrange a debate, with a panel made up of Nobel Prize recipients? Why not recruit presidential historians say, Edmund Morris, Amity Shlaes, and Michael Beschloss to put would-be chief executives through their paces? For that matter, why not a debate in which the candidates are interrogated by former presidential nominees? Surely voters would be at least as interested in watching Bob Dole and Michael Dukakis grill the presidential contestants as in seeing Gwen Ifill or Bret Baier do it.
How would any of those boobs be different from the boobs we have now?
I think there are certainly better options than what we currently have but the ones proposed by this author seem a step down rather than a step up.
Moderators NOT REQUIRED or DESIRED.
One word questions, with each candidate allowed xx minutes to answer, with a counter by each opposing candidate for xx minutes.
Proceeded by opening statements for xx minutes, closing statements for xx minutes.
One word questions...
Economy? Comments please...
Immigration. Comments please...
National Security. Comments please...
Education. Comments please...
Simple enough?
Now that there is funny, I don't care who you are.
It's also completely accurate.
Liberal doo-gooder and one-worlder Gates? Oh dear Lord, not Gates.
Every one of the ideas floated ignores those most affected - We the People. Why not debates moderated by randomly selected people across this geographic entity?
>>The most acclaimed candidate debates in American history the Lincoln-Douglas encounters of 1858 had nothing in common with modern presidential debates: No questions from moderators, no 60-second time limits, no ricocheting from topic to topic, no real-time reaction from focus groups. No pre- and post-debate sermonizing by political pundits. No Anderson Cooper or Megyn Kelly. No presidential candidates, even. (Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were running for the US Senate).
No commercial breaks
Today’s debate are structured so the moderator can maintain control over what the candidate says. It’s all about control. And we live in such a rule based society that it mostly works. (My favorite was when Giuliani was running and the stage was full of candidates. The moderator said, “Everybody who believes in Global Warming raise your hand. It was like a third grade class. I turned it off.)
I agree with the author. Let the candidates articulate their vision of what the country should do.
Stop calling them journalists. DemocRAT or Republican Partisans is more accurate.
I would love Larry P.Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, as a moderator.
Simple. We-the-people, via the mechanisms (elections) set up by our state legislatures, elect the people who elect the president. The president is the head of state of this country, and as such does not belong in a (worldwide) public setting in which he is treated as an inferior by anyone. Let alone, by a political opponent posing as a "neutral moderator.â€Whether that political opponent is selected by a pure political propaganda arm such as the broadcast news networks, by the Smithsonian Institution, whatever. The whole concept is gauche.
Now, whether an incumbent is running for re-election or not, it is appropriate that political candidates define the issues as they see them, and that can include a true debate but there must be no moderator who is “positioned†above the present or the future president. A simple chess timer to equalize the allocation of speaking time between the participants would suffice.
In addition, there should be no constraints on what visual aids any participant should be able to use, provided only that each participant has seen all such in advance, and had opportunity to create responding visual aids for rebuttal. In a sort of pretrial disclosure arrangement.
“Gotcha†moments so beloved of “neutral moderators†should be prevented.
Allow the candidates to debate if they put up $200k toward an open internet forum with streaming capabilities. An example is adding streaming capability to FreeRepublic.com from a venue at the Detroit Masonic Center.
It might wean the financially weak contenders out sooner as a benefit.
The best moderator to date was the radio guy from New Hampshire who did the first debate. He asked real substantive current questions and backed off and let the candidates answer and debate.
It’s become a host of the debate circus and the moderators have become the clowns there ONLY for gotcha questions to get ratings and NOT there for any real debate.