[Billthedrill]

Debate exhaustion here. Not the candidates’, mine. I wouldn’t mind seeing a real debate with real debate rules, but these contrived media shows are nothing more than “Let’s see if we can make a name for ourselves forcing a mistake.” Sorry, sell-by date has been passed on that one.

[Publius]

Back in 1980, PBS did something that worked brilliantly, so much so that the two parties refused to let it happen again. Instead of having "debates" involving the candidates, which would have led to nothing but pre-digested sound bytes, they held genuine debates between the advisors of the candidates, i.e., those who would be expected to serve in the administration of the candidates should they be elected.

The first debate was on economic issues. Arthur Laffer was the captain of Reagan's team, I forget the captain of Carter's team, and Mitch Rogovin was the captain of John Anderson's team. Each captain determined who on his team would go in to make or answer a point. There was cross-questioning, rebuttal and counter-rebuttal. One of my favorite memories was Art Laffer taking the ball himself and eviscerating Rogovin on tax policy.

In the foreign policy debate, Al Haig, captain of the Reagan team, sent Paul Nitze in to sack Paul Warnke and his appeasement-based foreign policy.

These were honest debates, conducted within a strict set of rules, and I learned more from them than I learned from listening to the candidates. I suspect it was the spontaneity of the debates that frightened off the two party establishments.

We need to do this in 2016.