An Immodest Proposal: New Debate Format

I gave been kicking this one around for a while and for whatever reason the smart people aren't knocking on my door to harvest mu ideas. Go figure.

This is easier to explain by example:

First, We seed the candidates based on past presidential runs, current and length of political position and lastly, name recognition.

So the GOP would have a field that looked something like this.

1. Rick Santorum (Highest ranked 2012 candidate).
2. Rick Perry.
3. Gary Johnson.
4. Mike Huckabee.
5. Lindsey Graham.
6. Chris Christie (I like to stagger governors and senators to make for more interesting debate.)
7. Marco Rubio (More or less arbitrary assignment over Rand Paul as both joined US Senate in 2010.)
8. John Kasich.
9. Rand Paul.
10. Scott Walker.
11. Ted Cruz.
12. Peter King.
13. Bobbie Jindal.
14. Jeb Bush.
15. George Pataki.
16. Donald Trump.
17. Ben Carson.
18. Carly Fiorina.

The Democrats would have a field that looked something like this.

1. Hillary.
2. Bernie Sanders.
3. Martin O'Malley.
4. Jim Webb.
5. Evan Bayh.
6. Michelle Obama.
7. Charlie Crist.
8. Ben Affleck.
9. Lyndon Larouche.
10. Bill Maher.
11. Brian Williams.
12. Candy Crowley.

Now we need a network to pull this off. We can use my Youtube channel until another venue develops. We can split the ad revenue. Here goes.

On a Monday night Carly Fiorina battles Ben Carson in an hour long (minus commercials) debate. There is no moderator as such. The candidates ask each other questions which reveals as much about them as do their answers. The closest thing we have to a moderator is a minimum wage guy in a suit who rings a bell if a candidate exceeds his time limit or restores order should there be a breach of protocol.

In this format, the audience decides who wins the debate. As with "American Idol" supporters call one of two numbers, one associated with Carson, one with Fiorina. Calls cost one dollar and a small percentage goes to the hosting network and the rest goes to the candidate's campaign. In this example Carson wins so he squares off against Trump on Tuesday. The winner bumps heads with Pataki on Wednesday.

This is not a detailed blueprint. It's not a perfect system but it would be better than anything we have seen in the past. As anyone can vote, Dems and Indies could vote in the GOP debates and vice versa. I don't see that as problematic and there are ways to get around that should it bother certain people.

The logistics of getting twenty candidates on one stage on the same evening....giant ugh! This proposal also addresses issues of fairness. The moderator is non-existent and thus cannot ask tougher questions to one candidate or to ignore one of the twenty.

The seeding might be done on the rank of campaign coffers to give the back of the pack more chances to earn revenue.

Parties might share the wealth by allowing last in the nation places like Vermont, New Jersey and Indiana to host the debates. They might also adopt a different state every night format.

The beauty of this debate format is that it could be repeated just as soon as one debate cycle ended. They might even start new debates before the prior series of debates ended. A preliminary to main event to be enjoyed by hardcore political dweebs.

Other considerations. If there is an excessive number of candidates they might consider a second tier series of debates to be viewed by those people who lament that there are but three C-Span channels. So whoever wins the second tier qualifies as the first night debater in the big show.

The powers that could be might consider pruning the number of candidates with each successive debate. Say the first series had eighteen. The second would have seventeen. the third sixteen and so on.

The powers that could be might also consider changing the format so that the later debates with smaller fields could only receive votes from registered party members. This would reduce the overall number of voters and also reduce the revenue. They might compensate by charging each voter say five or ten dollars. They might also allow additional votes for political party office holders.

As I said, this is just a rough sketch but this would be more engaging and more interesting than what we have done in the past. It would also generate revenue. Best of all, we wouldn't have to look at George Stehanopolous for any reason. Mr. Nine Figures is 86. Can there be a better selling point?

Further Reflections On The First Presidential Debate

I tried once more to watch the debate between Obama and Romney. It was hard to watch the whole thing and I frequently focused on the Chess Titans game in front of me as I listened to the verbiage. One observation stands out: I disagree wholeheartedly that Obama was off his game or that he turned in a less than Obama performance.

Granted, I have never been impressed with Obama's oratory. Neither the content of his speech nor his delivery has ever wowed me. Obama at his most polished--say his 2008 Greek column speech--is still an extremely contrived exercise. That is why the appeal of Obama is so mysterious to me. With some politicians we understand their popularity even if we actively oppose them. However, Obama's charm has always been limited.

I'll admit that Obama was interesting in 2004. But the more that was revealed, the sillier he would look. His gestures and mannerisms and poses would be dissected and for me, watching Obama was like watching a fourth rate magician perform a repertoire of tricks that had been recently revealed by a cable TV masked man. Still, he mesmerized audiences. That is still inexplicable to me.

If Obama can do nothing else, he could update his cliches. I can't believe he trotted out the "two wars on a credit card" line. But then again, how many times have we suffered through his "millionaires and billionaires paying their fair share" blather? I'll take Joe Biden's unclass clown routine any day of the week.

Obama never possessed an excess of talent and he has not grown into the job of president. If he were to request my cold blooded, objective, win at any cost political advice, I would advise him to get some fresher slogans. His base loves chants and slogans and bumper sticker logic. And I don't think the coveted independent voter can endure four more years of "I inherited the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression so I created a stimulus plan that funneled tax payer dollars to blue state special interests..."

Some of us have already seen the man behind the curtain. Other people saw him for the first time in the Romney debate. "Even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked." It ain't a pretty site, Bob. Ain't pretty at all.

At Least We Don't Have To Worry About Them Entering The Workforce!

OK, I'll admit it. I was pretty damned stupid-looking in my youth. That's because I was stupid. So were my friends. Real stupid. Real, real stupid. Real, real, real stupid.

But we had some sort of safety net of common sense that protected us from hitting the depths that these morons have hit. One thing missing from my youth was a celebrity cult leader. Yes we had Jim Jones and Sun Yung Moon and some more forgettable figures. They harvested desperate souls and lonely hearts but the media kept these megalomaniacs in check.

Barack Obama is the first media-sanctioned cult leader. I sometimes wonder if we had a cult leader in my youth who enjoyed favorable media saturation, if we would have fallen for his silliness? I genuinely believe my generation would not have been so vulnerable. The contrarian spirit was alive and well and we still railed against "conformity" and other perceived threats to individuality, or in my particular case, threats to individualism. "Follow The Leader" was not a popular activity nor a popular sentiment.

The unfairness of life. Elephants are slaughtered for their tusks because fools believe they contain aphrodisical properties. Girls are still subjected to institutionalized genital mutilation. In other parts of the world baby girls are euthanized. Christians and Jews are murdered for being Christians and Jews. And Barry can't use his teleprompter!

 Oh the humanity!



WHY NOT JUST LET BILL CLINTON STAND IN FOR HIM?
 

The Great Debate: Audio vs. Video

I work most nights so I miss a lot of prime time programming. Thus, I experience a lot of events on radio on the long ride home. That was the case with convention speeches and now with the debate. The pundits all chirped about how great Romney performed.

When I got home and finally settled in, I put the debate on Youtube as I multi-tasked on my Lenovo. Experiencing the debate in audio, I did not get the impression that it was all that lopsided. It sounded like both candidates were advancing their talking points. Romney's talking points are not quite as hackneyed or tired or worn out as Obama's but still, they came across as talking points. Obama came across as well, Obama. Nothing to stir one's pulse but nothing to make the faithful jump ship either.

Watching the video did change my perspective. Romney's attack was labeled "aggressive diplomacy" by an anonymous radio caller. It was unendingly polite yet confrontational. Romney did what journalists used to do.

Obama on the other hand, appeared defeated. I believe Obama has a hard time selling his economic policies because he does not fully believe in them. He might believe in them in a dogmatic/doctrinaire kind of way but he knows that the country pays a price for his version of economic justice.

No president has ever been so pampered and in the end the fawning media might have done him a disservice. Of all the many images of Obama we have endured over the years, the prolonged staring downward as he was so courteously eviscerated might ultimately be the image by which he is best remembered. Without the sycophantic journalists, the Kool-Aid drinkers, the fainting women and the trusty teleprompter, the emperor looked a bit underdressed.

This was Romney's night.