First Principles

I just finished watching the Republican debate on ABC in New Hampshire.  I loved this format.  Why can’t they all be like this?  I despise the “stand at the podium and shoehorn your answers in before the buzzer” format everyone else has gone with.  How can you learn anything about anything when the only answers you have time to give are one-liners and zingers?  I’m a pretty solid political junkie, but I couldn’t even watch the other ones most of the time.  What was the point?  It’s not like I was going to learn anything.

But tonight was great.  Longer answers, more freely flowing, and best of all, a moderator who sets out sticky issues generally to explore, not “gotcha” questions that highlight his or her own cleverness.

The winnowing down of the participants also helps.  Duncan Hunter is a great guy, and Dennis Kucinich is endlessly entertaining, but they were wastes of time at the past debates.

My favorite part is the contrast between the parties, as I sit here and watch the Democrats.  Even given the opportunity to delve deeper than soundbites and give specifics, they’re avoiding it.  The lack of knowledge of history, economics, and wold-wide geopolitics is stunning.  It sounds more like intelligent and very earnest high school debaters discussing world affairs, as opposed to adults who actually know what they’re talking about.  “Change change change change” is easy when you a) don’t have to say what that change is, and b) aren’t responsible for the consequences of your lofty and under-educated policy pronouncements.

But we can still do better.  I’d love to see a whole television season of regularly scheduled debates, like a talk show with a constantly shifting panel of two or three candidates.  Some of them can be all Republican or Democrat, some of them should be mixed.  That gives third tier candidates a chance to break out, and to spar with someone from the other party as a way of testing out potential general election matchups.  And if all the moderators can’t be as professional as Charles Gibson was tonight, then it would be fun to have one partisan on each side asking truly tough questions.

Alas, that would make them all have to answer hard questions directly and thoroughly.   Oh, well.  A guy can dream.