The NYT has an interesting collection of speculations today about future new media-based interactive debate formats. Here is my favorite, from Matt Bai, who moderated the Presidential Candidate Forum at YearlyKos:
MAYBE someday soon the candidates will have laptop computers at their lecterns, and we’ll hang a giant screen behind the stage. Then, as one candidate is talking, the others will use instant messaging to create a kind of scrolling commentary and critique, and all the comments will appear overhead.
While John Edwards is decrying special interests, Bill Richardson might type: “Gee, John, what exactly would you call the trial lawyers?” Or Christopher Dodd might write: “‘Why is Kucinich still talking’ LOL.”
The moderator could seize on the most provocative comments to drive the discussion: “Senator Clinton, while you were talking about reform, Barack Obama just listed 10 of your corporate contributors over your head. Care to respond?”
One can also imagine a debate in which each of the candidates takes three powerful bong hits and then gives their answers — Tom Brokaw has a similar suggestion — but I doubt we’ll be seeing that any time soon.
What ideas do you have?
…to have some media coverage of the Cambridge debate to replace Barrios last night?
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but I wasn’t able to attend.
I liked the LOGO format, but it wasn’t a debate strictly speaking.
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I say one issue for an hour, whether it’s Iraq, trade, healthcare, etc.
but it will be a long time before the candidates can pull it off themselves… and besides, it rewards quick, snarky tidbits, not seriously considered, insightful lines of thought.
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The debates are already too “short” in that each candidates aren’t allowed to speak for more than a few minutes on a topic. Adding the whizbang snark factor will only make the debate more ADHD, instead of more thoughtful.
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I hold out hope that we’ll get more and more debates like LOGO and AFL-CIO, but that they’ll be hosted by a wider range of media and not that particular interest group. Imagine a 90 minute debate on just health care or just education or just foreign policy. Imagine giving a candidate a full 5 minutes to respond to a single question, or even 10 minutes.
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Sure, it’s tough when there’s more than a half dozen candidates, which is why I’d kind of like to see the primary season have a half dozen early states to winnow out the one to five percenters, and then have more time for each of the remaining candidates to give longer, more thoughtful answers. But I digress…
Each candidate/campaign has its own fishbowl, into which each candidate/campaign can insert an anonymous question it wrote. For each candidate, the moderator randomly draws two or three questions from the fishbowl. If the respondent thinks its a campaign trick, s/he can say so, if a candidate wants to own up to their question s/he can do so.
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Frankly, I’ve come to the conclusion that in any debate, the last people who should be asking questions are the very people who’ve been asking te questions thus far — media and news”personalities”.