The latest dust-up between the Clinton and Obama camps is whether to have more one-on-one debates.
There should be no dispute about this: of course they should. Whether they need “one a week,” as the Clinton campaign has proposed, I don’t know — that might be a bit much. But this —
“I don’t think anybody is clamoring for more debates,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ve had 18 debates so far.”
is crap, and Obama knows it. Most of those 18 debates were circuses with a gazillion candidates on the stage. The recent ones, with only three or four candidates, were better, but so far there has been exactly one debate with just the two front-runners. The voters can only benefit from more events like that one, in which the candidates get to speak for more than 30 seconds at a time and in which the voters might actually learn something. (And no, there shouldn’t be one on Fox, but the other venues are fine.)
So count me among those “clamoring” for more one-on-one debates.
to my mind, the smart pol would want a debate before each primary, as far as that is possible given the schedule. imagine the impact of addressing the needs of whatever region the primary state is in in a debate.
frontrunners always try to duck debates because it’s easy to screw up in a debate, and thereby give up your advantage. Furthermore, general (and IMHO accurate) consensus has been that Clinton is at her best in the debates, while Obama is not — his particular gifts don’t translate very well in that format.
<
p>Shouldn’t matter, IMHO. If he wants to be a different kind of pol, he shouldn’t play by the same old crappy rules.
…same old crappy rules that are the only ones that allow the electorate to witness a candidate being tested on their policies and positions in real time? The only way the polity has to see what a candidate is made of absent spin and scripts?
<
p>Sorry, but if that is the differnt kind of politician he wants to be or anyone thinks he should be, you can keep him.
<
p>If he thinks he can be president he shouldn’t shy away from debates. If he does, that is not change, it is just the same old fish wrapped in new paper.
I think David meant the “same old crappy [unwritten] rules” that say the “frontrunner” should try to avoid debates so as not to “lose points”. I don’t know where you get the idea that David is opposed to Obama participating in more debates, especially considering the title of this very post.
..this sentence:
<
p>
…to end the quote box.
<
p>Oops.
It is the funding – Hillary is looking for free advertising, as money is getting tough to come by.
Let Clinton stew in her own juices. Should be amusing to see her campaign implode.
You totally missed my point. Like you didn’t even read the comment.
<
p>You’re repeating the “frontrunner game” assertion you made in an earlier comment, but it’s still just an assertion. Maybe you’re wrong and maybe you’re right, but either way, you’re not responding to my comment.
<
p>Obama will debate Clinton one on one again. Just not as often as she wants. This post is railing against the idea that there should be no more debates at all, but that’s a strawman.
I didn’t miss your point. I just don’t agree with it.
<
p>
<
p>I think you’re wrong about that. There, how’s that for a direct response?
You disagree with my opinion that Clinton wants more debates than we need. You probably agree with my opinion that it would be nice to have more debates than the two more that Obama wants. But that still misses my main point: This post is an annoying straw-man argument that tries to imply that Clinton “wants debates” and Obama “doesn’t want debates” and since debates are good, Clinton is being good and Obama bad. Whatever our opinions about how many debates we would benefit from, it’s still a discussion about how many, not yes or no. Bob is spinning, he ought to know it, and whether he does or not, he’s wrong and it’s annoying and deceptive. I was upset at Bob for spinning it into something it isn’t.
So we had a couple more debates, though not as many as Clinton wanted at the time… and now Clinton is resisting debate invitations Obama wants. It seems that Obama’s campaign has been pretty consistent on wanting to continue having more debates at a slow pace, while Clinton has vacillated from “let’s debate twice a week!!” to now apparently wanting no more at all.
<
p>In light of this, what do you say no? Was Bob’s post idiotically insulting and detached from reality or not? (yes, it most certainly was – he was doing it to make people angry but he didn’t have reality backing him up).
I thought it was Bob, but it was you who posted that. Wow, I really do expect better from you. But now i can see why you were so defensive about it. Well, you certainly hit my button with it. And you were wrong, very annoyingly and stubbornly so, in your implication that Obama didn’t want to have any more debates. He very very clearly said otherwise at the time, and you chose to cherry-pick a quote out of context and pretend he meant something other than what he said.
We need some really serious debates, something we haven’t seen in a long time (probably since about when the parties took control of the debates back from the League of Women Voters).
<
p>My ideal scenario, which I doubt will ever happen, would look something like this: before the nominating conventions, party debates every two weeks, held by some nonpartisan group or groups. Major broadcast networks required to simulcast them. Two hours long, each on a maximum of two or three topics, with each candidate asked a question, given five to ten minutes to answer in detail, then the opponents get three to five minutes to respond, and another two minutes or so for the first candidate to rebut. Opening and closing statements of five to ten minutes. Give the moderators given power to dock candidates’ time if they get off topic or start slinging mud, or interrupt each other. Initially, every candidate who’s filed papers to run for the party’s nomination is on the stage. Each subsequent debate, participation is determined by aggregates of polling data, with the cutoff starting at (say) 5% in national polls or 10% in polls in the state with the closest primary over the past two weeks. Increase the cutoffs a bit each time.
<
p>After the conventions, reset the cutoff to 5% in national polls, and probably keep it there, since that’ll be enough to keep the real nutjobs who’ll just disrupt things out of the way. Hold ’em every week, up until the election.
<
p>(Actually, if I thought it were remotely imaginable in today’s US, I’d just want to go back to the Lincoln-Douglas model.)
Every two weeks, and then every week, required broadcasts? Thank goodness for Netflix.
…that like David says below, we would benefit greatly from hearing thoughtful, in-depth discussion of the issues, and we won’t get that with the current debate structure. (Let me also emphasize again that I know I’m never going to see debates like that; it’s just my own little fantasy-world idea of how they should be — and while I’m at it, why shouldn’t I posit a voting public that’s interested and engaged and wants to watch these things?)
and that does create a problem with cutoffs.
So I’d expect the organization in charge of the debates to use some kind of a weighted average. The weighting can be adjusted according to the historical accuracy of the different polling organizations, and as the campaign wears on, according to their accuracy in the primaries. As long as the weighting formula and the data to which it’s applied are public, I don’t see any problems with this (and I’m always in favor of as much transparency as possible).
<
p>I think that the idea of starting the cutoffs very low, and increasing them only gradually (up to maybe 15% in nationwide polls right before the convention, but all these numbers are made up, not based on anything), as well as letting candidates qualify for the debates either by polling at a low minimum nationwide, or by meeting a higher minimum in just the next state to vote, helps offset the inaccuracy of the polls and keep candidates from being unfairly frozen out.
<
p>Maybe during the primary season, it would also be a good idea to have monthly debates among the top two or three candidates from each party, to (hopefully) mitigate the play-to-the-base tactics.
if network television still, in 2008, is “calling” states incorrectly [as they did on S.F. Tuesday], they are not qualified to do the very difficult statistical work necessary to “correct” bad polling.
And I don’t think the TV networks should be the ones in charge of the debates. Their statistical ineptitude aside, they’ve got a vested interest in playing the debates up for drama, with “gotcha”-hunting moderators like Russert, to try to drive up ratings, rather than in encouraging a thorough and thoughtful discussion of an issue.
the original hourson-end debates between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, or the high school National Forensic League format refered to as “Lincoln-Douglas”? The latter would actually work quite well for just two candidates and has the advantage of talking about one question for 45 minutes with individual speaking times as long as 7 minutes at once.Apparently putting a dash mark before words turns into a strikeout; that was not my intent.
I’m not familiar with the Nat’l Forensic League format you mention — I’d never heard of it before, in fact — but that sounds like it would be fine. I personally would love to see debates in a format similar to the original Lincoln–Douglas, hours-long deal, but I don’t imagine that very many people share that opinion.
Personally I think there’s little relationship between a candidate’s debate performance and his/her potential leadership skills. Given that assumption, our interest in debates seems almost fetishistic, perhaps echoing a longing for the era of Lincoln-Douglas debates that contained anything more than set-piece sound bites and counter-jabs.
<
p>Debates give voters more exposure to the candidates (perhaps), but unless the moderator actually runs the debate actively and unless the candidates agree to rules that support honest back-and-forth (they never would), I doubt anything valuable will come out of the process.
<
p>That said, given that there will be debates between the Democratic and Republican nominees, it will be important to see Clinton’s and Obama’s performances to gauge their potential as a winning candidate. Maybe — because a debate between the two Democrats will have a very different dynamic than between the two parties.
<
p>But I’m not convinced that debates have any value in shedding light on the actual qualities for which we should be selecting for in a President.
<
p>(Disclosure: I’m a strong Obama supporter, so I suppose I am biased because I’ll readily admit that Obama is a weaker debater and, that assessment aside, strategically has a lot more to lose and a lot less to gain than Clinton does in agreeing to a debate).
Seems to me that discussing the issues in depth in a public forum is a skill that the president should have.
That’s my point. Unless the format of these debates are radically changed (which, I think, neither Clinton nor Obama would agree to), there won’t be any “discussing the issues in depth.”
<
p>When a President, as opposed to a candidate, “discusses the issues in depth,” it’s not in a debate format. President Bush does not stand next to Senator Pelosi and do a blow-by-blow discussion of his stimulus plan. There’s little correlation between a debate-style presentation of ideas and an actual Presidential one.
Taking questions from the audience and answering the questions in depth. She probably would welcome that format. At the events I attended, people loved it.
No disagreement there, but that’s not really the skill that our televised “debates” highlight.
in a one-on-one situation — no need for absurd 30-second time limits. The recent debates have been a vast improvement over the early ones, and there’s no reason the candidates shouldn’t be allowed to give answers of a few minutes in length.
As Jon Stewart said, a debate show would be great, I’d love to see that.
There will obviously be more debates: the questions concern the exact number,time, and place (Fox or no Fox).
With the whole thing on streaming webcast. Two desks, face to face, each candidate making calls, having meetings, taking quick breaks for badinage and raillery with an eye to the camera.
<
p>It would be great. Kind of like Big Brother meets Decision 08. There could be real-time comments, the whole deal. Heck, they’d probably wind up as running mates at the end, or one would just kill the other; either way, the decision would be made.
<
p>Failing that, I agree they should have more debates. It is idiotic for Obama to have said what he did. A real blunder by his campaign.
<
p>I think 2-4 per month would be about right. Fox should absolutely not be included because they are the Republican Party’s broadcaster.
….(not Blitzer). Where is Jim Leher? Also less questions more time to actually Debate an idea.
Between Wolfy and Russert, who’s the worst? Just when the debate gets civil and good points are being made both of those two just need to ask a question trying to get the candidate riled up. Get a good moderator, they should ask the tough questions, but spare us the gotcha stuff.
no love for Tweety Bird? Why not just have an open forum and questions from the audience that both candidates must answer? I’m so tired of Russert, Matthews and Wolfy that I won’t even watch. I’d also like to see a rule that questions must actually be answered, not deflected.
Borowitz said they should get a room!
There are major differences between Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal and Barack Obama’s proposal. Hillary’s proposal will result in universal coverage; Barack’s proposal will not. Paul Krugman wrote about the differences again in Monday’s NYT. Yes, I wish we could have a single payor plan in the United States, but at the very least, we must have universal health care coverage that is affordable to all Americans. I do not care how great a speaker someone is, if they do not get this fundametal issue, then we should be all concerned.
<
p>More debates will allow the candidates to explore important issues like health care more in depth. If there are people who want to watch netflix instead, then so be it, but I am sure there are many people out there who really are concerned about the important issues and would like more information from the candidates themselves. Let the questons come from the audience or let them come from the candidates themselves. Pick a neutral moderator. Keep Wolfe Blitzer and others like him at home. They do a disservice to this country every time them open their mouths.
Krugman is, uncharacteristically, skewing the numbers; the research he cites assumes facts that aren’t included in Clinton’s plan.
<
p>TheOpenSociety, you live here in MA and see how health care mandates are playing out: they haven’t succeeded (yet) in being universal, and they are imposing hardships on some families. There’s a real debate to be had here even among Obama supporters (my wife is more optimistic about the MA health care plan but remains an Obama supporter), but it’s the kind of intricate detail that’s (a) not suited for a TV format debate, and (b) probably immaterial given that all bets are off when a moving President hits an immobile Congress. Personally, I’m not so much betting on the specifics of Obama’s plan as his ability to recruit the American public to hit Congress with him to break down the inevitable resistance.
I would rather start with a proposal that has the goal of universal coverage, than one that doesn’t even get there. I also have heard Hillary Clinton explain her policy in terms that anyone can understand, even simpletons like me. I am sure she can do the same thing during a debate. I also know that she has the experience with Congress that Obama does not have, and therefore, she is more likely to get her proposal through Congress. She has been a senator for 7 years (he only three), she already has experience in what not to do if you want to get a health care proposal through Congress (he has not), and she has worked in Congress as a staffer (he has not). Moreover, she has been a part of an administration, even though it was an unpaid position (he has not). Besides Obama great oratory skills, what experience does he have to really tackle the tough issues we face? It takes more than talk to accomplish legislative change.
Hardly inspires confidence.
<
p>Insofar as her existing plan is already more extreme than Obama’s, insofar as there is tremendous resistance to any change at all in our health care system, and insofar as Senator Clinton’s last effort was a complete disaster that set health care reform in this country back by more than a decade, it seems to me that on this issue Obama is perhaps the more pragmatic choice.
…someone noted that Bill B. was a pretty terrible coach of the Cleveland Browns before he became a pretty good coach of the NE Patriots [setting aside the painful memory of the recent Superbowl].
<
p>Sometimes failure teaches us about how to succeed.
<
p>I for one, think that her failure in the past makes her more likely to succeed in the future, since she knows exactly where the pitfalls are.
It’s a side issue in this thread, but how much do the exact details of plans put forward by candidates matter?
<
p>What do Democrats all want: a Democratic President, House, and Senate
<
p>Let’s look back to 1993:
<
p>57 and later 56 Democrats in US Senate
258 Democrats in US House
Democratic President–Bill Clinton
<
p>Hillary Clinton Head of Task Force on Health Care Reform
<
p>Result: no universal health care
Why not just turn the presidential campaign into American Idol and be done with any substantive discussions. We are half way there already anyway.
<
p>BTW, the Clinton health care plan failed for a number of reasons, including mistakes in how it was presented to Congress (not having to do with the substance of the policy) and to the American people and in how ambitious it was. Hillary Clinton has learned from those mistakes. Most importantly, however, it was a proposal way ahead of its time. The public was not ready for a complete overhaul of the health care system in the United States in 1993; it seems as if they are now. Also, political history teaches that in order to have a major public policy change accepted by the people, there has to be a major crisis (see, e.g., the depression) or an eventual acceptance of a policy by its repeated assertion (the right to vote for women). I wonder if we would have reached the point of acceptance we have now if the Clinton health care plan had never been proposed and discussed.
I took my high school government class at the tail-end of a presidential election. A classmate, much brighter than I was, asked a great question: “Why do they spend so much time talking about things over which the executive branch has little to no control?” I hear my friend’s voice again every four years.
<
p>The health care proposals are important and we all get to decide for ourselves how much they figure in to our decision of whom to vote for. The president has the ability to propose, to cheerlead, twist arms, rally public support, and eventually, to either sign or veto a bill. They have no power to just enact their plan. If I’m voting one way or the other based on the assumption that someone’s plan is going to happen, well it ain’t. So at least for me, the health care plans figure in, but only proportional to what an actual president can do with them.
<
p>If we are taking about fantasy debates, here’s mine: An hour or two on health care focusing on these two aspects: Which provisions are you willing to compromise on and which are deal breakers? Perhaps we could start with the question, “If a bill came to your desk that was essentially your opponent’s plan, would you sign it? Why or why not?” Then we’d get a better idea of what might really happen after the election.
…what we do not need is hours and hours of how many angels can dance on the head of a health care pin. The discussion of the health care plan is illuminating a bit on perspecitives on governmental problem solving but a rehash of the same thing over and over solves no problems and makes the candidates look strident. For that question I would much rather here two experts in the details of public policy speak. Beyond that, I do not think Hillary is served by another hour or so of air time discussing her Iraq position.
<
p>Over all the differences between the two are so small that the debates focus on the minute issues instead of the big picture…what do we offer the country in November against McCain.
Neither of them have distinguished themselves on that front, unfortunately, but maybe that’s just because they haven’t been asked.
a weekly debate seems like a bit much since they are mostly debating and exaggerating small policy differences.
Wasn’t sure when BMG would be reporting it.
Obama made it clear he will debate again, just not as often as Clinton wants. What Clinton wants is to have so many debates and so much debate prep that neither candidates spends much time campaigning anywhere. It’s clearly excessive. That “nobody is clamoring for more debates” statement was made in context of saying we’d have more, just not many more; you’re taking it out of context to turn it into an easy strawman to knock down.
One. That’s pathetic.
Debate preparation involves deep analysis of the sort of questions the candidate will be forced to answer as President. It also tests whether the candidate can filter those complicated ideas into sound bites short enough to get coverage through the media filter.
<
p>Ask yourself this question: if my candidate is afraid to debate the other candidate in the race, how the hell can my candidate claim to be ready to be leader of the free world?
<
p>It takes too much time to prepare is NOT AN ANSWER.
<
p>This is not American idol. It’s a campaign for President of the United States.
<
p>IMHO, if you can’t be ready for to debate, you sure as hell aren’t ready to be President.
… if Hillary agrees to stop self-funding her campaign. She’s just maneuvering for her advantage (since she’s running low on money and debates are her best format) on a variety of fronts and he should respond in kind. Alternatively, Obama should propose a topic-focused debate. How would Clinton feel about a debate on Iraq and foreign policy?
…she’d feel fine. She screwed up on Iraq. Other than that, her foreign policy expertise outshines Obama’s in nearly every way:
<
p>Asia: She’s been to China, spoken to the Chinese government about women’s rights, and Obama hasn’t made it there yet.
Europe: Obama was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcte. on Europe and never went there in capacity.
Africa: Obama was explicitly told by the government of Sudan not to come; Hillary’s ally Richardson brokered the cease-fire
Or Dodd?
Or Richardson?
<
p>Biden–Senate since 1973
<
p>Dodd Congress-1975 and Senate since 1981
<
p>Richardson
Congress 1983
Ambassador to UN 1997
Secretary of Engergy 1998
Governor of New Mexico 2003
I’m well aware of their experience. Richardson’s problem was that despite his experience, too often he seemed not to know what the hell he was talking about. And none of the three had the star power and the media infatuation. Hillary does.
I think there are a lot of exceptions to her alleged shining foreign policy expertise. All of Hillary’s experience has ended up aligning her with the broken Beltway conventional wisdom on foreign policy (talk tough, support wars, don’t talk to bad people, etc.). Obama’s challenging of that wisdom is one of his greatest strengths as a potential president and it is one of the areas where Obama’s positions are much more aligned with the Democratic base than Hillary’s are. A foreign policy debate would play to those strengths and (I hope) convince more Democrats of the case for nominating Obama.
It’ll be fun to watch as she tries to be on both sides of an issue with only a single word.
<
p>And Obama has agreed to two debates now – Texas and Ohio. This was gamesmanship on his part and smart too – let Hillary look desperate for debates because she thinks she is great at em and then that lowers expectations for Obama and he can only do better.
<
p>And in 2006 in her campaign for re-election to the Senate Hillary refused to debate her anti-war opponent Jonathan Tasini. You could say he had no chance so why debate him and share a platform, but let’s not criticize Obama for this and let Hillary get all self-righteous about it. She’s full of it again.