Presidential Debates

I think Rick Warren should moderate the presidential debates in the future.  His civil forum was by far more interesting and revealing than the debates the way they're conducted.  I think Warren asked interesting questions that got spontaneous responses that gave us much more insight into the candidates than the debates do.

Comments

[Pro Life]

Ya, I like the way McCain answered some of the questions before Warren had a chance to ask them. McCain was in his limo (watching TV?)when Obama was being interviewed.

[Sam]

I think we should just have real debates. They should have a cross examination period, so the candidates can choose the questions themselves.

I heard McCain challeneged Obama to have a real debate at one point but that Obama declined. Bummer!

[Paul]

Pro-Life: What's your proof?

[Gravis]

My understanding was that McCain would not be able to hear Obama's part of the interview. On the telecast, Warren referred to McCain being "in a cone of silence".

Pro-Life, do you think he was lying?

Here's a decent summary of the "cone of silence" issue:

http://snipurl.com/4fcl1

(The issue isn't whether Rick Warren intentionally lied, but about whether he even knew where McCain was during his interview with Obama. Apparently, Warren was mistaken.)

[Les]

Prolife has no proof. It's much easier to demonize people and us ad hominen attacks especially if you can't argue the issues.

McCain doesn't need to know the questions before hand. His stength, if Prolife would bother to investigate, is in "town hall" type of debates where people from the audience ask questions. He's very good on his feet. By the way BO wouldn't agree to any of the "town hall" type of meetings because he couldn't use a teleprompter.

Now it wouldn't surprise me if the media hadn't given BO the questions before his debates with McCain, considering the pro BO that the MSM has for him.

[David]

I'm very depressed with the debates that I've seen. They're so shallow and need to include members of the Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, etc.

[Paul]

The debates have been worthless for several reasons -- bad questions, bad format, no real adherence to the questions asked, more misleading rhetoric. It's just an extended commercial from what I've seen/heard, so I didn't waste too much time on them after the first one or two.

The reason they don't have the other parties is because those other parties don't have a chance of winning, and if we allowed four parties to answer the same questions (instead of two), we'd only have half the number of questions answered, making them of even less worth.

"It's much easier to demonize people and us[e] ad hominen attacks especially if you can't argue the issues."

Just curious: if readers had to pick, do you think that the quoted statement above better applies to Obama-Biden or McCain-Palin?

"I just want to give you a more balanced picture"

Amy, balance is not your forte.

[Paul]

Anon, fair and intellectually honest responses are not your forte.