Editorials

Because the upcoming presidential election is so important, so are the campaigns. And no aspect is more crucial to educating the electorate than the presidential debates.

“The 2008 election is the most interesting, and perhaps the most consequential, in modern times,” points out Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “The challenges facing the country are immense. We face a global economy where American primacy is no longer a given. We face budget deficits that threaten to careen out of control in the next decade as government spending grows rapidly and revenues do not. We have a health system that is straining to provide coverage and care to an aging American population.”

These and innumerable other issues will immediately face the winner of the November election.

“We know that tackling any of these problems in a serious way will be a heavy lift next year, even if voters opt for big change and get it,” Ornstein says. “Whether it is President Obama with a Democratic Congress with comfortable majorities, or President McCain coping with divided government, the parties will be divided and polarized. The inchoate public demand for change, and for action in Washington, does not mesh with any larger consensus about what action should be taken to effect change.”

It’s going to take more than “business as usual,” he says.

“That is why Sen. John McCain’s call for 10 joint town meeting appearances with Sen. Barack Obama is a welcome overture,” Ornstein says. “We need to break out of the normal campaign mode, to have nuanced, textured and honest discussions of these huge problems and issues.”

Something like this has been attempted before.

“Barry Goldwater and his friend Jack Kennedy apparently struck a deal in 1963 to campaign in a different way in 1964 — to campaign together on the same plane and hold multiple debates, many without moderators or questioners, all around the country,” Ornstein recounts. “The idea, of course, faded when Kennedy was assassinated, and now McCain has evoked it to jump-start his plan for town meetings.”

The idea is intriguing, he says.

“Town meetings are a terrific venue; get the candidates together without moderators or journalistic interveners to engage in discussions with themselves and voters,” Ornstein points out. “The fact is that the journalists who have moderated debates in the primary process have made the show all about themselves. The questions asked by journalists are usually predictable, dealt with by candidates in the same way they handle news conferences or Sunday shows. Real voters can ask unpredictable questions that reflect those real lives.”

But town meetings should not be the only venue, he adds.

“Town meetings do not provide much chance for extended and deep discussion on individual important issues with follow-up questions and serious back and forth between the candidates,” Ornstein says. “What would be wonderful for the country is to have 10 (or at least many) debates with different formats.”

Moderators could be helpful in some of those debates.

“But, not the usual broadcast or cable anchors with gigantic egos or personality issues,” Ornstein says. “Some might have experts asking the questions or at least people with unique vantage points — for example, a debate on health reform might be in a mini-town meeting setting with, say, an ER nurse, a doctor working for an HMO, a small-business owner struggling to provide and pay for health insurance for 25 employees, a CEO of a big business facing soaring health benefit costs, a head of a pharmaceutical company, a hospital director, along with a health policy expert and some others with health-related vantage points. Others might be narrow or broad-based conversations, not debates in the usual sense.”

Voters who are clearly seeking change should get it before the election — with the way that the candidates present themselves and their positions.

()