Please, no more town hall debates. The queries were uninformed, overly broad and allowed for little insight, as has been the case ever since this sorry format debuted in 1992.
At least empower the moderator to challenge the candidates with follow-up questions. All we heard tonight were rehashed stump speeches.
Why not have a debate with experts — professors, authors, academics — of varying ideologies quizzing the nominees? Anything would be better than this:
The New York mayor seriously considered a third-party candidacy last winter. Too bad he didn’t pursue it.
Considering the current financial crisis, who do you think voters would turn to? The candidate with little experience, the one tethered to George Herbert Walker Hoover or the pragmatic innovator and self-made billionaire?
Beyond his business acumen, Michael Bloomberg could’ve made the most credible case for reform. The drama over the bailout plan demonstrated once again that neither party can be trusted to lead.
Resentment towards the two parties has been building for years, and it’s never been greater. I voted for Ross Perot in my first presidential election, fully aware that he was crazy. Hell, that was his campaign’s theme song and he still got 19 percent of the vote.
If only we had another option in this election.
My initial optimism about Obama has waned; he seems to be little more than a boilerpate Democrat, a John Kerry with superior oratory skills and a better team of strategists. As for McCain, two words: Sarah Palin.
And I had such high hopes:
How refreshing would it be to choose between two truly decent candidates, neither of whom is grounded in the politics of petty partisanship? I typically resist such unguarded optimism, but, for one night at least, the future looks bright. I’ll savor it while I can.
Score one for pessimism.
As Fareed Zakaria recently opined, “It’s a time to figure out what works, not what ideological mantras to keep repeating. It’s the age of Michael Bloomberg.”
Too bad his influence will be limited to New York. As for the rest of the country, rest assured that whoever wins, the failed politics of the past will prevail.
(Sam Nunn was mentioned as a potential running mate for Bloomberg. Imagine if he had shared the stage with Palin and Biden.
Enough said.)
Republicans used to be for it. Then along came Palin:
In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
All this talk about Bill Ayers brings to mind my favorite scene from “Network,” the standard by which all satires (and polemics, for that matter) should be judged.
