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Debate Was a Missed Opportunity for Voters
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Saturday, October 11, 2008

ARTICLE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Publication Date: October 9, 2008

There was no clear winner in Tuesday night's presidential debate, but there were clear losers: America's undecided voters.

It was their one chance to see Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama onstage together interacting directly with voters and spontaneously answering the questions of ordinary citizens. Instead, they heard mostly a rehash of stump speeches and claims and counter-claims already repeated ad nauseum on the campaign trail.

Billed as a town-hall-style debate, the event's stilted format yielded few memorable or illuminative moments. Scared-stiff audience members read their questions from note cards after those questions were screened and selected by moderator and former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. Brokaw inserted many of his own piercingly personal, straight-from-the-heartland queries, such as "Who do you have in mind for Treasury secretary?" and "Would you give Congress a date certain to reform Social Security and Medicare within two years after you take office?"

Instead of a free-wheeling, wide-ranging debate in which the candidates engaged directly with voters on a broad spectrum of issues, the gathering featured canned discussion of only a few topics, mostly confined to wonkish exchanges on economic and foreign policy.

The debate was the latest in a series of disappointments this electoral season. There were the early "Jeopardy"-style primary debates, in which a slew of candidates competed to see who could squeeze the most headline-grabbing phrases into 60-second sound-bites. Then there was the overhyped CNN/YouTube Republican debate, which fell short of its populist billing when it became clear that CNN staffers had picked the questions and turned the "people's debate" into a forum for Democratic partisans. The late-season primary debates between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Obama were punchier and more revealing, and Gov. Sarah Palin's outside-the-Beltway persona enlivened the recent vice-presidential debate, making it the second most-watched debate in history. But Tuesday's presidential debate marked a return to the disappointing status quo.

The moderators have been a big part of the problem, but the presidential campaigns also share the blame. They negotiated the straitjacket rules that have made direct engagement and rebuttal so scarce in these stage-managed, contrived affairs.

As a consequence, American voters miss out. We miss the chance to see the candidates offer unrehearsed responses to deeper questions about their governing philosophy, life experiences and personal values, including the cultural and character issues so often dismissed as a distraction by Beltway moderators.

Missing from our superficial debates are such questions as: What does this candidate think is the role of government in a citizen's life? Does he see government as the answer to our problems or as the problem itself? Does he worry, as I do, about our coarsened popular culture, the disintegration of our families, the violence on our streets and protecting the innocence of our children? Does he have a plan for bringing our country together amid such deep partisan divisions? What is that plan, and does his record show that he could carry it out? What does he believe is the root cause of the terrorist threat America faces today? Does he see the world the way I do? Can I trust him?

When we elect a president, we're not just choosing a set of policies; we're choosing the person we want to see on TV screens for the next four years, the person we want waking up to that 3 a.m. emergency call to respond to a national crisis, the person we want imposing his political will and values on government and, by extension, on our nation.

Choosing a president is a little like choosing a spouse, albeit for a shorter-term commitment: We'll be stuck with this person after Jan. 20, so we want someone we can live with long after the debates have ended, the ballots have been cast and counted and the hard work of governing has begun.

-- Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.