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The Big Debate on Thursday

Weapon X

By Weapon X
in Channel Zero

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Guest KING BLING

Guest KING BLING

Posted
Posted

Bill Moyers has an awesome review of the debate process the other night...it really is a sham, the show had so many good details. From the site:

 

The 1976, 1980, and 1984 debates were sponsored by the non-partisan League of Women Voters. The League worked on behalf of the public by openly pushing for lively debate formats and the inclusion of third-party and independent candidates.

 

When, in 1980, President Carter refused to participate in a debate that included both Republican challenger Ronald Reagan and independent John Anderson, the League insisted on Anderson's inclusion and proceeded to hold a televised Reagan-Anderson debate without Carter. Ronald Reagan was able to use the first debate to outline his agenda to a national audience, and many believe he could not have won the presidency without the debates.

 

In 1984, the three debates featured a moderator and three panelists who would ask both candidates the same questions. The Reagan and Mondale campaigns asked for an unprecedented degree of control over the debates — going so far as to veto nearly a hundred proposed panelists. The League of Women Voters blasted both campaigns publicly, and for the second debate that year, the candidates didn't reject a single panelist.

 

The '84 debates were notable for another, more memorable reason. This was the election in which President Reagan, then 73 and potentially deemed too old by some voters for re-election, brought down the house by saying, "I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." From that moment on, his age was never an issue in the campaign.

 

In 1988, the political parties wanted more control over the debates while the League insisted on protecting what they considered to be the debates' integrity. The Democratic and Republican parties signed a secretly negotiated "memorandum of understanding" that dictated everything from selection of the panelists, to the makeup of the audience, to banning follow-up questions. When they had agreed on all the details, the campaigns presented the document to the League. Accusing the two major parties of perpetrating a "fraud on the American voter," the League exposed the secret memo to the public. The struggle ended with the League of Women Voters withdrawing as sponsor of the general election debates, refusing to give its name to an event "controlled and scripted by the candidates' campaign organizations." The result: the parties got the kind of debates they wanted when the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a nonprofit organization created by members of both major parties took over the management of the debates.

 

 

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/debatehistory2.html
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Nekro

Nekro

Posted
Posted

Shamelessly stolen from www.thismodernworld.com:

 

Just came across the actual rider signed by the John Kerry and Delusional Monkey campaigns in arranging their upcoming "debate," which will actually be (like most U.S. "debates") more of a joint press conference.

 

The candidates are forbidden from asking each other any direct questions of any kind, nor can they challenge each other with proposed pledges. Thus, much of the skill used in actual debating is explicitly forbidden. Point for Monkey.

 

No pre-written notes of any kind will be allowed, nor can candidates use any props or have anyone in the audience to point to (like, say, Allawi) to examplify their rhetoric. Point for Kerry.

 

In the "Town Hall" debate, audience members will ask their moderator-screened questions, but they won't be allowed any follow-up, and if they deviate from approved levels of free speech, they will be silenced. Candidates will therefore be able to a) change the subject entirely, B) misleadingly paraphrase the question (one of Monkey's best tactics), or c) stall by following-up an earlier point, especially since their opponent is forbidden from asking any direct questions in response. Huge point for Monkey.

 

Remaining-time lights will be mounted directly onto the cameras, so the candidates don't have to break fake eye contact with TV viewers.

 

In the "Town Hall" debate, the candidates will have small, predesignated areas in which they can "move about" in their attempts to simulate the body language of actual human connection. The candidates' "move about" areas will not overlap in any way.

 

The shaking of hands is contractually mandatory.

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mental invalid

mental invalid

Posted
Posted
Originally posted by KING BLING

Bill Moyers has an awesome review of the debate process the other night...it really is a sham, the show had so many good details.

 

 

amazing, in a really depressing way...hopefully this will catch some steam...that is where that open debate link is from....

 

 

kerry should have put bushs feet to the fire on this, but the party controls the man....

 

but what would bush have done? if kerry had drilled and drilled bush would have had to play the hand...

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Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted
Originally posted by SIPPINJUICE

Since Kerry is a "sweater" theyre gonna try and keep the room warmer then 75 degrees.

 

 

like the Quimby VS. Sideshow Bob Debate.....

 

Flames added by chanel 6 news for effect.

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POIESIS

POIESIS

Posted
Posted

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/opinion/.../28krugman.html

 

 

*shit, tpm explains it better:

 

 

Paul Krugman today touches on a crucially important point about Thursday night's presidential debate. If 2000 was any indication -- and there's every reason to think it is --the winner of the debate won't be determined during the 90 minute encounter itself but during the spin war that will follow it. And with the advantage the Republicans have on the cable nets, talk radio and chat TV shows, the odds are stacked in their favor.

 

(As Krugman alludes to, the initial public reactions to the first Bush/Gore debate had the then-veep coming out on top, if narrowly. It was only after several days of pundit churn that Bush became the winner. The Bush team won the post-debate debate.)

 

More than just these built-in advantages, though, Democrats, I think, have seldom really appreciated that there is such a thing as a post-debate debate. I don't mean that they don't know about putting out surrogates or trying to spin the results. Of course, they do. But in 2000 at least (a certainly in analogous situations in this cycle) the effort was very reactive and scattershot. And that inevitably leaves the Democrats trying to parry or deconstruct the ways that Republicans are trying to define what happened. In that way, they're fighting at best for a draw.

 

Republicans are already leaking hints and taunts about whether Kerry will sweat profusely under the lights, whether he's too tanned and other similar nonsense. But the antic nature of these taunts doesn't mean they won't be effective. They're meant to throw the other side off balance and, in a related manner, to provide grist for a catty and frivolous press corps.

 

So what's the Democrats' plan going into this debate? You can see what the other side is planning from visiting Drudge or listening to the GOP surrogates on the chat shows.

 

But what do the Dems have in mind?

 

It's easy to predict that there will be several exchanges in the debate where the president will describe the situation in Iraq in ways that are entirely belied by the reality of the situation. Perhaps he'll mention the situation in Fallujah where his intervention in the battle planning had such disastrous and feckless results. Will the pundits and talking heads be primed for those moments? Or only for Kerry's moments of over-fancy rhetoric?

 

Will the Dems be ready to hit on these issues and focus the post-debate debate on the president's recklessness, lack of a plan and inability to level with the public about what's happening in Iraq?

 

There are many other possible examples. But the point is that we have a pretty good idea what the president is going to say. And what he'll almost certainly say will open up a number of solid lines of attack. But if the Democrats don't hit the ground running with a plan in mind they'll be overwhelmed by the GOP spin machine -- no matter how many fibs the president tells or how many times he says up is down.

-- Josh Marshall

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