When Even The Candidates Are Tired Of The Debates…
…that’s a good indication there are too damn many debates. Obama has had about enough:
Inundated by dozens of invitations, Sen. Barack Obama will turn down requests to join future debates and forums this fall, his Democratic presidential campaign announced Saturday.
Obama will honor his commitment to eight more debates (five sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, one by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision and two in Iowa), but he does not plan to accept many invitations for forums, where the candidates appear sequentially.
Campaign sources confirmed that the announcement could affect such key Democratic constituencies as the Congressional Black Caucus, Iowa AARP and League of Conservation Voters, which are planning to sponsor forums in the fall.
“Unfortunately, we simply cannot run the kind of campaign we want and need to, engaging with voters in the early states and February 5, if our schedule is dictated by dozens of forums and debates,” campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement.
Now, the cynics among you may wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Obama has generally underperformed expectations in the debates thus far – and the answer is, “Of course it does!”…
Nevertheless, the fact remains that there are too many debates this time around. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the last couple (though atrocious formats had a lot to do with that, as well)…
It’s no wonder that, according to Obama, the biggest problem in America today is cynicism.
The New Yorker won’t use the word “debate” and instead describes them as “overpopulated, overmoderated, your-time-is-up Q&A panels.”
I think that we would learn more about the candidates if each of them had ten minutes alone with a probing interviewer than by seeing all of them side by side. Either a Tim Russert/Jim Lehrer type or (preferably) someone from the other side of the fence. Have Brit Hume interview Democrats and Keith Olbermann interview Republicans. Then you would have substance instead of a beauty pageant.
Peter, I’ve been advocating pieces of that for a while now. I wanted to see Andrew Sullivan on the panel for the HRC forum. Can you imagine what he would have been like with Hillary?