After the debate Friday night, I was struck by something, Bush and Kerry really want to go after each other. For a while in the early part of the debate I swore the moderator or the Secret Service was going to have to break them up after one threw a punch.
Of course for that to happen one of the candidates would have had to cross the line on the floor that seperated them. Which also means one of the rules would have been violated. Though really what would be the problem with just throwing out the rules?
Sure in the first debate, the 32 pages of rules effectively hand-cuffed the President. That defied the conventional wisdom that the debate playing field was massively tilted in his direction. Kerry was masterful at exploiting the rules to his advantage. In the second debate, the rules really didn’t have as much of an impact, well besides that one moment where Bush steamrolled the moderator, ABC’s Charlie Gibson, to make a reply to a statement by Kerry.
Imagine for a moment a place where Bush and Kerry would be able to have a Lincoln-Douglas style debate, directly talking to each other and openly challenging the other. You get the sense from Friday night, that both would welcome the opportunity. Now Bush’s handlers might be scared to death of it. That would mean he would be almost totally unscripted for 90 minutes.
The greatest thing for the voters about this format would be seeing the candidates in a totally hostile environment and seeing how they react. So far we have seen that when confronted with a challenge, that Bush gets flustered and falls back on what he is confortable with. While Kerry is calm but determined and pushes on.
I doubt that the moderator for this last debate, CBS’s Bob Scheiffer, will toss out the rules, but here is one vote for him to do just that. If for no other reason than it would give the networks some of the greatest reality TV of the entire season.
