Make debates like reality TV
I really hate the presidential debates. This isn’t the first year they have been all but unwatchable.
I would propose a far more useful exercise. The candidates come out onto the stage and are introduced. Perhaps they make opening statements. The moderator gives them a scenario — perhaps an international crisis, perhaps a natural disaster, perhaps a scandal in the administration. Each candidate retires to a separate conference room with a coterie of advisers. We the audience watch the interaction between po- tential president and staff. As the deliberations continue, more information comes into the room, disrupting what everyone thought a moment ago. The crisis worsens.
The new information is crucial. Suppose, for example, that the scenario involves accusations that the attorney general, a close friend, has taken a bribe. Conscious of the television audience, the candidate might arrive in the conference room and announce theatrically, “Friend or not, he’s fired!” — thus proving fidelity to grand principle. Ten min-
utes later, we learn that the accusation is false, planted by hackers believed to be Russian. In playing to the cameras, the candidate has acted too hastily. At that point a cyber-attack begins on crucial infrastructure. It’s a slow-rolling attack, and responsibility cannot be definitively determined. The candidate has to decide whether to fight back — perhaps with a pre-installed logic bomb in an adversary’s systems — or wait.
Neither candidate would be aware in real time of what the other candidate was doing with the same facts. We the viewers would know; the people in the room wouldn’t. (Yes, yes, we would have to find good ways to meet the ob- vious challenge of broadcasting both conversations simultaneously.)
We the voters would be watching, for once, not merely the final decision, but the way each candidate interacts with staff and deals with a deteriorating situation.
However we structured the scenario, we would be able to watch the process by which the candidates make their decisions. True, it wouldn’t quite be real. But it would be a lot better than what we have now.
And there’s one other advantage: It would make great television.