The primary problem is that the most informative debates or question-and-answer formats are policy driven and tend to be boring because they don't generate fireworks.

Gotcha questions generate fireworks, and can be fun to watch and interesting to discuss afterwards, but don't further a reasonable basis for choosing a candidate for one of the most powerful offices in the world.

I vote for shorter debates with varied formats. I like the town-hall formats with ordinary people asking questions.

I'd also like to take the media stars out of the mix. Replace them with more neutral moderators, perhaps, say, a panel of physicians, hospital administrators, and patients asking questions about health care issues, a panel of economists, union members, business leaders, homemakers asking about economic policy, or panel of teachers, students, and parents asking about education.

An official timekeeper for any and all events would be a great help. Maybe a buzzer for dumb "gotcha" questions.

continually seeking to improve the debates, I totally disagree with your conclusion that it's not working as is.  Make that categorically.

I think debates and press availabilities are pretty much the only campaign events of any interest.  The rest of it is contrived BS.  Debates and press avails force the candidates at least a little bit out of their planned-out spin paths.

If I eyeball the candidates real close during 5-6 debates, I feel as if I have their measure pretty well.  I could read newspaper stories about their speeches for months without getting that kind of sense.

i say we go for a 'discussion' rather than debates. Discussions tend to offer more goodwill and true concentration on the issues. Only one rule would be made: no mention of scandals. none because they derail from the issues at hand.

No moderators, no commercials, no scandals; Just the issues at hand.

it would be historic.

i agree with the diarest that the debates have left us all wanting. the most shameful part was the "Dodd clock: example. totally unfair and undemocratic to give some candidates more time than others.

but the idea that the debate audience reflected satisfaction with the debate is nonsense. alot of people watched because alot of people were VERY interested. they had no idea as they began watching what would happen. the debate was a joke, and most people who watched it said so. lots of people watch the Super Bowl each year, that doesn't mean they are happy when the game sucks.

yeah, ten million watched, and were totally let down by the network, who frittered away this huge audience on bullshit, when we could have actually learned something.

Two words: Presidential Apprentice.

The problem here is that the candidates don't have major policy differences.  As a result, all that's left is über-wonky details or scandals.

Hands down the MTV/MySpace Candidate Forums were the best forum in which I saw the public and media interact with the candidates.

The audience-generated questions, the live-action polling from the online and TV audience, and the "professional" moderation from Chris Cilliza and the MTV vjays outdid anything the cable and broadcast networks did this year.

I've written extensively about these events here:

In Search of a Feedback Loop: Grading the MTV/MySpace Candidate Dialogue

McCain and MTV/MySpace Hit a Home Run

MTV/MySpace Present Candidate's Closing Arguments

The debates hosted by the League of Women Voters were always thoughtful and substantive. I'd like to see them return again.

I'd also like to see a series of discussions and keep the number of people participating in each discussion to three or so. In years where we have several candidates, rotate who is in each discussion. No time limits on answers. Get some non-committed wonks up there.

Some people think the CNN YouTube debates were progress, but their were also some valid concerns that they were only superficially different from the standard MSM fare. If anything, I'd argue that those debates were simply grafting user-driven technology onto a dying medium.

Yes yes yes! Couldn't have said it better.

This is all a bit arbitrary. Best would be a revote. Failing that, either let the result stand (penalizing Obama for taking his name off, which he wasn't obliged to do) or use the exit poll figures of HRC 46%, BO 35% to allocate delegates. This could be off but seems reasonable based on actual voting.

OOps. Pls ignore last post, wrong thread

We need Change!  And we, must change if we are to survive as a country!

It's like the monkeys making shakespeare. Given enough user submitted questions on YouTube, CNN can filter them and get essentially the same questions that CNN would have asked anyway, but this time with faux legitimacy of having a patsy ask the question.

How about after some moderation process to vote-up good questions, each candidate submits a 1.5-3 minute response to each question. No Dodd-clock inequality. Every candidate answers every question. It wouldn't happen all at once, but after whatever contest and voting for questions, candidates get N-days (1 week?) to submit answers and all the answers get put up at once. Rebuttals happen in the usual YouTube manner of 'posting a video response' to some video. And we then also get the direct feedback of view-counts and star-ratings on each candidate's responses. I think it could be truly fascinating.

I guess the only problem is that it doesn't happen on TV. It's all hyperlinked and netty.

Given that poorly moderated menageries of 8+ candidates suck, how about limiting any one debate to 3-4 candidates? Have a rotating schedule with A,B,C one night for an hour, D,E,F the next night for an hour, etc.

The hope is that there'd be more time for reasonable and content-full long-form answers.

How many debates did we have with all 8 dems? 6? more? We'd need at least twice as many mini-debates. Probably more TV hours total (but hey, they're desperate to fill time with anything, right?).