This is how to have a presidential debate

Tired of questions that sandbag and incite rather than hit the crucial policy issues?
Tired of presenters chasing their own ratings rather than the social contract?

Play Political Pursuit instead

Begin with a large pool of potential questions solicited from the public at large. Of these, 300 or so questions are selected, chosen for breadth, relevancy and popularity by an independent non-partisan group or groups such as the League of Women Voters.

These final selected pool questions are published at least two weeks before the debate so that both the public and the candidates may prepare as well as they wish before the evening of the debate.

The debate itself is conducted in a straightforward manner:

Each candidate has one minute to introduce themselves and to frame their candidacy.

Each candidate then selects from an urn of 300 balls a question number, which they have one minute to address or to rebut the previous answer of another candidate, or to respond in any other way they wish. The listeners and pundits of course may refer to their notes regarding this indexed question asked by a presenter to the candidate whose turn it is to be in the spotlight.

After the minute, the next candidate selects a new random question and so on.

The debate ends after a predetermined number of full rounds giving each candidate the same opportunity to speak.

Finally, each candidate has one minute to sum up and recapitulate their position.



This format has the advantages of being fair to each candidate, giving each the same amount of time to speak. It has the advantage of including those questions deemed most relevant to the public and gives obscure or heretofore unknown issues the possibility of being asked, not just what the presenters think is important in the current news cycle.

No candidate will be hit with a presenter's argumentative, biased, or unexpected question. And, since they will not be sandbagged with a previously unknown or argumentative question, candidates will not have to prepare a set of side-stepping general "answers" that basically ignore the question at hand. The public will know that the candidate had time to prepare and will judge accordingly.

Each candidate may prepare cribs as much or as little from the potential pool, which has the admirable side-effect of being a kind of test-prep for the candidate and their staff for the Presidency and is the ultimate focus group for issues important to the electorate.

This benefit accrues to the public as well as they see the breadth and quality of the pool that will in itself constitute a short course of our democratic republic. Pundits can also pre-fact check.


Overall, publishing the pool ahead of time will raise the level of political discourse in our entire country among all its citizens.

Most importantly, anyone--including non-citizens or minors--may submit a potential pool question with the final pool selected by a non-partisan group from among those submitted by the public. The group does not need to select banal, irrelevant, non-civil, repetitive, unnecessarily technical, or even, well, boring questions to be among the final debate pool.

The excitement of a lottery but without the faux drama of the presenters fomenting discord--while no more "debate" than the entertainment reality show that is palmed off now, it will be a meet-and-greet, but with real meat. Political Pursuit.