When Will We Decide On A Format That Really Works?

As a contrarion of the worst kind, I find that the current debates tell me what the candidates want us to hear. None of the debates so far have told us much about the candidates or any more than they wanted to share with us.

I would like to try a different kind of format; one that allows them to cover all the points that would allow us to focus in on their preparation,their skills, their understanding of the problem and, lastly but not least, the kind of skills they would want to recruit to help them in the task of running this great country of ours….

By agreement, we should find a kind of forum that would allow each of them to speak freely for ten minutes and then allow them another five minutes to defend their positions or to ask questions of the other speakers.

The forum as I see it should do several things.

1. It should answer for us what each of the candidates consider their highest priorities and why…

2. It should then proceed to lay out what is wrong or needs fixing; and what we have failed to attend to re each of those priorities….

3. But most importantly, it should detail in very clear terms what each candidate proposes to do about it… How does he or she intend to address each of the priorities they have layed out as our most serious…

4. Finally, each candidate should tell us what they think they can do to address the violations and abuses of this administration and how they hope to resolve the problems that are likely to affect our lives for at least the next decade… We would expect their best ideas to surface here and it should serve to determine how their minds work when it comes to assessing and addressing a problem…

5. Then I would like each of the candidates to relate to us what they see as their leading strengths and weaknesses and what makes them especially equipped to deal with the wide ranging problems that confront us…

6. Finally, I would also like to hear who they would appoint to help them achieve the tasks ahead. Merely, the mention of the kind of people that they would bring into their administrations and for what reasons would be amazingly informative and instructive and a key to how their minds work…..


7 Finally, I would like to know to what extent they would be willing to commit to the tasks that lie ahead. Would they be willing to put their individual crusades into writing and commit to them?....This would also be informative and give us an idea of how rock solid their commitments are….


This would allow us to hear about the bedrock conceptions behind their individual campaigns and allow us to judge how they best conform to our own view of the challenges that lie ahead.

I am less interested in the hype and more interested in the bed-rock. I think, too, that this is what the candidates are dying to tell us and would differentiate the candidates once and for all in our own minds…

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon