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The two presidential campaigns jointly announced their debate plans today, and there are no real surprises. What would you give to be a fly on the wall when that joint statement was hashed out? Looking at the formats -- posted below the jump -- you'll see two of the debates will have a relatively free-form discussion period. Conventional wisdom holds that as the better debater, this bodes well for Obama, but after Saddleback, and just watching his free-form speech in general, I'm becoming more concerned about his discursive style. Sure, it's smarter and displays his command of the issues, but it's not always the most decisive. Katharine Q. Seelye gets at this in a smart article at the Times. Here's an example she cites:
* Should we pay good teachers more money? (This is admittedly a trickier question for a Democrat who relies on teachers unions that oppose merit pay.)Mr. Obama: “I think that we should, and I’ve said this publicly, that we should set up a system of performance pay for teachers negotiated with teachers, work with the teachers to figure out the assessment so they feel like they are being judged fairly, that it is not the whim of the principal, that it is not based on a single test but the basic notion that teaching is a profession, that teachers are underpaid. So we need to pay them all more and create a higher base line but then we should also reward excellence.”Mr. McCain: “Yes. And find bad teachers another line of work.”What's certainly true is that McCain's recent performance raises expectations for a McCain win, so that any Obama win will be magnified, as opposed to the Bush tradition of eking out a small win but having it resonate thanks to his anti-intellectual reputation and inclinations. As a final note, I'd be remiss in any discussion not to include James Fallows Atlantic article on debates, which didn't blow my socks off but does include some good advice for Obama (and the rest of us, as well): just think of McCain as Alan Keyes.
--Tim Fernholz
