by Jack
The media pundits shouldn’t dismiss value of the presidential debate as just partisan posturing of the same nature that we’ve heard all year long. It isn’t, the debates are designed to educate everyone, but mostly the undecided voter who still needs a little nudge one way or the other. For the astute observer, who watches body language, as well has listens to the words, there’s even more to be learned. Tonight’s debate is likely to be the most watched in the history of televised debates that reaches back to 1960 when Nixon and Kennedy went at it.
If you want to follow the first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama in real-time, you have a plethora of options. This is shaping up to be a heavily live-streamed, live-tweeted, live-blogged and even live-GIF’d, political event.
When is the debate happening? The debate will begin at 6 p.m. PST tonight.
THE VENUE AND TOPIC AREA: The first debate, held at the University of Denver’s Magness Arena, is slated to be about domestic policy. One hopes that the lingering effects of the 2008 financial crash — especially the ongoing unemployment and foreclosure crisis — will be heavily featured in the discussion, but you can also expect the candidates to respond to questions about their plans for tax reform, entitlement programs, health care reform and the deficit. Those topics alone could crowd out a 90-minute debate session, which means that one thing you’ll want to watch for is which topics don’t make it to the table. Student loans, immigration reform, infrastructure restoration, financial regulatory reform — one or more of these topics might not end up getting discussed.
THE MODERATOR: Moderating the first debate will be PBS NewsHour host Jim Lehrer, and if you’ve been longing for the 2012 presidential contest to emerge from its extended period of superficiality and become, at last, substantive, Lehrer is your best hope. The man wrote the book on presidential debates — literally. His instructive memoir of the years he’s spent both as a moderator of debates and a student of the genre, “Tension City” is a terrific insider take on how moderators prepare and shape the contests, with deep detail on many of the “frozen moments” we remember from debates past.
If “Tension City” gives us any clue as to how Lehrer is approaching his task, you can expect him to be meticulously well-prepared. The man pretty much agonizes over the language he uses to engage the candidates. He’ll have spent weeks drafting, redrafting, and refining his inquiries — and he’ll have done so out of a sense of duty. Of course, if you’ve read “Tension City,” you’ll know that in it, he vowed that he was getting out of the debate moderation game, and he’s apparently “seething” about criticism that he’s “too old and too safe to moderate yet another debate.”
Nevertheless, he’ll leave his mark on the Denver debate.
Mr. Romney brought a BIG mop and knows how to use it.