Town Hall Debate: a golden opportunity

[sithknight]

Now I'm pretty steamed about the "ground rules" format for the town hall debate. It seems that the audience members are supposed to submit their questions in writing prior to the start, and then if they deviate in any material way from the preapproved question, the moderator is supposed to cut them off. Smells pretty damned fascist if you ask me.

In any case, I think this presents a golden opportunity for Kerry. He needs to wait until some person in the audience throws a question his way that does deviate. Then, when the moderator cuts them off, Kerry should say: "now hold on a second, this is America. I'd like to answer the gentleman (or lady's) question. The American people have a right to ask questions of their leaders."

That'll make monkey boy look like the chump that he is, but allow Kerry do show the public without looking like a jerk in doing it. Plus, he'll more than likely be able to answer the question (whatever it is) with his usual intelligence.

What's Bush gonna do? Try and rise to the occasion by answering another unscripted question? That would just give us another classic sound bite.

[unblock]

1. unfortunately, the moderator would smack kerry down

and should, that's the moderator's job, to enforce the ground rules.

the moderator can say, "i'm sorry, senator, your campaign agreed that tonight's questions must be preapproved by both sides, so we must stick with submitted questions."

a candidate who breaks the rules can look great until it's pointed out that he own campaign agreed to the rules.

worth, the moderator can point out something that his campaign insisted on.

[sithknight]

2. possibly

you may be right about the moderator cutting him off. But I certainly think you're wrong about the Kerry campaign insisting on the restriction. It just sounds more like something that the Bush camp insisted on.

However, I think this idea isn't too far afield. Kerry might be able to bluster over the moderator and proceed to answer the question anyway. (shrug) perhaps that's just wishful thinking.