Last night I watched and was exhausted by 11 Republican Candidates for President sharing a stage and jostling for their moments of notice. It seemed less of a debate and more of a sound bite scrum!

I think that the debate planners would be better off taking a “March-Madness” approach to debates… start with a Sweet Sixteen if you need to, although a Great Eight would be a better starting point.

Imagine four 15-minute debates of two candidates each, the winner, by audience electronic vote moves on to the Final Four. Two more 30 min debates result in a down select to 2 candidates that complete in the final 30 min debate.   Sound bites would not be sufficient to make it through. At the end of 2 hrs. of debating there would be a debate winner, with breaks and voting it may take two and a half hours. There can be another 5 minutes of summary from each of the 8 candidates at the end. Then we’d have a meaningful debate with some sense of who these candidates are and what are their policy positions.

Next time around mix up the starting pairing.

Organize the questions around a set so there could be some consistency in what each candidate has to address. Start with foreign policy questions, then economic, then domestic/social questions, then leadership/character challenges.

Just my musings for this morning!

Mike