The upside is the chance to outshine McCain in the civil debates, and the chance to let him screw up and look like a stumbling old man. McCain is not too inspiring when he actually opens his mouth and talks (his biography and reputation is where his strength lies). The bet for Obama is that he will be able to think on his feet and keep his cool, but McCain will not.

The downside for Obama in rejecting the idea is that it makes it look like he is afraid to stand up next to McCain and be compared in a public forum. Even if you don't think the argument in my previous paragraph adds up to a plus for Obama, he still has to say yes unless that is worse than saying no.

Upside for Obama: It'll be good for the country.  Obama wants to lead that country.  Doing good things for the good country he wants to lead leads to goodness in the country.

More seriously, McCain's message stinks, so Obama doesn't need to worry about helping McCain get it out, he should want it out there.  

I also don't imagine John McCain will argue to Obama's face in an unmoderated town hall that Obama is a "secret Muslim with radical terrorist sympathies" so anything to get the campaign off that bullshit narrative and onto the issue fundamentals  (where Obama has an overwhelming advantage) is good for Obama.

I think that overall, they're a good idea. They'll hopefully stay focused on issues, and the country disagrees with McCain overwhelmingly on the major issues in the campaign. Also, Obama's not a terribly good debater, but I think he's better than McCain, so I think he could probably beat McCain at all of them.

Normally, I find myself agreeing with Noam, but here I see it differently:

1. Obama, thanks in part to Hillary Clinton and in part to his own carelessness, faces an "everyman" gap that might only ossify were he to eschew intimate, accessible venues entirely in favor of big rallies and high-priced TV ads.

2. Obama is at his best as a campaigner when there's bona fide policy contrast and he has no extrinsic loyalty -- such as party loyalty -- to his opponent (witness his effective broadsides on the gas tax). I think he will prove a far more effective debater against McCain than he did against Clinton.

2a. As a corollary, my sense is that the Obama people are betting that gaining a reputation for running circles around McCain in these debates, plus the inevitable visuals in the media, will make the age argument for them.

3. You assume that McCain will be delivering his message in a vacuum here, but the point is that Obama will be right next to him ready to poke holes in McCain's self-imagery. McCain's reputation for being an independent maverick is not one that will fade without pushback from Obama and other Democrats on Iraq, the economy, judges, etc.

4. For obvious reasons, Obama's not big on moderated debates right now.

McCain doesn't know crap about economics, so he'll bumble through memorized soundbites or say "pass." Either way, he looks bad. Obama will be smart and articulate and cruise right past McCain. Through the Dem primary, Obama improved and got to the point that he could (except for the Philly debate) out-debate Hillary, who is far more adept than John McCain at that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, as davisbanimal says, the things that would be up for discussion would play to Obama's strengths. McCain won't go for the crazy "issues" - or if he does, great! He'll look desperate and nasty, and Obama can respond by honoring his service in Vietnam and talking about how he expected more from a guy who's served his country for almost half a century. And when McCain stumbles and bumbles around on, say, the recession, he won't have Charles Gibson there to take the heat off by asking Obama why he isn't wearing a flag pin.

Now, I wouldn't want to see a dozen of these gatherings. What does "through the summer" mean? Weekly? Let's not go crazy. And, since this is being floated by McCain's people (lobbyists, I'm sure), you have to scrutinize every last aspect of the proposal to see what their angle is.

Scheiber:

"As a journalist..."

Who are you kidding?

it's a good idea for obama because the issues will favor him.  there won't be any "gotcha" questions from debate moderators.  the majority of the questions will be about iraq and the economy, two issues that heavily favor obama

Another upside is that Obama gains stature, they will both be viewed as equals on stage, and when Obama stands next to McCain he will literally overshadow him as he is a lot taller. McCain is what, 3 feet tall? (actually 5:8, same as me) but his standing next to a much taller man ain't good visuals for him.

Now a lonely voice from the right:  you are making the usual error of overconfident Democrats, perhaps because you only talk amongst yourselves.  Your conventional wisdom is McCain will lose an unmoderated debate because...we don't like his ideas.  And he's old.  And he's not all polished and shiny like our guy.  

Obama has shown, in debates with Clinton, that there's no there there.  In the last debate they held, just the two of them, he actually looked bad.  Against Hillary The Ice Queen Clinton.  It takes some doing to look bad against her.  

Obama does best in front of uncritical, adoring audiences, or getting softball pitches from an adoring old lib like Moyers.

Obama’s performances of the past month or so have been anything but luminous, so I would understand if he's afraid of some real competition for the crowd's affections.  

Jeffrey is right, there's no way Obama can say no to this. Saying no to H was easy, because they'd had a million debates already and [though he couldn't say it] he's won already. But he can't say no to an unmoderated debate with McCain.

And Woody is right - Obama would cream him in a back and forth. Conservatives who want an excuse to vote for Obama will be given one.

For once, maybe it'd be nice to skip this part where we all automatically jump past the merits of an idea to what it would mean in terms of strategical pluses and minuses for the campaigns. Let them figure that out. This is simply a great idea, it would be great for politics and it would be great, dare I say, the country's civic culture.

Out with the max three-times-a-campaign, centralised, super-choreographed, media-owned debates dominated by all the freakshow issues that the TV stations want to see debated. Back to small-scale, frequent debates, where the candidates actually debate directly with each other, and do not need to be sidetracked by media hypes.

It's simply good for America. So for once, maybe, f*ck strategical considerations, 'k?

I was actually just thinking the same thing about height that blackton said, although I thought McCain was actually 5'7".  Regrettably, visuals are important

Honestly, I think this is a great idea. If as Obama says, it's actually about substantive issues, and my guess is that with voters asking the questions, it mostly would be, it's a big positive for him.  If the election becomes about policy positions, Obama should win fairly easily.  Also, as others have pointed out, McCain is a much weaker debater than Hillary (at least from the debates I've watched this year), and Obama has more than held his own in the past several debates with her, Philly being the possible exception.  This is a very favorable forum for him.

More than that, though, I think that this would be good for the country.  I think that dialogues typically tell voters more than monologues do, and I've become increasingly fed up with the crap that debate moderators feel is worth talking about.  I'd prefer never to see Tim Russert or Charlie Gibson moderate another debate.  As to Noam's point about these debates making McCain not look light some right wing zealot, I'm of the opinion that this would be a good thing, since McCain is not, in fact, a right wing zealot.  I know it seems foreign to people that cover politics, but would it be so bad if Obama and McCain were running against each other rather than against caricatures of each other created by the campaigns?

jlr2006, you see what you want to see. And that is pretty obvious since Obama was never interviewed by Bill Moyers (at least none that I have found).

I like McCain, he does a pretty good interview and is great one on one, but he doesn't fire up any crowds and does get a little short at times. Beyond that, there won't be a debate between them, but they will take turns answering questions at town hall meetings, or they will come up with a list of questions and each takes their turn. NO WAY they do an unscripted one on one with each other, the downsides are far too great for both. It could wonder all over the place, they can repeat points, they can get sidetracked, etc. Can you imagine one: "ok what do you want to talk about next?" They can both look like idiots.

One other thing, he only needs to do it a couple of times, it is not like they are going to do a road show together for month on month.

jlr, I agree that Obama was lackluster in the Philadelphia debate, but I thought he did very well in the debates in previous 3 one-on-one debates with Clinton (California, Texas, and Ohio), and, ice queen or not, Hillary has a very good command of the issues and she's an accomplished debater.

I was basing my opinion of McCain's debating skill from what I saw of him during the Republican debates this year.  I remember him debating Romney in California and stubbornly ignoring everything that Romney said while just repeating "timetables was the buzzword."  He seemed authoritative when he was talking about torture (although this lost him points with many Republicans), but when it came to the economy, he had very little to offer.

I agree with the commenters above. There's a potential for McCain to just flip out, lose his temper, and start choking Obama.

Everyone's missing the big plus to unmoderated debates - NO MODERATORS!!!!!  Other than the first few Obama-Clinton ones, there's been everything from talking snowmen to 45 minutes of Wright grilling.  The concept of moderated debates has proven itself to be garbage.  Let them go back and forth on whatever topic they want, and I'll bet it'll be a lot more revealing (and intelligent as well!).

walt, yeah but they have to structure the format themselves, the notion of a "conversation" between the two could be downright embarrassing. Debates need structure so there will have to be a moderator of some kind, just not a questioner.

I'm with everyone else here.  I think it likely that Obama would all but assassinate McCain in such forums and do it with a smile.

Also, if Obama is truly all about a new kind of political discourse focussed on the substantive issues of the day and stripped of all the gamesmanship, negativity, and spin, how would it look for him to decline an opportunity for substantive debate in order to consolidate advantages that have nothing to do with substance and everything to do with gamesmanship and spin?

blackton,

No moderator would presumably just mean no questioners other than the candidates themselves.  I do presume that there would be rules, and someone external to enforce those rules.  

Why not Lincoln-Douglas?  They have to hash out the affirmative statements ahead of time, and this might be a little tricky.  I don't see McCain lining up to debate the topic "Health care cost containment should take priority over extending health insurance to America's 40 million uninsured men, women, and children" even though this is precisely what he has proposed.

See the wikipedia page on LD debate for an outline of the format.

en.wikipedia.org/.../Lincoln-Douglas_debate

Also, Noam, talk about log-rolling.  You say Alex Massie has some good thoughts on the subject, then I click on the Massie link, and here he's quoting you in this post!  

You guys are too cynical by half.  If McCain and Obama can replace the dog-and-pony shows that have gone by the name "debate" in past elections with a substantive discussion, good on 'em!  I honestly don't care what tactical advantages such a proposal might have for McCain, and I don't even care if tactics forms the basis for him floating the proposal.  It's a good proposal, and I'm willing to credit McCain for it.  Whether they can pull it off remains to be seen, but that fact has little bearing on the value of the proposal itself.

I think I understand better now why Rove types and the ridiculous right are so contemptuous of liberal Democrats (and liberals in general). Obama's outgunning McCain in debates, however many, won't be of much help to him if his superior intellect and sophistication is turned against him in a campaign otherwise driven by a constant stream of anti-intellectual, anti-sophistication, and (*sigh*) racially colored (sic) undertow from sources apart from the official McCain campaign. We (lliberals) always underestimate the sophistication of smear tactics and the stomach the other side has to use them. MSM is going to be awfully busy this summer scooping this dreck by talking - blogging - about it. We'll just blink our eyes in amazement how easy it is to put liberals on the defensive, while the galleries watch with growing excitement.

Patriotism, anyone?

Contra Noam, I like this idea. In the age of Madison Avenue p.r. and shrinking television sound bites, it would be refreshing in the extreme to hold such forums. Democracy in action.

"Why not Lincoln-Douglas?  They have to hash out the affirmative statements ahead of time, and this might be a little tricky."

Aeromonas is confusing or ignoring the real Lincoln-Douglas Debates with the "Lincoln-Douglas" academic style debate practiced in high school and college debating societies.

www.educationworld.com/.../lp304-01.shtml

In the actual Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, the format was that "Each debate had this format: one candidate spoke for an hour, then the other candidate spoke for an hour and a half, and then the first candidate was allowed a half hour "rejoinder." The candidates alternated speaking first."

en.wikipedia.org/.../Lincoln-Douglas_debates_of_1858

Neither of these formats would be appropriate in an Obama-Mccain debate. (Note that the top billing went to the looser of the 1858 Senate election, but the winner of the subsequent presidential election of 1860.)!

Some kind of rules would need to be established: a "moderator" who was not a questioner, to keep thing moving along etc., a "time keeper" and time limits for each question raised by the audience, etc.

I think it would be an interesting experiment at the least, and a great departure from the abysmal media controlled debates we are used to.

Also, heckling should be allowed tho not encouraged.

-

Well, I wasn't confusing them, at all.  I was talking about the formalized LD-style debate practiced in competitions, not the actual Lincoln v Douglas debates in 1858.

If you think that such a format would be inappropriate, fair enough.  But why not tell us why?  I mainly put this forward as an example of how debate can be reigned in without resort to a moderator/questioner.  

Still, it seems to me that what you'd want is some format where the two candidates agree ahead of time on the topics for debate, and these topics would be addressed one at a time on a schedule, with a finite time allotment for each candidate to make his points and cross-examine his opponent.  Whatever you want to call it, that's pretty much LD-style debate.

In Canada we have a healthy history of "free for all" political debates among party leaders. (These days, at least four ....) There is moderation, but the leaders can also go at each other.  The most memorable moment was in 1984, when in one single exchange, the Conservative Leader, Brian Mulroney, dealt such a massive unscripted blow to the Liberal leader that he never recovered ... Mulroney went from 5 points behind to, within six weeks, win the largest parliamentary majority in Canadian history.  One single exchange.  

Not that this is going to happen, but that it could.  And as has been mentioned above, what's great is that McCain will not be able to use Rovian code words in a debate such as this without being caught.

It seems to me that the advantage of this kind of debate is that McCain doesn't get to let other people do his dirty work for him, in the same way that Hillary was lucky to have George Stuffingenvelopes fire off the stupidest questions so far this election cycle. If he lobs dirt bombs, they've got his fingerprints on them. And I'm inclined to believe that that will have a deterrent force.

The other advantage is that these events -- as I understand them -- have the potential to recreate the large, enthusiastic "revival meeting" atmosphere that Obama enjoys and does well in. I'm not sure these will play to McCain's strength.

It's good for the country AND it's good for Obama.  Here's why.  Obama still has a stature gap with McCain.  McCain and his people repeatedly call Obama a novice who barely has the right to be on the national stage.  Everytime they share a stage, the gap decreases and becomes about issues, not gravitas.

On top of that, the fewer the number of debates, the more they are high stakes dramas, reviewed for theatre instead of substance.  By making debates more routine and lower stakes, there is a greater likelihood that the campaign will be about issues.

Next, the press is bound to speculate all summer about bullcrap like Ayers and the flag.  The sooner the general election campaign turns to issues, and not bullcrap, the better for Obama.

Finally, we are conditioned to a world where it is to Obama's advantage to have the campaign be about style and charisma rather than issues.  That was true in the race against Hillary, but it won't be in the race against McCain.

Obama is very good about knowing whether a particular forum or venue will work to his advantage;  I think he knows this is a great opportunity for him.

I'd certainly like to see this sort of debate.

But let's keep in mind.  Obama's not such a great debater and McCain's not such a bad one.  

The notion that Obama's oratory will flourish and that he'll be sharp on his feet while McCain will reveal himself to be a doddering old man is a bit misguided.  

Obama's great at speech-making.  At debating?  He's not bad but he's often disappointing. McCain's OK - and he's sometimes charming.  And that's important because debates are about expectations.   The 'winner' of any debate is the one who exceeds expectations and so Obama has more to lose than McCain here.

Still, I'd like to see it.  

jlr2006 said:

"Obama has shown, in debates with Clinton, that there's no there there.  In the last debate they held, just the two of them, he actually looked bad.  Against Hillary The Ice Queen Clinton.  It takes some doing to look bad against her."

That is why she had her old friend, and another accomplice help her gang up on Obama for the 1st hour about issues that most people have heard recycled a dozen times.

"Obama does best in front of uncritical, adoring audiences, or getting softball pitches from an adoring old lib like Moyers."

So does everyone else, duh! The first thing that comes to mind was Hillary's interview on Hardball: looked a lot more like "softball" to me. www.youtube.com/watch

The second thing that comes to mind is Obama's interview on Hardball: more along the line of tough questions I expect to see, and Obama had some really great answers. www.youtube.com/watch

"Obama’s performances of the past month or so have been anything but luminous, so I would understand if he's afraid of some real competition for the crowd's affections."

What I don't understand is why you would understand if he is afraid to debate McCain in the face of recent news that he is anxious to debate McCain?

In my earlier comment I had Bill Moyers serving up soft squishies instead of hard questions to Barack Obama.   My error:  it was Jeremiah Wright being interviewed.    

But the theme of the mainstream media being oh so gentle on Obama, while trashing their former love, Hillary, stands.

JLR: "the theme of the mainstream media being oh so gentle on Obama, while trashing their former love, Hillary, stands."  Is that what you call the last debate?

You've long since given up being a journalist, so strategize away ....

First Read has some thoughts about why Obama might agree to those joint forums McCain has proposed, the

jlr2006 said:

"But the theme of the mainstream media being oh so gentle on Obama, while trashing their former love, Hillary, stands."

ROFLMAO.

See Icarusr re: PA debate...

In light of your theme, can you please explain Hillary's interview on Slow Pitch Squish Ball with Chris Matthews?

In light of your theme, can you explain why I, and everyone I know, thought Obama took the Ohio debate hands down, yet every commentator and analyst I could find said she won? Especially after starting off the debate whining about how she always has to go first? And whining about the Saturday Night Live skit?

In light of your theme, can you explain why sniper-gate barely registered in the national media, and everyone still brings up bitter-gate?

A fair amount of debate is kicking up over Obama's decision to accept McCain's offer of "unmoderated debates" between the two in the months leading up to the election. Noam Scheiber, writing in The New Republic's "The Stump", thinks this bodes ill for

For those who are interested, here's a link to the portion of my recent Bloggingheads appearance