MEMO TO: RNC, Republican candidates, campaign managers
FROM: Rando pixel-stained wretch
cc: All interested readers

Well, we've gone through another election cycle, and we have once again experienced the Lucy-and-the-football phenomenon in media-platformed debates. Put aside the fact that the structure of these debates is entirely absurd; voters will not get anything of substance in a two-minute response to, "What's your economic plan?" Nor will one-minute rebuttals provide any more clarity to the slogan-and-quip-line answer to those questions, even when the moderators play it straight.

But of course, that rarely happens any longer. In fact, with one exception this cycle, media "moderators" turn out to be partisan advocates itching to debate rather than moderate. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash deserve credit for managing to restrain themselves from the "fact checking" exercise in the first presidential debate, but David Muir, Linsey Davis, Norah O'Donnell, and Margaret Brennan thought they belonged on the stage more than the two nominees. Their preening, partisan, and perjurious interventions all ran in the same direction -- to derail your candidate and protect your opponents. 

The most recent debate had rules set against that as a condition of the agreement, which CBS News ignored. And then when your candidate called them out for their perfidy and attempted to correct the record, CBS cut their mics and Brennan smirked about it on camera. When they didn't bald-facedly call your candidates liars while ignoring falsehoods from your opponents, they framed the follow-ups to push Republican candidates away from a direct response during their rebuttal time, while simply allowing the Democrats to directly rebut what your candidates had argued. Brennan and O'Donnell did that all night long on Tuesday.

We don't call this industry the Protection Racket Media for nothing, after all.

However, you have to take some ownership for this sad corruption of this TV-age tradition. You put broadcasters into a position of power and control over your candidates and messages. You kept engaging in this debate format even after the power you handed the Protection Racket Media corrupted them even more thoroughly. You assumed that the humiliation of Candy Crowley in 2012 for her attempt to debate the debaters taught media anchors a lesson. And indeed it did, but not the one you assumed. Now Crowley's innovation has become de rigueur for network anchors anxious for self-promotion and ego inflation, entirely at the expense of your candidates ... and your voters. 

Had enough yet? Or do you have a deep-seated need for further humiliation? If so, you can stop reading, but please keep this memo handy for 2032. You'll need it then even more.

Still with me? Good. Republican candidates and advisers usually believe that debates benefit them because the format and the exposure give their candidates a way to speak directly to voters without Protection Racket Media (PRM) filters. I assume you've figured out by now that this is sheer delusion, thanks to leaving the PRM in charge of these events. The RNC withdrew from the Commission for Presidential Debates over format and control issues, but the commission wasn't the problem. The PRM is the problem. And Republicans have to cut the media out of the debates if American voters are ever going to get any substantive value out of these events in the future.

How would that work? Allow me to propose a simple model that not only removes moderators entirely, but also provides at least the opportunity for significant discussion of substance rather than zinger production.

First off, host the debate jointly with Democrats and invite all media outlets to televise and broadcast it. Only the two candidates will be on stage -- no moderators, no questions from the outside, no lectures or "fact checks" from anyone except the debaters. Microphones will be managed off-stage and only lightly as necessary. The topic(s) of the debate will be agreed upon between the campaigns beforehand -- economy, foreign policy, health care, fiscal matters, innovation, etc. That will likely require more than one debate in a cycle, but traditionally, presidential cycles feature three debates anyway.

The format will be:

• Candidate 1 speaks on the topic set for 30 minutes
• Candidate 2 asks questions of Candidate 1 for 10 minutes
• Candidate 2 speaks on the topic set for 30 minutes
• Candidate 1 asks questions of Candidate 2 for 10 minutes
• Candidate 2 closing remarks - 2 minutes
• Candidate 1 closing remarks - 2 minutes

Total run time would be 95 minutes, give or take -- about the same amount of time the last two debates took. The times could be adjusted a bit, perhaps in allowing 25 minutes for the main presentation by each candidate and 15 minutes for the question period, where real debate could take place. 

What this would produce would be a true debate on real substance. It would disincentivize the impulse to load up on zingers and instead bone up on the actual issues. It would also require voters to nominate candidates that can actually speak at length on policy, coherently. This format provides ample opportunity for opponents to "fact check" their rivals and to force them into extemporaneous defense of their policies and records. In short, it would produce a real debate, controlled by the candidates rather than the PRM, and offer a comprehensive look at the candidates and what they offer American voters. 

And it would manage to do all of that without network news anchors turning themselves into partisan, leering game-show hosts in a corrupted and cooked edition of Who Wants to Be a Presidentaire?

Would Democrats agree to such a format? Not in this cycle, surely. Their candidate can barely get through two minutes without a visit to the Merriam-Webster Salad Bar, and still hasn't had an adversarial interview from a PRM flack in this cycle. This is advice for the future, given in the present while all of the lessons remain fresh in our minds. 

Don't let this happen again four years from now. If you do, you will deserve every consequence you suffer for it, but the country will suffer too -- and that's not acceptable. If we must have televised debates, then let the candidates debate, not bubble-headed news readers with delusions of adequacy. 

The choice is yours. Lucy awaits with the football. Feel like trying to kick it again?

Sincerely yours,

Ed Morrissey
Managing editor
HotAir.com