There are definitely people who have spent orders of magnitude more time thinking about the topic of debate than myself; but I daresay the majority of folk have thought about it less than me. From my particular vantage point and life-experience, it seems clear that publicly arguing about a topic is a really poor way of raising the level of discourse and understanding on that topic. Imagine if, in science, instead of papers and conferences we had public debates, where scientists were expected to engage in a ceaseless half-thought out back-and-forth superficial point-scrabbling style policy debate. It would be a nightmare - I mean, I hope that's obvious. For some reason this is a preferred mode of political dialogue.

Almost no one changes their mind in elections; Almost everything that goes on in elections is

(1) motivating people who have already made up their mind to go vote or

(2) theater to convince the least-attentive least-well-informed voters.

Raising the level of discourse of the theater is probably not going to have a significant effect; the theater is targeted at the people least interested in how much sense things make.

Source: I worked for the DNC during the 2012 cycle.

The first questions to ask are "why isn't this being done already?" and "has anyone tried doing this already?" and "if yes, what happened?"

I'm not sure it would lead to better politicians as much as would it lead to politicians adapting their bullshit skills to better fit the new interview set up.

Many of the bullshit explanations politicians give are perceived as perfectly acceptable to the wider public.

MODERATOR: Should gay marriage be legal?

POLITICIAN: Nope.

MODERATOR: Why not?

POLITICIAN: It goes against the teachings of my religion. It says in passage X:YZ of the Bible that homosexuality is a sin. I refuse to go against the command of God in my time in office.

That answer is fine to many, ma... (read more)

We would need better informed and more intelligent voters for this to have much of an impact, and even then I doubt it would matter because high IQ, well informed voters already have a very good idea of what candidates will do when elected.

I would much rather have candidates take IQ and general knowledge tests than participate in honest debates. And in the near future what I would like to see is a DNA analysis of Presidential candidates to identify those with genes predisposing them to being sociopaths.

First consider the reasons why the primary debates are not like that, despite the arguments presented in the clip that it would both make for a great TV show and make the candidates more prepared for the US presidential election debates. Win-win, right? Not quite.

Here's a comparison case, the general public has had far greater access to statistics and other data relevant to elections since the advent of the internet, has there been any corresponding change in behaviour?*

*This isn't rhetorical, I genuinely don't know.

If the people in power had the desire to enforce honesty and and goodwill in politics the problem would be solved already.

Presidential candidate interview setup that would have more of an impact:

Candidates present their program to a panel of experts (mostly economists, some foreign policy experts). The experts are then asked to give a probability of various future events (unemployment goes up/down, enter a new war, etc.) in 1, 2, 4, 10 years after the election, conditional on either candidate being elected. Some of the question are "standard", but some come from a poll of the public (or more exactly of people watching the show). Then after the election, the same experts are brought back and their past predictions are evaluated. The worst performers aren't invited back for the next pre-election show.

Basically, their news network is trying to change the way political debates work by having the moderator force the candidates to answer the questions that are asked of them, not interrupt each other, justify arguments that are based on obvious falsehoods etc.

This can only work if the moderator is not sufficiently mind-killed. I believe a moderator tried to do this in a debate for the last election, except the "obvious falsehood" turned out to actually be true.

This might just be high levels of baseline cynicism, but I don't really see changing the particular debate tactics used to change much of anything.

By the time it gets to televised debates, the choices have already been narrowed down to Blue policy vs Red policy (with a small change in the relevant party's policy, based on the individual candidates). It's still a debate between two people who are disproportionately wealthy, educated (particularly in law), and well-connected. The vast majority of the vetting goes on in local politics, finding those who are a... (read more)

For many questions the correct answer would be: "This is a difficult question which no easy answer, I would have to spent a few hours thinking about the issue and then come back with an answer that doesn't fit into the 1 minute time slot that the debate gives me to address the point."

I don't think that deep and meaningful debate happens in a hour of TV. It's the job of journalists to ask candidates and their parties questions on issues. If a New York Times reporter asks for an on-the-record answer and doesn't get one in a day he should simply wr... (read more)