“Presidential debates should be a little more like [Bravo reality TV show] Project Runway,” argues Time TV blogger James Poniewozik,” in that:
[T]he best way to test someone’s ability to do a job is to get them to do it, not to talk about it. They’re about applying knowledge, not regurgitating it. Whereas a Presidential debate is like a job interview—a tepid one, with time-delimited answers—an episode of Project Runway is like a job tryout…
And so, he continues, the debate moderators should “focus more on hypothetical scenario-playing… like how [the candidates] would handle, say, a military conflict between China and Taiwan.” Because:
[S]houldn’t Jim Lehrer be able to elicit at least as much information about a candidate’s future job performance as Heidi Klum?
Fierce!
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.