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Monday, January 23, 2012

I'd watch a debate every night if they'd let me

I know it's fun to complain about the fact that tonight's GOP debate number elevety ka-billion and three feels excessive. But it's not the number of debates alone that makes it that way. What voters are actually fatigued over is the length of the campaign and the repetition of canned speeches, deceptive ads, and stupid lazy press narratives that go with that.

But the debates themselves actually make for the best opportunities for one or two revealing moments of spontaneity to break through all that scripted crap. Granted, the tight ground rules and poorly managed moderation by our nation's celebrity journalists mean such moments are few and far between. Often the best we can hope to see is an irrelevant gaffe, sighs, or "oops!" But every now and then an actual thing happens during the debates. And that's more than we can say for most campaign events.

If the campaign season were shorter, less expensive, and less stupid it could still contain a debate every few days and we'd be just as well off.

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