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Next time, let’s ditch
staged debates in favor
of candid conversation
between candidates

Political debates -- like those prepos- terous presidential confrontations we endured a few weeks ago --are anti-freedom. They are rhetorical structures that enforce restraint and encourage deceit.

During the next election, let us add a different sort of encounter between candidates -- a plain and direct "conversation."

The case is axiomatic: There is no better way to know the character of a man than to watch him talk with his adversary.

Here's how we should do it before the next election:

Create a TV-studio black set with a Charlie Rose table -- no distracting audience or symbolic backdrops -- sit the candidates down, and have them look each other in the eye and ask questions. And give answers. For hours. No moderator to get in the way, no other interviewer. The candidates must interview each other.

Like the pool game in "The Hustler," make the conversation open-ended, a continuing contest of wills through language.

There should be round after round, with breaks in between so the candidates may rest and consult their advisers. Then they return to the table.

Each round should last no longer than two hours. The men talk until one calls for a timeout, which can run to 20 minutes. Cut to commercials and pundit analysis. Then the candidates return and keep returning to the table to ask and answer questions until one of them quits.

The whole thing could take anywhere from 6 hours to 48, right up until the polls open. Imagine the audience. The world would be riveted to their TVs and radios.

This is such a sensible proposal that Ted Koppel brought it up on "Nightline" the week before the election. He asked a Republican spokesman, "Why we don't just sit the candidates down for a few hours and have the moderator do nothing more than keep time?"

The spokesman, predictably, rebuffed the idea. But the candidates themselves might not. How often during those three televised debates did we see each man narrow his gaze and lean toward the other, clearly tempted to break the rules and rebuke his opponent? They both wanted to keep talking.

Next time, we should let them. The nation needs it.

Much of what we saw in the debates was "canned," a series of small speeches memorized and rehearsed for insertion at the appropriate time, sometimes not even in answer to a question.

What we see now is also scripted. But why? What's wrong with this process? We live in the age of electronic media and we keep the two most important people in the world from talking?

From having an adult conversation?

All they do now is yell at each other over podiums hundreds of miles apart.

This is civilized? This is a modern method for settling issues?

Why run all over the country trying to convince everyone else that you're a worthy candidate for president of the United States when you can unleash your arguments and explanations directly at that face across the table?

And then, at last, we might get some forthright revelations about personal habits, political and legislative decisions, philosophies and beliefs. There would even be time for the intriguing but suppressed issues like the drug war, the repeal of income tax, global warming.

During the just-ended presidential campaign, all we had were truncated charges and countercharges, accusations of lying and too much silence.

The only thing that might bring out the truth is a good, long conversation.

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