he problem with televised debates is not the politicians who perform in them but the people who put them on.
Formats are dictated by the ''sponsors,'' be they TV outfits, newspapers, or do-good organizations like the League of Women Voters. The way questions are asked, who picks the questions, who asks the questions are all matters dictated by the planners, and maybe even one or more of the candidates, if they have the clout to force their preference on the organizers by threatening to pull out.
The candidates have to endure the format that is agreed upon beforehand. And most formats are flawed because the organizers have different intentions than the candidates. The politician wants to look and sound good, make his or her points, and try to leave the opposition on the defensive.
But the sponsors want to get attention, credit or a reputation for clout for their organization. TV outfits want their anchorperson or correspondent to be moderator or a panelist. Newspapers have the same interest in promoting their particular personality. So formats vary widely, and we've seen that in the three different debates put on by the six GOP presidential candidates.
The best format of the three was the one from Iowa Monday night, with NBC's Tom Brokaw and a local Iowa broadcaster roamed a lower stage. As strolling moderators, they shared the questioning duties from a platform lower than the raised dais that held the six contenders. There was a complex rotation for questions, candidates got to question each other, always a potentially entertaining or illuminating occasion.
But any time you have six candidates, the format becomes tedious. Even with 90 minutes, there wasn't enough substance dragged out of Texas Governor George W. Bush and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the only Republicans with any shot at the nomination. Since TV debates are the forums in which most voters get to compare candidates, there should be more of them, with television networks and local stations blackjacked into providing more free time.
The most exciting televised debate I ever covered was the 1983 face-off between Wilson Goode and Frank Rizzo for mayor in Philadelphia. Goode, a black sharecropper's son with two degrees and an icy command of the facts and figures of city spending, went on to defeat Rizzo, a two-fisted former police chief nicknamed ''The Cisco Kid'' for his habit of wearing twin pearl-handled pistols in his days as a knuckle-busting cop.
What was exciting was this: The live broadcast was first interrupted by a female protester denouncing the exclusion of the local fringe candidate, representing Bolsheviks United to Defeat the Running Dogs of Capitalism, or something like that. After she was yanked off the set of the sponsoring TV station, one of her comrades, a man, jumped up and continued shouting in the same vein. This was too much for the burly take-charge cop. Lurching around to the front of his podium, the 62-year-old Rizzo collared the miscreant right in front of the camera. As they tussled, Rizzo's head kept jerking back toward the podium. His microphone and earpiece were wired to it, and he kept grimacing as his head was jerked back. Through it all, Goode, a buttoned-down, middle-management type, stood dumbfounded. When help arrived, the protester was dragged off, and Rizzo returned to his place and resumed his spiel with aplomb: ''As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted.'' Rizzo didn't win the election, but he won the night.
The best format I've covered for a presidential debate was in New York City in 1984, when Gabe Pressman, the savvy king of New York TV people, moderated a tight contest involving Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson the Sunday before the crucial New York primary.
Gabe sat on one side of a small square table, no bigger than a card table, with Mondale, Hart, and Jackson, cheek by jowl, nothing between them but microphones and glasses of water. Sitting that close, there's nowhere to hide. The key, in addition to proximity, is to have a strong-willed, well-prepared moderator, who can enforce disclipline and time limits.
Panels of journalists are a lousy idea for debates. They get in the way, with clumsy questions. No one's ever sure about how tough to be, how aggressively to follow up. Pressman was the perfect choice - a tough questioner who knew when to retreat and let the candidates roll.
We've been generally well-served by the TV debates in Massachusetts campaigns. The frequent clashes between Senator John Kerry and former Governor Bill Weld in the campaign in which Kerry held his seat were models for serious intellectual engagement by two experienced, top-flight politician-lawyers. That was a heavyweight bout that went on for nine or 10 debates, more than enough for any reasonably attentive voter to take the measure of the men and their intentions.
For anyone planning a presidential debate hereabouts, I'd suggest ditching the usual journalist panel, get the contestants around the smallest possible table, and use just one moderator with a reputation for being tough but fair. Then let 'er rip.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
