idway through last night's debate, with Israeli- Palestinian violence as a backdrop, one of the uncommitted voters quizzing Al Gore and George W. Bush asked, ''What would make you the best candidate in office during the Middle East crisis?''
At that moment, you could almost hear journalists all over America groaning about what they would dismiss as a softball question. That's because the town meeting debate format itself has become a topic of heated debate. Proponents say citizens as questioners focus on substantive issues while journalists as inquisitors like to focus on strategy and ''gotcha'' questions. Detractors, many of them media professionals, say the citizens lack the ability to cut through the political platitudes.
''I am not a fan of the town meeting debate format,'' said CNN political analyst Jeff Greenfield in an interview before last night's event. ''My problem with the format is that the inquisitors ask questions that candidates have basically been answering for a year and a half.''
''The people who watch the debates say they like this [citizen] format the best,'' said Thomas Patterson, Bradlee professor of government and the press at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. ''These are a winner with the public.''
Atlantic Monthly editor and political columnist Michael Kelly said that when citizen-driven debates work, ''you can get terrific stuff ... The problem with them is it really is the luck of the draw.''
Last night's debate, which covered a lot of territory but spared the candidates any truly pointed questions, fell somewhere in between.
On CBS, an apparently unimpressed Dan Rather cracked that ''the candidates proved they can indeed walk and talk at the same time.'' Yet CNN analyst William Schneider observed that the citizens ''quite frankly asked the best questions of all.''
Last night's event provided no flashy headlines. But recent political history has featured some memorable debate moments provided by citizen questioners, most notably during the 1992 presidential debate in Richmond when empathetic challenger Bill Clinton connected with the crowd while George Bush looked tellingly at his watch.
In the high-profile 1994 US Senate race between Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney, citizen questioners were widely criticized for unfocused questions that threw the debate off track. After the event, Romney complained that the format ''was one that was holding me back.''
For better or worse, such debates hold the potential for unscripted vignettes. During the 1992 Richmond debate, a man sporting a ponytail grabbed 15 minutes of fame by asking, ''Can we focus on the issues and not the personalities and the mud?'' while trying to get the candidates to seal the deal by crossing their hearts. Eight years later, some journalists still roll their eyes about ''that guy in the ponytail.''
''We go to elaborate means to find a moderator who is neutral ... and you don't have really the assurance these panels are going to be,'' said Michael Barone, senior writer at US News & World Report and contributor to Fox News Channel. ''I think the citizen formats are not superior to journalists in debates.''
Kelly said one of the problems with citizens as questioners is that ''it gives a great and distorting advantage to the candidate who is the [better] thrower of bull. That plays into the Oprah-ization of politics that really is at the expense of substance.'' The flip side is the argument that citizens, far more than journalists, tend to focus more on real pocketbook issues.
''I actually like the regular folks' questions because they tend to ask bottom line-oriented questions that voters understand,'' said Craig Crawford, editor of The Hotline newsletter. ''Reporters focus on process and can't help but ask questions that focus on the machinations of the process.''
The fact that last night's event neither confirmed the worst fears nor validated the greatest expectations of the town meeting format may simply mirror a campaign in which the two politically moderate candidates are scrapping over a small slice of undecided voters in a remarkably close and uninspiring race.
The one question delivered with some bad intent came from a man who asked disapprovingly whether Bush was ''really, really proud'' of the fact that Texas led the nation in executions. But any fireworks were quickly doused when both candidates espoused similar views on the death penalty.
