THE DEBATE DELUSION.

In the aftermath of the only major party forum featuring the vice-presidential candidates, the usual suspects raise the usual objections to the supposed moderators.  Case in point:  Andrew Stiles and Thaleigha Rampersad for Washington's Free Beacon:  "Girl Boss, Interrupting: CBS Moderators Tarnish VP Debate With Toxic Female Energy."  Yes, legacy network people are often Democrat operatives with bylines, and yes, the coastal cosmopolitans are poisoned with soy and weak coffee.

The second biggest takeaway was the biased, female moderating. CBS News anchors Margaret Brennan, 44, and Norah O'Donnell, 50, bombarded Vance (but not Walz) with what many described as "toxic female energy."

They employed several common tactics from the toxic "girl boss" playbook: arbitrarily changing the rules, blatantly mischaracterizing a man's remarks, and pretending to know what they're talking about. Brennan and O'Donnell repeatedly pestered Vance to defend something another man (Donald Trump) said while neglecting to ask Walz about his female running mate Kamala Harris and the radical policy positions she endorsed in 2019 (but claims to no longer support).

The immigration portion of the debate was particularly fraught. Brennan disregarded the agreed-upon terms of the debate by attempting to fact-check Vance's comments about migrants in Springfield, Ohio. The moderators had insisted at the outset that it wasn't their role to fact-check the candidates.

In any event, Brennan's so-called facts were egregiously misleading, and when Vance tried to correct the record, the moderators muted his microphone. (Avoidance is another well-known female tactic.) "Margaret," Vance said, calmly. "The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check, and since you're fact-checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on."

That's cathartic, and it might be mostly correct.  It's not the most serious flaw with these moderated debates.  Hot Air's Captain Ed Morrissey correctly caught that.

Well, we've gone through another election cycle, and we have once again experienced the Lucy-and-the-football phenomenon in media-platformed debates. Put aside the fact that the structure of these debates is entirely absurd; voters will not get anything of substance in a two-minute response to, "What's your economic plan?" Nor will one-minute rebuttals provide any more clarity to the slogan-and-quip-line answer to those questions, even when the moderators play it straight.

But the moderators are not playing it straight, even if they're asking what seem like reasonable questions.  First, they frame a Complex Proposition as a long-winded speech, sometimes introduced with "some people say" or "experts say" and then expect that response in a minute or two.  Second, the very questions are often question-begging.  I would be delighted if a nominee responded to "What is your plan to ..." with "I cannot find that line in the Federal Constitution that authorizes ..."  I'm enough of a realist to recognize that the Oktoberfest Queen is more likely to dance with me than for that exchange to materialize.  And yet, to complete the argument, "What is your plan" favors candidates who think Good Intentions plus Presidential Power Fixes Things, which is to say, it's loading the dice in the favor of somebody who Has A Plan, whether it works or not.

For example, from the recent presidential debate, where Mr Trump dodged a question about his plan to make daycare affordable.  (Mrs Emhoff had all sorts of preferences and subsidies lined up to carry on about.)  The premise is ludicrous.  What we understand as "affordable day care" has always been about the richer woman farming out the child care to a poorer one.  That argument is old, and sometimes (wrongly) attributed to Mother Jones, but whether it is the richer women bidding up the wages of nannies, or the richer women pooling their incomes to establish a Harvard Prep Day Care, there's a labor market at work, and subsidizing the provision of nannies or of day care might augment the work force in those lines of business, but from where are the workers bid away; whilst enlarging tax preferences for child care allow the very richer women bidding up those wages to further bid up those wages.  Alas, I'm even less likely to see any candidate offer that answer, because it takes more than two minutes to answer it, and the ad misericordiam followups are so easy to introduce.

Perhaps, the Captain continues, a return to the Lincoln-Douglas format is better.

It would disincentivize the impulse to load up on zingers and instead bone up on the actual issues. It would also require voters to nominate candidates that can actually speak at length on policy, coherently. This format provides ample opportunity for opponents to "fact check" their rivals and to force them into extemporaneous defense of their policies and records. In short, it would produce a real debate, controlled by the candidates rather than the [Protection Racket Media], and offer a comprehensive look at the candidates and what they offer American voters.

And it would manage to do all of that without network news anchors turning themselves into partisan, leering game-show hosts in a corrupted and cooked edition of Who Wants to Be a Presidentaire?

Would Democrats agree to such a format? Not in this cycle, surely. Their candidate can barely get through two minutes without a visit to the Merriam-Webster Salad Bar, and still hasn't had an adversarial interview from a PRM flack in this cycle. This is advice for the future, given in the present while all of the lessons remain fresh in our minds.

Don't let this happen again four years from now. If you do, you will deserve every consequence you suffer for it, but the country will suffer too -- and that's not acceptable. If we must have televised debates, then let the candidates debate, not bubble-headed news readers with delusions of adequacy.

The choice is yours. Lucy awaits with the football. Feel like trying to kick it again?

Unfortunately, dear reader, the staged-managed press conferences with peacocking moderators pretending there is a short answer to a Serious Question have been my reality for my living memory, and Republican candidates, whether winning or not, have been complaining about moderators playing favorites for at least all of this century.

We're likely to be stuck with the format, though, until somebody seeking national office rejects the phony premise of the Sunday Shows that For Each Challenge There is a Policy.  But how does one successfully rise in politics to be able to seek national office while questioning the permanent government's conceits and mocking their pretensions?