Will candidates actually debate?

Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

I don’t envy Bob Schieffer tonight.

The veteran CBS journalist is charged with what stymied previous moderators — Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill and Tom Brokaw — turning a joint candidate appearance into what it is supposed to be: a debate.

We have yet to see a presidential debate in the general election, folks. John McCain and Barack Obama twice have talked around each other and over moderators, who have either been constrained by formats or unable (or unwilling) to control the candidates. (The event featuring Joe Biden and some robotic version of a human being named Sarah Palin was — wink, wink — a complete farce and nothing resembling a debate.)

Debating is a lost art, and I am sure Daniel Webster and Henry Clay are wailing as they watch these quadrennially soporific spectacles. Debates also are an unquestionably valuable tool for voters — if they are real debates, that is — because the candidates are forced to show their knowledge, think on their feet and give a glimpse into their characters that no 30-second ad or mail piece or stop-and-chat can provide.

Schieffer will have his hands full — thanks to constraints imposed by the debate commission — trying to help voters decide which John McCain will show up (will it be the maverick, the socialist, the conservative, the reformer, the gift-giver, the angry old man, the honor-suffused hero?) and whether Obama will do more than simply tie his opponent to George W. Bush. (Yes, we know about the fundamentals of the economy nonsense and the 90 percent support by now, Senator.)

It’s a fact of life that nearly every candidate will do everything he or she can to not say anything he or she didn’t plan to say during such debates. I understand their fears of the “gotcha” questions or ex post facto media spin of their unscripted answers. But a debate is, ipso facto, a give and take between two people, an argument, a spirited discussion, a point-counterpoint.

Anyone seen anything like that yet?

Schieffer has signaled that he will try to do more than his predecessors. “By now we’ve all heard their talking points,” he told the Associated Press. “We’ve heard the general outlines of what they are talking about. The time has come to be a little more specific.”

A noble goal. And let’s hope Schieffer doesn’t let the proscribed rules restrain him from pressing the candidates if they start to scroll through their talking points.

And why shouldn’t Schieffer ask really tough, wiggle-room-prohibited questions such as:

“Sen. McCain, don’t you think that your campaign slogan of ‘Country First’ has been shown to be a sham by your choice of Gov. Palin, who most of the public does not think is qualified and whom you met only once before picking her? Isn’t this politics first, Sir?”

Or this: “Sen. Obama, you have presented yourself as a transpartisan candidate, hoping to move politics in a new direction. And yet you seem to have behaved very conventionally in the past few months, changing your position on offshore drilling and public financing of campaigns and then creating a nasty Web video about the Keating Five. Haven’t you succumbed to politics as usual, Sir?”

I’ll wait for those.

Truth be told, I feel Schieffer’s pain. I moderate debates every campaign season, too, including on “Face to Face,” and do everything I can to knock candidates off their memorized talking points and try to get them to engage. It is not easy, but not to try is to shame the profession.

(Shameless Plug Department: After the Obama-McCain appearance tonight, catch George Knapp and me trying to get a real debate going in the most important Nevada race — between Rep. Jon Porter and state Sen. Dina Titus. Unlike the presidential debates, there are no rules. It airs at 10 p.m. on KLAS-TV, Channel 8.)

What voters really have to ask themselves in the end is what it says when candidates won’t debate at all, considering what an essential tool it can be for those trying to make up their minds. The sickening strategy employed by a pair of state Senate candidates, Allison Copening and Shirley Breeden, is illustrative of what ails the body politic: They have told various groups they are too busy meeting and connecting with voters.

But this is transparent nonsense, designed to cover fear but instead exposing it. And — are you listening, Messrs. Webster and Clay? — any candidate who refuses to debate should be consigned to the worst fate any politician can face: defeat at the polls.