Critic: Fewer Debaters Equals More Debate

Ron Paul's hyperactive legions didn't like it when I praised the difficult-but-necessary decision to limit participation in presidential debates, but the results speak for themselves.

The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg says the Republican and Democratic debates on ABC Saturday night were "the best, or best-produced, such televised events of the campaign so far." Why? Among other reasons, he says, because the participants "had been winnowed down to a manageable number."

"The candidates didn't have to struggle quite as hard just to get a word in," Hertzberg writes. "These, finally, were debates in which there could be some actual debate."

Granted, ABC, by setting benchmarks for inclusion, provoked less controversy than Fox, which seemed to rely on its own horse sense about which candidates are serious contenders. But, as I said, those sorts of editorial judgments were already present in the debates in the form of favoritism of clock-distribution.

Alessandra Stanley, by the way, disagrees about the quality of Saturday's debates. She blames moderator Charles Gibson: "[B]y insisting that he would stay out of the fray, he allowed himself to look a little like a witness called in to testify before a Senate hearing, where committee member pontificate at length while the witness looks on gravely, hoping to not look bored or foolish on camera."