The Debate We Need

Many have questioned whether Sarah Palin's experience has adequately prepared her to be Vice President to a 72-year-old President—just as many voters have questioned whether Barack Obama has enough experience to become president. I think this is the wrong question. In the modern era, every president has had to adapt to unanticipated challenges to such an extent that experience is a poor criterion for readiness. It is high-level problem solving that defines the quality of a presidency.

The debates that we need, both tonight during the Vice Presidential debates and in the future presidential debates, would focus on the reasoning processes of the participants. That would reduce the ability of the candidates to fall back on memorized sound bytes and campaign rhetoric. An excellent example from moderator Jim Lehrer was, "W hat priorities would you adjust, as president, Senator McCain, because of the -- because of the financial bailout cost?"

He asked this question of both candidates and in a couple different ways, and neither candidate addressed it adequately. Unfortunately, he did not have enough of these process style questions to force the candidates to react to them, which they would be forced into if that were a major mode of questioning.

Here are some questions I would like to hear asked of all four candidates:

"Can you explain specifically how your tax policy is superior to your opponent's as tool for job creation?"

"Terrorist networks such as al Qaeda are not essentially tied to any one nation. How does that change the use of military force to combat them? How is this similar to or different from traditional warfare?"

"Senator McCain often complains that he was taken out of context in stating that he was fine with the United States staying in Iraq for a hundred years. He was saying we could stay there a hundred years if our soldiers were no longer suffering casualties. How long should we stay if our soldiers continue to suffer casualties?"

"General Petraeus has said he would not use the victory in Iraq, and that our progress there is fragile. We could be in a mere lull in the violence. What is the worst situation in Iraq you would accept and still remove our combat forces?"

"Allowing that continued exploration for oil will probably be a part of the United State's energy policy for the foreseeable future. That is, I don't want to hear that drilling has to be part of our energy policy. Can you explain one good reason to avoid more oil drilling in the United States?"

You could probably generate a dozen or more questions of your own that would tap this level of thought. Problem solving questions are excellent discriminators in any job interview. However, I do not expect to see many problem solving questions tonight. Probably the best we can hope for is follow-up questions that try to get deeper level of specificity than the pat answers the candidates will have memorized.

As viewers, we can still look for any example of real problem solving in the answers. I expect we will see some from Joe Biden. With Palin it will be interesting to see if she can respond to deeper probing without sounding like a job applicant stringing catch phrases and important sounding words together in a valiant attempt to say something the interviewer can interpret as a correct answer.