Debate Format From the Fox/Google debate

I really liked last Thursday's debate format.  The idea to use clips of the candidates speaking what they believe served to provide us a window into who the candidates are and prevent the candidates from equivocating or even lying.  Also, it served to help frame the questions and even demonstrate how the candidates’ views have evolved over time.  I think this idea stemmed from the debate between Romney and Obama back in 2013 elections.  The moderator fact checking the candidates, while seemingly against tradition before, now seems like one of the best ideas due to our country's lack of attention spans. 

It serves the country well to get things fact checked right on the spot or even to prevent the need for fact checking with sound and video clips as most people in my opinion will not bother to check what their favored candidate has said.  Heck, I doubt many people watch the post-debate interviews.  Mind you, those post-debate interviews and the focus groups that followed serve to provide analysis to the thoughts and attitudes of the American people and for candidates to expand on what they want to say (more details on policy and positions) and to correct any errors they thought they made.  Also, the post-debate analysis with the political analysts also serves to aid people in understanding the economic, domestic, and international effects of what these candidates want to do when they get into the white house. 

Even having three debate moderators serves a purpose.  Each one taking the role of the softball questioner, the hard ball questioner and the intermediate questioner.  And each one will be a different one for each candidate potentially (though the idea of tripping candidates up after a series of softball questions seems like fun too).  Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier even had different sets of questions in case Trump Showed up and of course as we saw in Thursdays debate for when he did not show up.  In this instance the use of the three moderators and their varying levels of questioning aids to through a candidate on and off guard with respect to the level of difficulty for each question enabling people to see how a candidate deals with this form of pressure.  

Final Thought:  I hope this format carries over into the actual Presidential debates later on this year and that the media becomes more robust with respect to fact checking and the use of the candidates own words to clarify the candidates’ views and narrow their ability to answer the question to addressing the question directly rather than dodging.  But this remains to be seen.   I still want a double blind debate though where we do not know who is answering the question till the end, but I doubt that will come to pass anytime soon.  Cheers to hopefully a more interesting and "accountable to their own words and actions" debate format.