Political leaders debate in public, how to moderate?

[CaptainPanic]

Last night, I watched the debate of the political leaders of the different fractions in the EU parliament (essentially something like a presidential debate, be warned, it's 1h 30min long).

 

The debate was mostly quite interesting, and rather polite, but as you might expect, there was a moment where the politicians kept interrupting and disrupting each other to the point where I thought that it was trolling. The part at 1 hour 11 min is in my opinion the worst, where the moderators lost control completely for a brief moment.

 

I had an idea how to improve these kinds of debates, where all participants wish to maximize the attention on themselves, and to respond to everything the others say. The idea is very simple. Connect their microphones to a chess clock. They all have the same time to speak, when time runs out, they can no longer debate on the remaining points. Obviously, only one person can speak at one time, and moderators will choose who that is, similar to the debate I linked to. They are all allowed to respond to each other as often as they like.

 

What do you all think? Would such an idea work? How would this be abused by the politicians who are obviously smart debaters?

 

(Btw, I googled the idea, and a huge number of hits say that I am not the first to have this idea...)

[imatfaal]

Surely the electric cattle prod is the best answer.

 

I am not a fan of the staged debate so my answers are slightly jaundiced. You say that google shows you are not the first to have this idea - I am pretty sure you can find mention of hour-glasses/sand-clocks being used to time debators speech-time in classical Greece and Rome. And to be honest I think that (like many questions) the beginning of the answer is to be found there; you have come up against the age old battle between honesty vs sophistry, plain-speaking vs rhetoric, communication vs spin. In a staged debate, the orator with the best grasp of rhetoric and how to appeal to a crowd will tend to outscore the diligent honest plodder. Any artificial constraints tend to favour the more accomplished speaker - the expert will always adapt quicker to new challenges than the amateur.

 

Timing might help - the debate between Bill Nye and some Australian Flat-Earth Loon was well timed and went off quite well; it is a bit shameful but I think Bill and Ken actually had more respect and dignity than most of our professional politicians and so-called statesmen. You need to be brutal in the time keeping; hit a mic switch, turn off the spot light, and if necessary water-canon (thats a priest with a water pistol).

 

I also like the idea of pre-booked facts - if you wanna rely on a source to make your point then you have to pre-arrange for the back up and details of that source to be made available to your opponent and to the impartial chair in advance. The Chair will have the duty when a statistic or fact is claimed to weigh in with a clarification of the veracity; ie "that fact is taken from a Cochrane Review of over 100 peer reviewed papers and can be accepted" or "that statistics came of the back of a box of CocoPops and is not to be relied upon".

 

Interruption should be dealt with in the same brutal manner as over-running time; mics should be off when not speaking, any murmur from a non-speaker should cause a green gel to be put over the spotlight (no one looks good in a green spot), and the moderator should literally talk over any any interruption "you're behaving like a child, you have been told to be quiet so stop showing off and keep quiet!"