Newstradamus

When it comes to televised debates, I’d much rather read a summary of the high (or low) points, since the full programs are a snooze. First of all, they’re not really “debates,” but a string of questions offered by a moderator to candidates individually. The White House hopefuls usually reply with stump boilerplate “talking points,” while weary reporters wait to pounce at any misstep or any perceived insult.

And as the silly season nears its “official” kickoff in few weeks at the Iowa caucuses, it seems as if the moderators’ questions are getting more lame, such as the trend toward such questions as “Raise your hand if you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution."

This week’s Republican and Democratic debates in Iowa sponsored by a paper I used to work for, the Des Moines Register, had the rare distinction of being both stultifying boring and unintentionally funny. On Wednesday, the schoolmarmish moderator, Register editor Carolyn Washburn, tried to keep the unruly GOP candidates in line, but they refused to play her hand’s-up game about whether they believe "global climate change is a serious threat and caused by human activity." Fred Thompson said, “I'm not doing hand shows today.” Then Alan Keyes (where did he come from?) hijacked the show for a while, leading the editor to mutter an audible “Sheesh!”

With the Democrats on Thursday, she announced up front that she didn’t want anybody to talk about the war in Iraq. Wrote the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, “This created a scene reminiscent of the ‘Fawlty Towers’ episode in which innkeeper Basil Fawlty, trying not to offend his German guests by mentioning the war, keeps blurting out war references inadvertently: ‘So, that's two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering, and four Colditz salads.’”

According Susan Milligan of the Boston Globe, Washburn had been boning up for nearly a year to be ready for these debates, and Milligan quotes the Register's longtime political reporter, Dave Yepsen, as warning the candidates to expect a grilling. "She asks tough questions and pointed questions,'' he said. "She doesn't mess around."

Right . . . .