Are There Too Many Cooks in the Presidential Kitchen?

John Edwards and Hillary Clinton have deservedly received some heat for a recent post-debate conversation that was unbeknownst to them caught on camera. Edwards suggested that the debates needed to be modified so that a "more serious and a smaller group" could take the stage. Senator Clinton agreed readily, even enthusiastically. I actually agree with Edwards' post-incident spin that smaller debates are needed not so candidates will be marginalized but just so each candidate gets more of a chance to speak. That doesn't really sound like what he and Clinton are advocating in the video, however; with their own voices they dismiss some of their competition as not being serious without naming names. I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that Mike Gravel is not a serious candidate; he seems to actually prefer to attack the other candidates/political establishment instead of presenting his own vision. I consider all the other Democratic candidates to be serious ones, however, even though not all are registering very strongly at the polls at the moment. Perhaps the poll numbers will even out a bit now that Clinton's and Edwards' intentions of playing kingmaker have been revealed. I strongly encourage you to watch the video that originally aired on Fox News for yourself.

It would still be nice to see some smaller debates, though -- four at a venue would be pretty good. The big debates do not do a good job of letting the candidates speak in detail, and it is also hard for the viewer to absorb so many different (yet sometimes very similar sounding!) political platforms all at once. Smaller debates could conceivably allow each candidate to express his or her agenda in more depth and also make it easier for the viewers to get to know each candidate. It is quite difficult to decide how to choose which set of candidates should take part in a given smaller debate, however. If the frontrunners participate in the same debate, then clearly the lower tier candidates are being marginalized, but perhaps it is best for the voter to get a better feel for the candidates likely to win the nomination of their party. It doesn't seem like the media which broadcast the debates should decide on their own or based on a few polls who can win a party nomination, though, so I reject the notion of dividing the candidates based on their early popularity. Random distribution of the candidates seems to be the fairest thing to do, but even that could conceivably still lead to the frontrunners all participating in the same debate, which would destroy the credibility of the small debate movement in a hurry. Human selection of the debates is another possibility -- it could be consciously decided that the frontrunners will not all appear on the same stage and that fringe candidates of principle like Kucinich and Gravel will be sent to different debates to enrich the discussion of both, for instance. Unfortunately, no matter how the candidates are distributed, it is probably true that most people who watch the debates at all will watch only one set of candidates duke it out -- the simple fact that people do not have unlimited amounts of time to devote to following the presidential campaign makes it likely that the smaller debates will reduce the exposure of some candidates because many debate viewers will now hear only four candidates speak instead of eight. Because it is so difficult to organize the smaller debates in a fair way, I think that small debates should supplement rather than replace the larger ones.