In the Era of the Sound Bite, the broadcast debate, the stump speach, and print, TV and talk radio coverage (with the possible exception of Rush Limbaugh's detailed and extended rants), conspire to limit candidate risk on essential issues and deprive voters of information and insight they need to make good, informed decisons. We once had informed and impartial analysts sitting around the set Sunday morning discussing the issues. We once had candidates capable of explaining the source of a problem, what had been tried before and with what positive and negative results, and what should be done next to fix the problem without causing newer and bigger problems. But you can't stuff that into a response concise enough to make it intact into the papers or the evening news.

The more polished the politician, the more practiced he or she is at packaging a political position for the press. The better the package, the closer it is to a well-crafted slogan than a position statement, the more it skirts the downsides, the risks, the real costs, the possible collateral distruction.

Take the recent responses of politicians to the bridge collapse trajedy, our deteriorating infrastructure, and how repairs should be funded. Politicians on the Left quickly and adeptly blamed lack of bridge maintenance funding on the war in Iraq (we have billions to spend on bridges in Iraq and none to spend on our own). The issue that should have been addressed in depth is the diversion of potential infrastructure funds to earmarked projects of questionable benefit to the nation. In all fairness, a soundbite about a new highway being funded while old bridges went unmaintained zipped across our TV screens.  But not only were not all of the dots connected, most were not even identified. How about looking at ALL the earmarks? How about setting better priorities for ALL earmarks? Maybe that new highway was not as important as fixing our bridges. But maybe it was more important that a museum in an influential senator's state. Maybe we should be assessing what each of our people in Congress are doing with their earmarks, and talking to them about their priorities if they are spending their shares on glitz instead of good old everyday infrastructor.

But I digress.

Newt Gingrich says we should be able to see extended weekly debates, debates that are long enough to get to the hard questions (Will you retaliate in kind if Isreal or New York are attacked with nuclear weapons? Do you think the bill for free medical insurance with which we would like to entitle children today will be handed to them to pay when they join the workforce as young adults?  Should we be forcing illegal immigrants who have come here only to work and send money home to their families to become US citizens?) His is a good idea. But only if candidates can be judged on how thoroughly they answered the questions. Giving candidates more time to address an issue could simply result in a more extended and dramatic presentation of their sound bite. A juried debate might work, though. A panel of (key word here) impartial judges could score the candidates on how well they answered the questions put to them, with the score being flashed on the screen, and a winner being declared based on the best average score.

But then again, perhaps the voters don't want to know more. If they knew more, it would be harder for them to vote their hearts instead of their heads.