Reporter John Schwartz's occasionally attempts humorous pieces for the paper, as in Sunday Week In Review, "Whom to [1]Trust With a Thumb on the Buzzer [1]." Schwartz took an amusing premise and rode it into the ground, while along the way giving his liberal view on the flag-pin controversy involving Barack Obama's explanation for his refusal (until recently, anyway) to wear a flag pin on his lapel.
Maybe the problem is that the debates, for all the interest, aren't telling us much. Here's a modest proposal: change the format to game shows.
"But that would cheapen political discourse!" you might exclaim. Really? More, than say, hammering a candidate over whether he should be wearing a flag pin? All I'm saying is give Alex Trebek a chance. Why wait until the candidates are actually in office to see if they have a steady thumb on the button?
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Game shows, we know, test general knowledge, the ability to think on one's feet and other qualities we look for in our leaders. What have the current round of debates tested, aside from the candidates' ability to mold a question into an opportunity to deliver the same memorized talking points?
Quiz shows and game shows should not completely replace full-on debates, Professor Thompson said, because the thing that makes the shows so satisfying - the notion that questions have simple answers - leaves out a big part of today's world. "Most of the questions challenging the country now," he said, are "not the kind of questions you can answer that quickly." You can't scrawl the most effective exit strategy from Iraq on a screen in the Final Jeopardy round.
In 2005 Schwartz mocked Bush's Social Security reform ideas, calling reform proponents "out of their gourds [2]."
"As a reader of the Mutual Funds Report, you may well know that the Bush administration is making Social Security reform a cornerstone of domestic policy. After all, you're most likely an investor - someone who knows a thing or two about long-term goals and risk and the importance of prudent financial management. Which is why you may think that proponents of the new system are out of their gourds."