I want to sign a petition to demand better Presidential debates

I wish I had the tech skills to set one up, maybe linked to facebook.


The existing Presidential debate format is like a pillow fight.  We might as well tune in to watch alternating candidate TV commercials.  The candidates handlers insure that the format shields their candidates from questions that might actually reveal the vacuity of their rhetoric.  If they do get a potentially difficult question they just talk about something else and the media moderator's let them get away with it. 


The process produces no information beyond the carefully scripted sound bites from each campaign.  The partisans at both ends of the political spectrum get reassured, the voters in the middle get nothing - we end up judging candidates on how they look, or act, not the cogency of their ideas.    Nixon was judged to have "lost" the 1960 debate with Kennedy because he had a bad make-up job.  George Bush Jr. was judged to have won in 2000 because Al Gore was stiff and boring, and Mr Bush exceeded (silly) media expectations by not being completely incompetent at stringing together sentences.


We should set up ground rules about questions (no trick questions, no questions assuming unproven facts) and then let each candidate's campaign question the other candidate(s), with the right to follow up questions where the answer is evasive.  Have an independent panel of fact checkers to keep them honest.  Then we might actually learn something useful as candidates will have to answers about unpalatable truths instead of just telling us what they think we want to hear. 


Candidates won't want to use this format, but if voters won't vote for a candidate who doesn't participate, they'll have to do it.


If there is some tech person out there who knows how to set up a petition and start it circulating I would sign it in an instant and send it to everyone I know.