Presidential debates are largely boring, consisting of a lot of carefully coiffed men spouting painstakingly crafted, carefully rehearsed answers to plodding questions.
Normally, the debates are only watchable in the same way Nascar is, in the promise that if you keep with it long enough you’ll get to see someone make an error that results in catastrophe – but here are some ideas that might make things more interesting.
Ambush the candidates
Instead of carefully scheduling the debates, allowing candidates plenty of time to prepare, lure them to the venue under false pretenses with the promise of a free tanning session and then spring the whole thing on them when they arrive. Not only will the discourse be more spontaneous, we’ll also get to see the candidates unprepared to appear on television, and maybe even find out if there’s actually a human man hiding inside that cloud of hairspray and bronzer called Donald Trump.
Get the crowd involved
Debate audiences are instructed to behave themselves with a level of decorum that few Republican candidates so far have proven themselves capable of, so why not match the event to the candidates and make it as raucous and gnarly as possible? Pack the auditorium with passionate liberals armed with air horns and silly string canisters, set the lights to strobe, maybe set a mixture of wild dogs and chickens loose backstage. Imagine watching Donald Trump call a dead chicken hanging limply from the jaws of a hound “a loser” and tell me this isn’t a great idea.
Elimination round
With 10 candidates on deck for Thursday’s main event and an additional seven participating in a sort of warm-up show, there’s a real need to thin the herd. Let’s make each participant take the same citizenship test that immigrants seeking naturalization have to take, and eliminate anyone who scores lower than 75%.
Raise the stakes
How about instituting a sliding scale of financial penalties that the candidates must adhere to throughout the debate? Give a meandering non-answer to a straightforward question, have $500,000 deducted from your campaign war chest. Use your allotted time to offer an ad hominem attack against a competitor? Lose $700,000. Resort to repeating the same obvious sound bite more than once throughout the debate, give up $900,000 for each utterance. All fines to be donated to Planned Parenthood and climate change research.
Bonus round
Candidates are divided into teams of two and given everything they need to construct a large wooden enclosure, but no instructions on how to do so. The first team to get their structure up and successfully trap those previously mentioned wild dogs within it are rewarded with the ability to veto one question they don’t want to answer, while candidates who fail to construct a viable structure must hold one of the dogs in their arms throughout the rest of the debate.
Chris Christie is ‘America’s player’
Throughout the entire debate, and unknown to his fellow candidates, the New Jersey governor wears an earpiece and is forced to speak lines provided by Twitter users following along at home. If Christie sticks to the lines he’s being fed throughout the entire debate without straying, the media must refrain from commenting on his weight throughout the remainder for his campaign, and also has to comply whenever Christie instructs them to sit down and shut up.
Treat the debate like an interview
Ask the candidates the sort of questions Americans applying for minimum wage or service industry jobs typically hear and see how they come off. Can Jeb Bush honestly address his biggest weakness? If Ted Cruz was a tree, what kind of tree would he be? It’ll be interesting who actually answers “Where do you see yourself in five years?” as “president of the United States” and who says they see themselves hosting a show on Fox News.
Get the Koch Brothers onstage
The debate’s running time could be drastically shortened, and voters will get a much clearer idea of what they’re in for, if we just cut out all the middlemen and let the Kochs speak for themselves.
The Ultimate Challenge
At the end of the debate, each candidate is paired with a captured Isis fighter and given five minutes to explain what makes America great. If the candidate’s captive decides to seek naturalization at the end of the five minutes, that candidate is automatically awarded the republican nomination.
