Enough with the debates. The same. Old. Words. and ideas. Again and again. And again.
Meanwhile, the first generation to grow up with video games is now voting. In large numbers.
So, here's my proposal. Instead of having the candidates answer questions, put them into simulations. They sit at a laptop or with a joy stick in hand, and are fed scenarios: dollar in free fall, terrorist attack in Miami, find the balance between environmental sustainability and economic prosperity, president of France marries your sister ...
The candidates then have, say, fifteen minutes to craft responses. This could even go in rounds, with them responding to the response of their first response, a recursive causality just like the real world.
We might even give them a life line. As Life Hiker points out, the candidates decision about who to turn to for advice is at least as important as any other decision they make. Who do they call in the middle of financial crisis, for instance?
This, it seems to me, would be a great way to see what a candidate is made of, how quickly and well they think. We might even open it up nationwide, having debates for the final 10, top-scoring candidates. Or, we could just keep listening to them talk.
5 comments:
Great idea, Ron. In fact, if we went this route I'd be in favor of letting George W. Bush run again and participate in the crisis management simulations. With the writer's strike and all, great comedy is scarce these days.
LH,
Now that's just funny.
If you've got a game that knows all the right answers, why not just put the game in charge?
I, for one, welcome our new Robot overlords!
Thomas,
spot on. This is the crux of it - every candidate, party and community should have testable hypotheses about how the world works and revisions and disputations about these models ought to be the central task of politics. (It sort of is already, but in a form that generally resists testing.)
what thomaslb said.
and ron, nice to "meet" you -- thanks for your vote (speaking of voting...). i've been reading your supportive and thoughtful comments on cce's blog for some time now.
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