A presidential debate without journalists

There's been a fair bit of a back and forth about whether or not Barack Obama should agree to McCain's town hall proposal. Obviously, he won't agree to McCain's specific proposal, which would begin next week, and I think that 60 minutes is too short.

But on the larger question of whether or not the format is a good one for Obama, I think it is clearly an advantageous one -- not so much because of the contrast with McCain (I actually think the format is good for McCain as well), but because it takes the press out of the equation.

Think back to the Philadelphia debate. If that had been a town hall, without heavily partisan voters, none of the questions raised by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos would have come up. In theory, you'd like to think that the media would actually be able to ask valuable questions, but those two demonstrated that we can't trust the media. And I think it's pretty clear that Obama is far more likely than McCain to be the target of similarly scurillous questioning in future debates.

So while the details need to get worked out, and while McCain will feel more comfortable in the format than in a debate, I say go for it -- get past the media filter as much as possible. Ironically, the best chance we have for a meaningful, issues-driven debate is to bypass journalists.

Update: icebergslim makes an important point -- Obama has no obligation to neutralize his financial advantage over McCain. There's no need to do these town hall events before the conventions. Perhaps the way to go would be doing 4 or 5 of them after the conventions, and then doing away with the debates entirely.