Can we all agree that a presidential

debate is supposed to be something at least marginally more sublime

than two people standing on a stage bitching at each other? Without

a moderator, showboats and crowd appeals would probably consume the

available airtime, replacing the issues, artfulness and subtleties

(or lack thereof) of the candidates.

Yet, Newt Gingrich has stated that,

should he become the Republican nominee, he would refuse to debate

President Obama if a news reporter serves as the debate’s

moderator. His reason is his opposition to having a “second Obama

supporter” in the room whose interest is to refrain from asking

Obama questions that “affect” him.

Instead, he wants to set the debate

conditions and formats himself. While seven, three-hour

Lincoln-Douglas debates might be very effective at giving Americans

an idea of who has a better command of the issues, the room, and

his surroundings through their in-depth exploration of the issues,

Gingrich’s refusal to abide by rules and customs that were accepted

for the 1988 election.

If he is really such a policy wonk

or ideas man, as he claims to be, why should he be afraid of any

format, let alone having to give 60- and 30-second answers? As he

has proven in most of the debates for the Republican primary

season, he is one of the best.

Regardless of opinion pages’

content, reporters are interested in reporting fair, complete, and

accurate accounts of the news. People know when bad reporting has

happened. It’s pretty obvious, even if most Americans are little

better than sheep.

Maybe the fact that Gingrich has

been exposed to such negative media portrayals is due more to the

lack of anything positive to say about him than it is due to bias

or unthinking opposition to his ideas. Maybe most of the evidence

indicates that he is a morally reprehensible person who has not

yet, in the minds of American citizens, atoned for his sins against

people and our political system.

Procedural rules are important, and

both debaters can benefit from them. Limiting responses to 60 or 30

seconds in a world where sound bites are increasingly shortened and

where many if not most viewers would move on anyway if the response

was longer might not be such a poor idea.

There are rules to every game, and

if Gingrich does not want to play by those rules, maybe he

shouldn’t play the game. Politics is a freewheeling activity, and

if done correctly, the end cannot be seen or determined before it

happens. But even politics has bounds. Billing himself as the true

heir of former President Reagan’s conservative movement, he ought

to know that.