LET’S GET RID OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES. They don’t bring out or test the characteristics and skills we want in a president. They take up days and days of practice before the actual debate, then dominate the campaign with sound bites from the 90-minute encounter for days afterwards. They often trivialize the issues in the campaign and reduce the candidates to robots repeating stump rhetoric or to comics in search of one-liners to zing their foe.

What did we learn in the debates this fall between President Bush and John Kerry? Not much. In reaction shots on TV in the first debate, we saw Bush grimace and scowl and frown. Kerry gained ground in the race as a result. In the third debate, Kerry made a gratuitous and nasty reference to Vice President Cheney’s daughter Mary as a lesbian. Kerry lost ground as a result. Is this what campaigns for the presidency should turn on? The answer is no.