The GOP presidential debate (on Fox News Channel) begins at 8:00 p.m. Sunday night. The seventh game of the Red Sox-Indians series (on the Fox network, as it happens) is, I believe, scheduled to begin at 8:07 p.m. A number of potential debate viewers – and a huge number of Sox fans in New England, including many in a not unimportant primary state called New Hampshire – will, presumably, be taking a pass on Rudy vs. Mitt vs. Fred vs. John vs. Mike, in favor of Matsuzaka vs. Westbrook. So if any of the candidates wants to make an impression, he’d better do so in the first seven minutes! Actually, since the audience for presidential primary debates is pretty specialized in the first place, it’s not clear how many viewers will be lost to baseball. But to the degree some are, it makes the overall performance of each candidate through the hour-and-a-half of the debate less important, and producing a memorable soundbite or a winning exchange more crucial. A higher percentage than usual of potential voters will get their impression of this debate not from watching all or most of it, but from news accounts of it. And those accounts will feature only a couple of answers or exchanges. So the candidates will be spending even more time than usual today preparing their memorable ad libs and rehearsing their off-the-cuff witticisms.
