Someone is terribly mad at sane suggestions and commentary today. Yet another seemingly reasonable comment down-voted.
What could possibly motivate politicians in the current system to engage in such a forum??? Look at what happened after the cited example of Nixon in the 1960 debate, such as what didn't happen in this press conference.
Echoing my other comment, I'll bet there was a Fox reporter in the group (I think I would have heard if the Obama had totally shut them out). Was he called?
What.
What could possibly motivate politicians in the current
system to engage in such a forum???
Excellent question. You should have just posted that instead of doling out a downvote. I'm sure a set of circumstances could exist that force politicians at least at some level of government to participate. Maybe we can precipitate the change that would allow such fora to become part of the status quo.There are far too many items where the author simply isn't thinking through to give detailed answers to (http://xkcd.com/386/), and downvotes are explicitly OK for this, last time I checked the rules.