I just got this email outlining the presidential debate schedule and format:

Debate Schedule Is Set
Sept 16, 2008

The campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain announced they have formally accepted the lineup of presidential debates this fall.

“The campaigns have come to the earliest agreement on presidential debates reached in any general election in recent history,” the joint statement said.

The campaigns said they also accepted the Commission on Presidential Debates’ rules on third-party candidates, guidelines that make it unlikely that either Libertarian Bob Barr or independent Ralph Nader will be included unless they get a large and unexpected rise in the polls. The rules require a candidate to reach at least 15 percent in an average of five national public opinion polls.

The debates are all scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Eastern and will last 90 minutes:

First Debate
Sept. 26 at University of Mississippi
Topic: Foreign policy and national security
Moderator: Jim Lehrer of PBS
Staging: Podiums
Format: Broken into nine 9-minute segments. The moderator will introduce a topic and allow each candidate 2 minutes to comment, then facilitate a discussion for the remaining 5 minutes.

Second Debate
Oct. 7 at Belmont University in Nashville.
Moderator: Tom Brokaw of NBC
Staging: Town hall
Format: The moderator will call on members of the audience (and draw questions from the Internet). Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond to each question. Following those initial answers, the moderator will invite the candidates to respond to the previous answers, for a total of 1 minute.

Third Debate
Oct. 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
Topic: Domestic and economic policy
Moderator:Bob Schieffer of CBS
Staging: Seated at a table
Format: Same as first presidential debate, plus each candidate will get a 90-second closing statement.

That’s the earliest I’ve heard of debates agreed to. The CW is that the debates will decide November’s winner. Based on what I’ve seen in my adult life, rarely have they changed the outcome. That might change this year because Sen. Obama didn’t do well in the debates once they were pared down to Sen. Obama and Hillary.

I know that Sen. Obama is great from a teleprompter but it’s another story when he doesn’t have access to that crutch.

Technorati Tags: Debates, John McCain, Barack Obama, TelePrompTer, Tom Brokaw, Bob Schieffer, Jim Lehrer, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog