To The Point, Quickly

Two hours.
One hundred twenty minutes.
Ten candidates.
If you haven't already done the math, that means each candidate gets twelve minutes to speak their mind in this model of a debate, designed to give Americans a taste of what the Democratic hopefuls who managed to poll around two percent. I suggested at one point that this was a little like the National Hockey League playoffs, where only those teams left for dead were left out of the competition. More than half of the franchises participate. Go figure.
But back to that time thing. I suggested initially that each candidate would have twelve minutes to say what he or she has to connect with the public, so desperate to winnow down the crowd of familiar and less familiar faces. There are commercials. And there are half as many moderators as there are debaters. The rules state that each response be limited to sixty seconds, with a thirty second follow up whenever necessary. And of course it was necessary.
"The world is broken. How would you fix it? You have sixty seconds."
Back in 1858, just before MSNBC went on the air, a young Republican was running for Senate against a Democratic Incumbent. There was a series of seven debates, each of which would take more than sixty seconds to summarize. They focused on slavery, and its expansion into territories that had not as yet become states. When it was all over, Douglas won the election, but Abraham Lincoln had raised his national profile enough to be considered a potential presidential candidate in 1860. Abe won that one.
So how are we supposed to divine the next Abraham Lincoln in these sound bites? Endless repetition and discussion by pundits who have seen tape of the debaters scrambling for their moment in the sun. Or the glare of the lights. Sure, maybe some of them are playing for second place, hoping to get a ride on a ticket that would include them as a vice president. Others could be fishing for a cabinet post. It's hard to believe that every one of these ladies and gentlemen are looking forward to going twelve rounds with "the champ." In which case, the really serious ones had better start working on their Twitter skills. So much depends on a red wheelbarrow.