Will Tonight's Debate Deliver?

In six hours, many Americans, my family included, will be at a high school football game or kicking off their weekend in some way. I will be turned to the great match-up of the week, the first presidential debate of the season.

Tonight, at 8:00 p.m. Central Time, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain will step onto a red carpeted stage at the University of Mississippi. They will have one-liners at the ready and be prepared with clichés about hope and putting country first. The live audience and those watching from home will await the great line – the “I knew President Kennedy…and you are no Jack Kennedy,” or the “There you go again.” We will also hold our breath for the big gaffe.

I have been saying for months that this campaign has the promise to be the best of our lifetimes. On the stage at ‘ole Miss this evening, will be two very different men with diverse leadership qualities and dissimilar views about how to lead our country into the future.

I have looked forward to this moment with a, perhaps naïve and definitely geeky, anticipation that this matchup will be something more than rhetoric and petty politics. I hope that as the night’s moderator, Jim Lehrer, concludes the evening, we will be left with something more than petty thoughts of who looked better and who had the best gotcha moment.

Ok, stop your snickering. I am going to try to hold onto this high-mindedness for at least another 6 hours or so.


TONIGHT’S DEBATE
9 p.m. EDT, Friday, Sept. 26.Presidential debate with foreign policy focus, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS
Topic: Foreign policy and national securityModerator: Jim Lehrer of PBSStaging: PodiumsFormat: 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.