Andy Pearlman: — Subium • Bluesky web client

folks gonna miss this from just the headline, but someone should point it out: the lack of live fact-checking by the moderators *was part of the agreement* by the campaigns. It's not just that CNN /didn't/ live fact check it. It's that they /weren't allowed to/.

Earlier this week, CNN's political director David Chalian said a debate “is not the ideal venue for a live fact-checking exercise." Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to that model Thursday night, despite multiple falsehoods claimed during the debate.

CNN debate moderators didn’t fact-check. Not everyone is happy about it.www.washingtonpost.com CNN’s political director said earlier a presidential debate “is not the ideal venue for a live fact-checking exercise.” Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to that.

I think the whole idea is overblown. The moderators shouldn’t “fact check” and argue back with the candidates. It’s not an interview. It’s not their role and they wouldn’t do a good job of it anyway. They did mostly fine. People just want somebody other than Biden to blame for how poorly it went.

FWIW I think the debate format /in general/ is pretty weak, and frankly voters would be far better served by the candidates doing long-form interviews by (ideally quite aggressive) interviewers

Been a while since I paid attention there, but the UK used to be really, really good at those type of "hostile interviews"

We should invent a version of Prime Minister’s questions

Yeah, hard to do without a parliamentary system

If we had a parliamentary system, worries about age would not be so bad, right? If the PM becomes too old, either everyone covers for her, or someone else becomes PM without waiting for 4 years.

Right. No confidence votes are reasonably common, and can be pretty quick, in parliamentary systems for very rapid no-election changes in leadership

Many systems have pretty established and speedy deputy PMs systems for indisposed, unreachable, or unavailable heads of government too so cabinet can continue to govern. People miss that cabinet government is key, The UK one seemed less than robust though... news.sky.com/story/domini...

Dominic Raab 'given five minutes' notice' to run country when Boris Johnson had COVID, inquiry hearsnews.sky.com Professor Dame Jenny Harries, who was deputy chief medical officer, also gave evidence - with messages showing her saying COVID patients would need to be discharged into care homes to stop the NHS get...

Honestly, the US system for this is probably one of the more robust

Like, tho VPs tend to do stuff to pass the time, and occasionally act on behalf of the US at foreign events or funerals etc, or to break ties in the Senate, essentially their only job is to be the person running the executive branch falls to if the President is incapacitated or dies

I like how John Adams attended the Senate every day. I’m not sure what he did, other than sit there in the presiding officer’s chair.

A jillion different reasons why it'd never be for me, but frankly that's what I'd do. Considerably more interesting than sitting around waiting for your friend and ticket-mate to drop dead

also it's actually useful for the President to have a very close colleague who really gets to live at the intersection of the legislature and the executive branch, and can carry real weight in both

America has a really robust succession system exactly one deep; after that it goes fucking insane

We need to cut the Speaker and Senate Pro Tem out of the line of succession.

I really don't love that you'd have a giant non-trivial question of eligibility barging in like the kool aid man in any national-crisis where you need to go 2+deep in the succession list

still think it should go VP->SecState->SecDef->highest ranking military official. Because if you're suddenly 5 deep in the succession list, the US is at war, and the military are running the show anyway

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