Cross-examination was the greatest engine ever invented for uncovering truth. When these aspiring fora make you fill out cards to ask questions, they insult your intelligence. There's no followup. Often questions are not asked. Flagler College does this at its public policy forum, and a growing number of candidate appearances are before fora where you can't speak, but can only hand in a card in hopes that someone might read it. Among others guilty of this practice are our St. Augustine Democratic Club (of which I am a member), the NAACP (of which I am a member), the League of Women Voters, the Vilano Beach Civic Association (and the list goes on).
Monday night, I felt sorry for Pat Gill (LWV) and Editor Peter Ellis (St. Augustine Record), stuck with a boring format and unable to ask followup questions. As I told Pat Gill afterwards, we don't need schoolmarms or censors -- let us ask our own questions, please (and followup when politicians duck their questions).
The liveliest moment was when Pete Ellis (referred to as "one questioner" in Peter Guinta's story) asked candidates to raise their hands about fees.
But the question about who was under investigation by the Florida Election Commission was not asked. The questions about a county Inspector General (as in Miami-Dade, Florida; Wayne County, Michigan and New Orleans, Louisiana) were not asked. The same old stale questions turn people off to politics and let politicians get away with platitudes.
We need sparks, the way Tim Russert conducted interviews -- we need watchdogs for inquistors, not lapdogs.
Let us speak at these fora, or they will be poorly attended (as was Monday's LWV event, mainly attended by politicians, lobbyists and entourages).
Let us ask our own questions and stop playing schoolmarm and censor.
Also, let fora go on longer.
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