Why can't we have a bipartisan panel of live fact checkers, sort of like referees at a football game (real, unionized professionals, not scabs) who have the power to stop action and penalize one side or the other for lying? Why would this be so hard? And why can't they actually keep score, for god's sake, instead of leaving it to a television-intoxicated public to interpret facial tics versus smoothness of delivery, things that might be important when selling used cars but are dangerous when deciding who should be flying our plane, performing our surgery, or occupying the White House? Sure, the pundits could argue about whether the scoring was fair or whatever, but they will do that anyway and at least this would give us some kind of objective measure around which to frame our debates. Any objective measure (penalizing for lying) would have had President Obama winning the first debate by a wide measure, but we live in a world in which the appearance of winning, the amount of passion in your voice when you are telling the truth, matters more than whether what you are saying is correct. Simply blowing off a 5 trillion dollar tax cut as nonexistent because your campaign hired someone to come up with a different number than nonpartisan sources would not be allowed. Biden did both last night: he was truthful AND passionate but given a choice between the two, all the passion in the world is meaningless if what you are saying is not true.
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