Word: formatively
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Davis said campaign officials for Vice President Al Gore '69 feared that the debate's town meeting format might mean that McCain would be in the view of television cameras. He said a McCain advance staffer was told that the Gore campaign lodged an objection with...
...candidates argued over a variety of issues including health care, education, foreign affairs and affirmative action during the 90 minute town-hall format debate at Washington University in St. Louis...
...appropriate that this should happen in this most TV-centric of the three debates - the town hall debate, the Oprah debate, the debate format in which Bill Clinton in 1992 ushered in eight years of talk-show politics. And how ironic, in a debate where professional journalists otherwise faded into the background. In St. Louis, a group of midwesterners, having been judged by popular opinion to be more normal than anyone else in America (and I assure you, as a native of Michigan, that this is not true), were selected to ask the questions...
...also a debate format that puts as much emphasis on what the candidates do when they're not talking as when they are talking, since the theater-in-the-round keeps both of them on camera a substantial amount of the time. If you believe that you see the true man during his down time, it doesn't speak well for either candidate. Gore tended to freeze ramrod-straight when finished, like a photocopier gone into energy-conservation mode; Bush had a disconcerting tendency to cross his hands in front of his crotch and sway, as though he just realized...
...Tuesday night's format is something of an x-factor for Bush: He was comfortable with the behind-the-desk conversation of the Wake Forest debate. Will he feel similarly at home taking questions from an audience? He's also not carrying the advantage of the carefully lowered expectations that preceded him into the first two encounters. If he keeps his wits about him and nails a few specifics, he could win the day. But if he sinks into a verbal morass, as he's done consistently during off-the-cuff exchanges on the campaign trail, he might...