The Unanswered Question

As Democrats prefer for the upcoming group gaggle in Detroit tonight and Wednesday, there has been a feature of many of these mega-group questionnaires that has cropped over the past few years that’s a major bugaboo for me.  It’s a fairly recent phenomenon, brought about as a result of these events that fill the stage with overflowing candidates, making it a challenge to give every candidate a chance to chime in substantively.  And so the moderators bring up a sort of “yes or no” question and asks for a show of hands to respond.

While it’s lazy and inappropriate for the moderators,my annoyance goes a step further.  I not only blame the moderators for asking them, I blame the candidates for answering.  What I’d love to see is a candidate not raise his or her hand, and when asked why they don’t agree, give an answer somewhat like this – “It’s not a matter of agreeing or not, it’s that I don’t believe in raising my hand to answer questions here.  We are all running for President of the United States, which is a deeply serious job, and questions require answers and reasons for how we think, and why.  Not a simplistic action that could be interchanged to respond to questions like, ‘Who wants pepperoni on their pizza?’”