We piloted a web-based debate tool – Debatemapper – with the UK Prime Minister’s office at the start of the summer, inspired by the same ambition that you articulate so eloquently in your second approach.

It’s a free tool available now, and we would be delighted to collaborate with you, anyone else interested in fulfilling your ambition, and any candidate willing to back themselves in such a debate.

I have blogged about the project with Tony Blair at http://www.opentopersuasion.com, and our social-entrepreneurial goal is to create a new kind of public service: one that makes the best arguments on all sides of every complex public debate freely available to all, and continuously open to challenge and improvement by all.

Dan– I forgot to tell you the other evening, but Slate’s John Dickerson covered similar ground in May. I do like the idea of one-on-one debates… some Slate reader had even suggested a bracket system. Though note that that this doesn’t really rely on new media.

Hmm… did I just say I’d “like the idea”? I’m afraid this cycle I have more sympathy for the short-attention span votes. This also from Dickerson’s column: “readers suggested American Idol- or Survivor-type methods for voting candidates off the stage if their answers were no good.”

Seems like instant Internet feedback could be a helpful gimmick. “President Bush, sixty percent of our audience is not re-assured by your saying that the war in Iraq is ‘hard work’…”

“As is typical of user-generated content, despite all the hype about empowering citizens, the individual was utterly powerless, except to try to please and serve the interests of the gatekeeper and thereby obtain some attention (but not remuneration).”