A chance for civilized debates

The parties and networks have agreed to a debate format, and it sounds like we'll have some debates worth looking forward to:

There will be a pair of debates before Christmas, Dec. 15 in French and Dec. 16 in English, and another pair after Christmas, Jan. 9 in English and Jan. 10 in French. Each debate will last two hours.

The first set will be staged in Vancouver, the second set in either Montreal or Gatineau, Que. All four will be conducted in closed studios, without audiences to egg on their favoured leader...

The leaders will respond, one at a time, to each question. As one leader is speaking, the microphones for the other three will be cut off.

In another novel twist, panels of journalists will no longer pose the questions. The Vancouver debates will employ videotaped questions from ordinary Canadians, with the moderator authorized to ask follow-up questions if necessary. For the Quebec debates, all questions will be posed by the moderator.

I suppose the downside of the format is that the lack of confrontation between the leaders will mean less opportunity for one leader to respond instantly to another's remarks, however deserving of criticism those may be.

But then, there's always a chance for the leaders to do that later, not to mention for bloggers to do the job in real time. And that delay should be a small price to pay for the leaders to have a chance to talk policy rather than spending the entire time trying to shout each other down.