Taking it to the people?

USA Today is praising Sen. John McCain's proposal that he and the Democratic presidential nominee, presumably Sen. Barack Obama, take part in joint town-hall meetings or debates with no moderators. The editorial said Obama has called it "a great idea," and I'm inclined to agree. No one who saw the seemingly endless string of debates featuring the Democratic presidential candidates was moved to recall the great Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1850s, and it just seems more Democratic for the two major-party nominees to take their cases straight to the American people, on the same stages, without media middlemen and women. Some of the moderators of the primary season debates seemed to think they were the stars of the show, and rather than get into substantive discussions, they seemed to delight in hitting the candidates with "gotcha" questions. It's hard to imagine that John Q. and Jane Q. Public could do a worse job.