As he received his Quinnipiac University Fred Friendly First Amendment Award yesterday, ABC Newsman Charlie Gibson proposed that Sens. McCain & Obama commit to town hall meetings in the model of the seminars which also carry the Fred Friendly name:
“I loved watching the best of minds wrestling with hypothetical situations posed by expert moderators-and they always taught me a great deal. John McCain and Barack Obama have agreed in principle to a series of town meetings. I’d love for one of them to be a Fred Friendly seminar. Let Arthur Miller of the NYU Law School posit a situation with terrorism at its center, juxtaposing individual rights with the need for national security. I would venture to say it might be a useful way to judge the candidates side by side.”
…Televised, on say, ABC?