But it will only fuel the confrontation and debate".
Whatever the outcome of the final face-to-face confrontation, the debates have left an imprint on the race.
It would make for better confrontations and debate, instill an outside-the-Beltway perspective, and bring these shows much closer to being the "public affairs" programs they all purport to be.
Teaching by example will win more converts than aggressive confrontations and debate.
In her introduction to the dialogues, Wendy Singer says that the they have been narrowly interpreted as an example of an East-West confrontation, a scientific debate, or a philosophical commentary on the nature of Truth.
But Duncan Smith, the Eurosceptic former work and pensions secretary, accused Cameron and his colleagues of watering down potentially controversial changes, to avoid confrontation as the debate rages over Britain's future in the European Union.
In an obviously scripted confrontation at a debate in Buffalo, Lazio marched over to Clinton and demanded that she sign a pledge to ban so-called "soft money" contributions from the campaign.
When I saw that TPM had called the Conway-Rand confrontation the "nastiest debate of 2010" (distilled in "164 brutal seconds" of video), I was, I'll admit, a little skeptical: the level of the nastiness competition has been so very high this year, from Connecticut to Nevada.
But the more likely explanation of why McCain avoided a debate confrontation about "palling around with terrorists" is McCain's very real - and recent - symbiotic association and praise for another (not Ayers) domestic terrorist emblematic of the Vietnam era: G. Gordon Liddy.
And Mr. Gingrich, who is known for aggressively confronting the debate moderators to score points with the audience, saw his candidacy resuscitated by his verbal confrontations with Mr. Romney and debate moderators.
