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I wish there was more cultural demand for, not exactly hardball questions, but a surprise quiz here and there to let voters know the candidate isn't completely out to lunch.
"Yes, thank you for delivering your prepared remarks on immigration and the southern border, but if you don't mind, could you please name the President of Mexico?"
We do have something like that, it's just not randomized, so there's no calibrated score, so the results are based less on how far out to lunch the contestant is and more on how hard they're pressed on mistakes or on how hard they're not pressed on mistakes afterwards.
I also want Presidential Jeopardy to be part of every campaign season. It's hard to decide how to write a fair set of questions, even if they're randomly selected in the end, but that's not much worse than how the debates are run. Maybe limit the selection to predefined categories of questions where there are too many options to just cram the whole test? "World Leaders", "Headline News", "Microeconomics", etc?
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"That depends on which cartel is currently most powerful"
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"I hear they have a great president, people tell me all the time, I tell you what, when you reelect me, we'll sit down and make a deal. All of these people from jails, from mental institutions- they won't be coming through Mexico anymore."
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Presidential candidate jeopardy would be enormously interesting.
I've long been a proponent of presidential elections being replaced with a series of game show challenges. A combination of Jeopardy, the Price is Right, and American Ninja Warrior would provide a pretty well-rounded set of selection criteria.
Nyc mayoral candidates already mostly ate shit on housing price is right, would be great to see it on the national stage.
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