Noah Counte

The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which is sponsoring the forums, brokered the agreements. Agreements, because there will be a different format for the vice presidential debates. More on that later.

The first Presidential debate will cover foreign policy and the third debate will cover economic/domestic issues. There will be a second debate too, as you might have guessed, which will be a town hall type meeting where the candidates will answer questions from the audience and off the internet on any topic. Each of the three will be 90 minutes long.

The debate over format and specifics has been relatively without pouting, as far as I can tell. No one has complained about potential camera angles (really, it’s been bickered about in the past) lectern heights, or message lights, and, except for the order of the debates, there has been general agreement about length and format. Neither Obama nor McCain became personally involved in hammering out the details.

The first and third Presidential Debates will be a much more free-form exercise than is usual. If you remember past elections, there would be a question from the moderator, a timed response, a shorter rebuttal, and sometimes an even shorter re-rebuttal. This time around, there will be a question asked, and then each candidate will have two minutes to answer. After that, they’ll hammer on each other, mixing it up for five minutes. They’ll stand behind lecterns at the first debate, and site at a round table for the third. At the town hall meeting, they’ll sit on stools.

The schedule looks like this:

• First debate
  Sept. 26 at University of Mississippi
  Topic: Foreign policy and national security
  Moderator: Jim Lehrer of PBS
  Staging: Podiums
  Format: Broken into nine 9-minute segments. The moderator will introduce a topic and allow each candidate 2 minutes to comment, then facilitate a discussion for the remaining 5 minutes.
• Second debate
  Oct. 7 at Belmont University in Nashville.
  Moderator: Tom Brokaw of NBC
  Staging: Town hall
  Format: The moderator will call on members of the audience (and draw questions from the Internet). Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond to each question. Following those initial answers, the moderator will invite the candidates to respond to the previous answers, for a total of 1 minute.
• Third debate
  Oct. 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
  Topic: Domestic and economic policy
  Moderator:Bob Schieffer of CBS
  Staging: Seated at a table
  Format: Same as first presidential debate, plus each candidate will get a 90-second closing statement.

The Vice Presidential debates will be much more tightly run, with no interplay between the candidates. Camp McCain is worried about Palin’s lack of debating experience. Camp Obama, on the other hand, is worried about Biden’s propensity to ramble on – and that the more he talks, the more likely he is to say something that might come back to bite them on the heinie.

There you have it. Watch the debates - they should be interesting, informative, and maybe seminal in defining the candidates, this time more than usual.