The GOP Debates Have Been Pathetic. I Will Moderate the Next One.

Another Republican presidential primary debate has come and gone, and once again the voters of America are essentially worse off for it having happened. The five qualifying candidates spent the duration of Wednesday night’s two-hour gathering alternately squabbling over policies that none of them will ever get a chance to implement, posturing about toughness even as they were all mostly too meek to sharply criticize front-runner Donald Trump, and barely concealing their irritation about having to be in the same room as Vivek Ramaswamy.

I do not blame the candidates for the fact that the debate was a dud. The candidates are themselves duds, after all, and you cannot fault water for finding its own level. Instead, I blame the moderators: NBC News anchor Lester Holt, Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, and conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, who was there for some reason and who, in the manner of a small boy whose bedroom walls are covered with posters of aircraft carriers, at one point demanded that the candidates reveal the specific number of ships they would add to the U.S. Navy’s existing fleet. This ship discourse was the best part of a debate that was otherwise boring and irrelevant. That’s the fault of the people who were asking the questions.

Although the three moderators did try to preside over a dignified, issue-focused discussion, this in itself revealed them as out of touch with the prevailing trends in Republican politics. “We have two hours for a serious debate on the issues that matter most to Republican voters,” Holt said at the outset, and this false presumption was the entire problem. First of all, the Republican electorate seems to be motivated not by actual issues so much as fictional ones, nor by policy proposals so much as seething cultural resentments. Second, the debate completely elided the obvious fact that none of the candidates onstage actually matter to Republican voters. Trump’s polling advantage is big enough that there is little reason to care about what any of these also-rans would do about TikTok, since the odds are vanishingly slim that they would ever be in a position to do anything about TikTok in the first place. The only real way their policy plans would ever actually matter, at this point, would be if Trump’s mounting legal troubles ultimately ended up disqualifying or removing him from the race at some point next year, thus handing the Republican nomination to the next candidate up—the prospect of which, clearly, is the main reason why most of these second-stringers are still hanging around.

For now, though, any GOP primary debate without Trump is a sideshow, and it would be much more honest if the moderators would choose to treat it that way. “Look at who’s moderating this debate. This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We’d have 10 times the viewership,” Ramaswamy said early on, and I don’t disagree with his broader thesis. These primary debates would be so much better and more entertaining if they were managed by moderators who had a little flair. Carlson, Rogan, and Musk aren’t the ones to do it, though, and neither are Megyn Kelly, Elizabeth Vargas, and Eliana Johnson, the three people whom NewsNation has chosen to moderate the next debate, which will take place Dec. 6. I’ve got a better idea: I will moderate the debate.

I’d be a great choice. A lot of people are saying it. My work for Slate over the years speaks for itself, and if you don’t agree, just go back and read the story where I lived exclusively on a diet of CBD products for two weeks, or the story where I revealed that I cannot stop crying. I don’t have any dignity to uphold, in other words, and I certainly don’t have any political relationships to protect, which in turn frees me up to be as blunt and outspoken as necessary. I’ll deliver a great debate, I’ll deliver great ratings, and I’ll do it all for $300 cash, plus travel expenses. In exchange for this fantastic deal, my only condition is that I get to run the debate my way. Here’s how I’d do it.

The way that Wednesday’s debate started was super boring; the candidates were all there onstage at once, and Holt began by asking each of them why voters should choose them instead of Donald Trump. In my debate, we’ll lean into the fact that they’re all running in Trump’s shadow. The candidates will come out one by one to a professional wrestling–style introduction—but not a flattering one. Instead, I’ll bombastically recite the meanest things that Trump has said about every single one of them—“He’s the man they call ‘Pudding Fingers,’ ” I’d say about Ron DeSantis, for example—before playing them onstage to the tune of an individually demeaning song, which, in DeSantis’ case, might be something like “Hi-Heel Sneakers.” The point of doing it this way wouldn’t just be gratuitous cruelty; it would be to strip away a sham dignity that their floundering campaigns do not deserve, and to make them function on the GOP front-runner’s level. I would award bonus points to candidates who dance onto the stage as their intro songs play.

Once the debate gets started, my plan would be to run it in the manner of the ESPN sports talk show Around the Horn, whereby I, the moderator, conduct a rapid-fire discussion in which I bestow points to or retract points from the various candidates based on my assessment of the quality of their answers. These points are not valueless—far from it! The candidate who “wins” a given round will be awarded a brand-new item of Trump 2024 merchandise, which they must either wear for the rest of the debate or destroy right there on the spot—their choice. The candidate who logs the fewest points per round, meanwhile, will be made to perform a timed shuttle run in front of the other candidates—an eminently fair task, given the extent to which this cycle’s presidential discourse has centered on the leading candidates’ age and health. If the runner fails to meet a time set by me and an advisory council of gym teachers, they will be removed from the auditorium and the rest of the debate will proceed without them.

There is no point in querying these also-rans about their policy platforms when 1) there’s little chance that any of them will even make it through Super Tuesday; 2) none of what they say is binding and no one will ever remember any of their ideas anyway; and 3) GOP primary voters demonstrably do not care about policy. Instead, my questions will be focused largely on forcing the candidates to confront their own deficiencies. “Gov. DeSantis, you can’t even decide how to pronounce your own surname. What’s wrong with you?” I might say. “Gov. Christie, you couldn’t even win a debate with Mike from Montclair while guest-hosting on WFAN, and somehow you think you’re the guy to tame Donald Trump? What’s wrong with you?” I will spend a lot of time demanding that the candidates inform me about what is wrong with them, because if they can’t deal with my pettiness, then how do they stand a chance against Trump? I might also just end up asking them random trivia questions.

You might be worried that the candidates would filibuster my mean questions or would just refuse to answer. That won’t happen, because I will demand total control over all of the tech in the room. I’ll be able to cut their microphones if they hem and haw, and I’d also be able to shut off the lights on their lecterns so that recalcitrant candidates would be both silent and shrouded in darkness. I’d also bring a laptop filled with rude sound effects, which I would play loudly whenever someone says something that is evasive, stupid, or untrue. While these tech demands might perhaps strike you as excessive or undignified, look, these people have already voluntarily chosen to humiliate themselves by spending many months and millions of dollars for the privilege of polling at 3 percent in Iowa; I would just be giving them more of what they clearly crave, while making strides to actually compel them to answer direct questions. I may also find ways to involve an air horn.

I will be keeping close track of every time someone—this will probably be mostly a Vivek Ramaswamy thing—says something that sounds like a catchphrase cribbed from a podcast for angry incels. I’ll sound the air horn every time the phrase “smoke ’em” or something similarly dumb is uttered. Upon three aggressively stupid utterances, I’ll press a button, at which time a trapdoor under the offending candidate will open and he or she will plunge downward in a similar fashion to their long-term polling trends. At that point, they will be replaced on the stage by one of the candidates who didn’t qualify for that particular debate, such as Doug Burgum, who will also be subjected to an insulting introduction and rude theme music. I think this plan would really help to keep things dignified.

At the end of the debate, there will likely be only one or two candidates remaining, with the rest of them having either plunged to their respective dooms or been whisked away to the hospital after fainting during the shuttle run. Instead of wasting everyone’s time with one of the stupid, smarmy “final questions” that moderators like to ask, I will instead cut to the heart of the issue by requiring the remaining candidates to physically grapple with a Trump impersonator, whom I will hire with funds out of my own pocket. If they refuse to do so—perhaps because, true to form, they are actually terrified of fighting with Trump—then I will give them the option to kiss the impersonator’s feet as he insults them. It’ll be fun and revealing to see which option the candidates choose!

You might say that none of these ideas is realistic and that none of the candidates would agree to participate in a debate organized under these rules. I disagree. I think that all that these candidates actually want is to be on television, and they have already shown themselves willing to suffer any and every public humiliation in order to enjoy the glow of the national spotlight. They’ll show up no matter what the preconditions are, even and especially if those preconditions are meant to make fools of them all. I stand ready to travel to Alabama this December at a moment’s notice. NewsNation, you know where to find me.