Town Halls

I was happy when both McCain and Obama turned down ABC's effort to hijack the proposed set of town hall meetings and weigh them down with more obtrusive and pointless distractions. However, McCain apparently didn't deny that effort because he wanted to keep control of the questions in the hands of the people, but because he wanted to keep control of the people in the audience.

"I reported at the top of this hour that the campaign had told us at fox news that the audience would be made up of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. We have now received a clarification from the campaign and I feel I should pass it along to you. The McCain Campaign distributed tickets to supporters, mayor Bloomberg, who of course is a registered republican, and other independent groups."

(Good for Shepard Smith for actually speaking up, by the way)

Not so much town halls, as fully scripted campaign events. No wonder Obama turned down the attempt to get involved in such nonsense.