Obama should debate Boehner and McConnell

An election is about choices. But especially in midterm voting, which involves state-by-state and district-by-district contests, the differences are not always joined cleanly. So let's give the country a chance to understand what's at stake this year.

Between now and November, President Obama should debate both John Boehner, the House Republican leader, and Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the Senate. Their confrontations, televised and during prime time, would certainly get the attention of voters and make clear what the stakes in the election are.

Obama has already started a long-distance debate with Boehner, hitting him hard in speeches this week in Wisconsin and Ohio. Boehner, who has been critical of Obama for months, should welcome the chance to take his argument straight to the president himself. And since the Senate is in play, too, the voters should also get to see what McConnell has to offer. If the Republicans take both houses, Boehner and McConnell would become hugely important figures -- remember how powerful House Speaker Newt Gingrich was? The country should get to know more about them before deciding.

When I broached this idea with my friend and colleague Tom Mann at the Brookings Institution, he made the point that with the United States moving more and more toward a parliamentary-style democracy, we should adapt some of the sensible practices of parliamentary governments to our now-hybrid system. These debates, he thinks, would fit right in.

In parliamentary systems, the opposition party, as the name implies, sees its job as opposing. That's what Republicans are doing here. In the British Parliament, "question time" gives the opposition a chance to hold the prime minister accountable and creates a running debate. Surely American voters deserve similar forms of accountability -- on the part of both the president and his congressional opponents. Let the great debates of 2010 begin.

UPDATE, 10:00 a.m.: I did not realize until my colleague Ezra Klein called it to my attention just now that Jonathan Alter of Newsweek has also proposed debates along the lines I have suggested -- and Jonathan got there first. So that makes two of us. Any other takers? Maybe there's a media outlet or a non-partisan group out there that can issue the invitations.