[hga]

"seemingly reasonable" is the key, I down voted it because it wasted my time.

What could possibly motivate politicians in the current system to engage in such a forum??? Look at what happened after the cited example of Nixon in the 1960 debate, such as what didn't happen in this press conference.

Echoing my other comment, I'll bet there was a Fox reporter in the group (I think I would have heard if the Obama had totally shut them out). Was he called?

[malandrew]

    What could possibly motivate politicians in the current 
    system to engage in such a forum???

Excellent question. You should have just posted that instead of doling out a downvote. I'm sure a set of circumstances could exist that force politicians at least at some level of government to participate. Maybe we can precipitate the change that would allow such fora to become part of the status quo.

[Sauer_Kraut]

How did it waste your time? How is that a reason to attempt to moderate the comment from others by actively down-voting it?

What.

[hga]

To both current replies: because a detailed answer would have wasted even more of my time. But not so much after others wondered.

There are far too many items where the author simply isn't thinking through to give detailed answers to (http://xkcd.com/386/), and downvotes are explicitly OK for this, last time I checked the rules.

[Sauer_Kraut]

Right, it is called disengaging, but that is not what you did. You yourself choose to waste your time and energy on this.