Keller @ Large: Presidential Debates Need To Change

BOSTON (CBS) - There is yet another debate Thursday night between the Republican candidates for president, and after last week's insult-fest, the question is – have we reached the bottom of the barrel yet?

These debates have deteriorated so badly, a history professor at the University of Texas has written an article calling for them to be abandoned until we reach the general election.

His argument: "Personality is everything; substance nothing....Debates today don't merely fail to reward attention to issues, they actively punish attention to issues….[R]ecent debates have brought out the worst in voters' emotions and the candidates' personalities. The schoolyard taunts and adolescent boasts hardly befit the office the candidates are seeking, and the spectacle risks making an international laughingstock of the one who gets the job."

The Democratic debates have been less revolting, but they've also drawn lower ratings, and given the trend, they'll be down in the gutter next time around.

What's to be done about this?

CNN can start to turn things around Thursday night by injecting an element that's been totally absent from this year's debates – Lincoln/Douglas-style direct questioning among the candidates.

Let's see if that improves the quality of the topics; it certainly will tell us more about their actual debating ability then what we've been getting.

And we might learn more about who actually knows the details of the issues that face us.

Shouldn't that matter more than who's got the biggest…ego?

Listen to Jon's commentary: