Taken from Jonathan Alter’s article in this week’s issue of Newsweek entitled “The Danger of Distractions”:

“But there is a second reason Bush wants to spend valuable time debating debates. It runs down the clock on discussion of important stuff, like his record in office. The debate over debates is a classic ‘campaign issue’ as opposed to a ‘real issue.’ Campaign issues have little to do with how a candidate would perform as president; they are manufactured by the campaigns to score points. The media, particularly cable TV (which drives so much of the agenda nowadays), make it worse by favoring hot-button stories over complex, hard-to-illustrate real problems that the next president can actually work on.”

For the full article, click here.