NBC did it this time, running its "West Wing" program live tonight, featuring a presidential debate "moderated" by their newsman Forest Sawyer. Alan Alda (certainly not a conservative activist by any means) was tasked with being the conservative republican candidate, while Jimmy Smits was tasked as the Dem candidate.
Alda did a remarkably good job, but one has to guess it was scripted, and he was simply memorizing lines, as opposed to him speaking from the heart.
And NBC's website, where they want the audience to go vote on who was the "winner" of the debate gives an error if you select Alda's character...
http://www.nbc.com/The_West_Wing/Campaign/
I did not see the whole thing, only the last 20 minutes. The script was set up to make the republican candidate look bad, at one point with the Dem candidate trying to frame it up by "taking a pledge not to go to war over oil" with the Alda character unwilling to make such a foolish pledge, likening it as useless of promising not to "go to war over sugar". Smits Character attempted to pose the question of whether the "country was ready for a latino president" as opposed to running on qualifications.
Alda's character's overarching theme was open-market solutions rather than government, while the Dem was feel-good Clintonesque attacks. One has to wonder how many of the audience believed it really was on "NBC News Live" as the logo in the bottom right of the screen showed...
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