Candy Crow­ley, mod­er­a­tor for tonight’s town hall. Source: CNN​.com

Tonight is the sec­ond Pres­i­den­tial talk­fest cum “debate” man­aged by the Com­mis­sion on Pres­i­den­tial Debates. Tonight’s event, hosted by Hof­s­tra Uni­ver­sity in Hemp­stead, New York, will fea­ture for­mer Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney and Pres­i­dent Barack Obama in a town hall-​​style ques­tion and answer ses­sion mod­er­ated by Candy Crow­ley of CNN. As with all the debates, tonight’s fes­tiv­i­ties will start at 9:00 PM EDT (6:00 PM PDT) and are sched­uled for 90 minutes.

There has been much crit­i­cism of the mod­er­a­tors in the two pre­vi­ous debates: in the Den­ver Demo­li­tion Derby (Pres­i­den­tial Debate #1, on Octo­ber 3), PBS’ Jim Lehrer was pas­sive to the point of allow­ing both can­di­dates to over­run the rules and the time con­straints. In the Ken­tucky Con­fronta­tion, the sole Vice Pres­i­den­tial debate, CBS’ Martha Rad­datz was accused (pri­mar­ily by con­ser­v­a­tives) of los­ing con­trol of the debate between Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and House Bud­get Com­mit­tee Chair Paul Ryan (R-​​Janesville, WI). CNN com­menter and Red­state pun­dit Erick Erick­son tweeted dur­ing the debate that Rad­datz was “atro­cious”. In a testy exchange the next day between CNN’s Soledad O’Brien and Erick­son, Erick­son said Rad­datz was “hor­ri­ble”, to which O’Brien responded, “I think you have lost your mind”.

Nate Silver’s model pre­dic­tions for the Novem­ber 6 elec­tion. Pres­i­dent Obama has dropped from an 85.7% win prob­a­bil­ity on Octo­ber 2 to a 63.3% win prob­a­bil­ity on Octo­ber 15. Source: fivethir​tyeight​.blogs​.nytimes​.com

Much is at stake. After the Den­ver Demo­li­tion Derby, Rom­ney expe­ri­enced a surge of sup­port, eras­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s “con­ven­tion bounce” and mov­ing him into the lead over the Pres­i­dent in some national polls. Accord­ing to Nate Sil­ver, Romney’s bounce was on the high side of nor­mal for chal­lengers after the first debate.

Just as the right attacked Rad­datz pro­phy­lac­ti­cally before the Vice-​​Presidential debate, both sides are attack­ing Crow­ley for pub­lic state­ments she has made regard­ing her intent to vig­or­ously par­tic­i­pate in the town hall as a moderator.

Time’s Mark Halperin reports that both cam­paigns are upset by the prospect of an aggres­sive Crow­ley. The audi­ence will be made up of inde­pen­dents selected by the Gallup Orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to the mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing between the cam­paigns and the Com­mis­sion, the atten­dees will ask a ques­tion; each can­di­date will be given two min­utes to respond. Then, Crow­ley is to mod­er­ate a dis­cus­sion between the two candidates.

Accord­ing to the rules set forth by the Com­mis­sion (obtained by Time and quoted by Politico), Crow­ley is not sup­posed to

rephrase the ques­tion or open a new topic … ask follow-​​up ques­tions … or oth­er­wise inter­vene in the debate except to acknowl­edge the ques­tion­ers from the audi­ence or enforce the time lim­its, and invite can­di­date com­ments dur­ing the two-​​minute response period.

How­ever, in a Politico inter­view, Crow­ley pro­poses that she take on a much more active role.

I under­stand that I’m there. I’m not a fly on the wall. We don’t want the can­di­dates to spout talk­ing points. That doesn’t help vot­ers … I’m going to react organ­i­cally to what’s happening.

Halperin calls the (per­haps faux) out­rage of both cam­paigns a “rare exam­ple of polit­i­cal unity”.

What will hap­pen tonight? Will Crowley’s mus­cu­lar mod­er­a­tion approach cross the line into intru­sive­ness? Or does she just mean to keep the ques­tion and answer ses­sion on track? Will Pres­i­dent Obama be able to recover from what pun­dits called a poor, lack­lus­ter Octo­ber 3 per­for­mance? Tune in and com­ment here live (Dis­qus will be turned on again, to man­age the vol­ume of com­ments expected, and so older com­ments will be unavail­able today).

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