Even obvious questions flummox some candidates

To celebrate the official start of the holiday season, here's a gift for all Americans who will be participating in the presidential debates of Campaign 2008, either as designated askers or answerers.

It is a gift that needs to be opened early, before it is too late: "The Official Handbook for Smarties on How to Avoid Messing Up in Presidential Campaign Debates."

For candidates: Think deeply about not looking shallow and stupid. It is embarrassing to see that, this year especially, even candidates considered at the top of their debate game are messing up when they should be mopping up. Even when asked obvious questions they knew would be asked.

So today's advice to candidates is to first try a nontraditional approach: Forget calculating the politically smartest thing to say, and try saying what you really think. You'll find it is a lot easier to sound smart when you are saying what you truly believe. And you'll discover that voters, when they recover from their shock, will like to see that sometimes a candidate can be candid.

We have here an example from the recent Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. Very big in the news, for days, was New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to follow the lead of seven other states by requiring undocumented illegal immigrants to have drivers' licenses.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York had been hammered for waffling on it in the previous debate; public opinion forced the governor to drop the plan. This was the next debate since that had happened. (Who reading this column hasn't thought that, just knowing this, it's a question that would be asked?)

Another clue: Sen. Barack Obama had voted for the same sort of plan as a member of the Illinois Senate. (Who hasn't guessed that it would be asked of both Clinton and Obama?)

Not so fast, Obama. You looked like you never expected to be asked about it. Even though you used it to attack Clinton the very first time you had a chance to speak.

Today's lesson is focusing on that Las Vegas debate of Nov. 15, in part because Obama has seemed so sharp so often in the campaign that it shows us how easy it is for a politician to go from up to down.

When CNN's Campbell Brown made this the first question of the night, Obama said: " ... what the American people are looking for right now is straight answers to tough questions, and that is not what we've seen out of Senator Clinton on a host of issues — on the issue of drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants."