Excellent point, weegee.
Your idea is good in principle, mainer, and I wish we lived in a world where such a thing could happen. The problem is that the left would use guerilla tactics to game the audience selection process. If the audience wasn’t screened, you’d get an audience full of trained professional DNC operatives, essentially actors, who would turn the thing (with the MSM broadcasting the debate, which would cooperate with the DNC in every possible respect) into a total show, an absolute farce. Obama would come out smelling like a rose, and McCain would be made to look like an absolute fool.
Any attempt to screen out the shills, provocateurs, and professional trouble-makers would result in protests and lawsuits. The whole process would end up stalled in litigation, and the networks would refuse to cover it because they “question the audience screening process.”
I wish it were otherwise.
But you know McCain would never come to free republic and answer our questions so maybe conservatives are in a no win situation period this time around.