WASHINGTON — In a conference room at the Democratic headquarters, President Obama has been preparing for the debate next week, but the reviews of hi...

Mitt Romney has everything at stake in this first debate. My first piece of advice for President Obama is to frame virtually every answer as a choice, not a defense. He should also share his best self as emblematic of what is best in America, and he should stay nice.

They'll carefully review tapes of their own performances, as well as those of their opponents. But these presidential debates don't exist in a vacuum; they're part of a long chain stretching back (at least) to the Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960. And over the past half century, candidates have landed some real zingers.

The debate season will be Romney's last chance to overtake Obama in what, so far, has been an uninformative and tactical contest of accusation, innuendo, non-ideas, non-specifics and invisible agendas.

This week started optimistically, with the hope that Paul Ryan's selection would finally turn campaign 2012 into a big picture discussion about the role of government and the nature of capitalism. Instead, we got outraged reactions to President Obama joking about Seamus the dog, hours of debate over Joe Biden's use of the word "chains," and a back-and-forth between the campaigns about which presidential candidate was "unhinged." It is 78 days until the election, with 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, over 13 million homeowners underwater and our national conversation is still on a level of two children fighting in the back seat of the minivan. Maybe for the first debate, we should strap each candidate into a car seat, give them each a juice box, and let them have at it.

WASHINGTON -- The committee that sponsors presidential debates during the general election has chosen Denver, Hempstead, N.Y., and Boca Raton, Fla., a...