Q: Has the perpetual news cycle and the multiplication of media covering the race made any dent in that significance?

Crystal: I don't think anything that all the other media do is comparable to the two individuals being together alone on a stage debating the issues with a moderator. All this other stuff doesn't replicate that.

Q: From the point of view of the candidates, can they hope to win over voters during the debates, or is it more about not losing?

Crystal: I would say both. I would think in a contest that is very close... that it can work both ways, that you can lose it but also, I think, contribute a lot to winning it. How people evaluate you becomes pretty important, separate from the particular line that stands out historically as we saw in a lot of the "Debating Our Destiny" segments.

Mills: Definitely it can be detrimental. If you look, for example, at [Michael] Dukakis, when he was asked the question about if his wife was raped, would he support the death penalty... if you just read the transcript, there's nothing really wrong with what he said, but people were very shocked that he didn't say, "Oh, I could have hogtied him and killed the person myself." There was no emotion.

There's something ephemeral, almost, there's something that comes across or doesn't come across. It happens.

Q: Something particular to the medium of television?

Crystal: You're seeing them close up -- as close up as you can see them without being there. And you're seeing them also in a basically unprepared situation -- although they prepare enormously for the debates -- but the dynamic of the two of them.

I also think that this year there's a change in format that is going to be very valuable. The format as it now stands is that after a question, each candidate will answer for a couple of minutes. Historically, that's the way they've always been.... Now, once those, the A and the B responses, are made, then there are going to be about five minutes of open discussion that the moderator will deal with to talk about a subject. I think that's going to be much more fruitful and valuable because you won't have that stopwatch running.

Q: Which presidential candidate performed most effectively at the debates?

Mills: Other than [Ronald] Reagan? [Bill] Clinton. Clinton had an ease, he was such a communicator.

Crystal: He was successful. Certainly Reagan was quite successful.

Mills: We know who wasn't.

Crystal: Right, I think that's a good point. You know better who wasn't than exactly who was the most.

Mills: I think that goes to [President] Bush's point: you don't ever win them, but you can lose them. You have to be very careful. That's why you remember [Al] Gore sighing and Bush's own eye-rolling and things like that.

Crystal: I would rephrase that a little bit, only that -- easier to lose. Which doesn't mean that you can't win them, that you can't make such a good impression -- either in a particular debate or cumulatively, for the presidential candidates, over three debates -- that you can leave such a positive and strong impression that it has that positive impact when people get into the voting booth.

Q: How do you know if you've done that?

Crystal: That's a tough question because it's what sticks in people's minds, because as you've just pointed out, they listen and watch and then they start hearing both the spin and the pundits and the reporting about it and what life it takes on after that. So that's a sociological polling study that I don't know the answer to.

Do people's perceptions get changed from the point of watching it? You have the classic, too, of the Nixon-Kennedy debate, where people who watched on television clearly thought that [John] Kennedy had won the debate and people who listened on radio felt just the opposite. I keep thinking... Roger Mudd was interviewing Ted Kennedy and asked, "Why do you want to be president?" And he wasn't able to answer it very articulately, but in the context of the program, it didn't seem so devastating. But in the aftermath, people reporting about it, talking about it, being interviewed about it, it certainly had an impact.

Q: How have the debates changed over the years?

Mills: One of the things you don't see in this documentary but you see in the first one is [Jimmy] Carter and [Gerald] Ford, when they had an audio problem, and they stood there at their podiums, not looking at each other ... and they lost sound for close to 30 minutes, I think. And they literally stood there. It was just so funny. In our interview, which is in the first show, Carter said, "Well, that was just ridiculous. I should have walked over, we should have talked." But they didn't want to seem that they wanted to sit down. They could have gone and talked to each other, but they just stood there like zombies for 30 minutes while they tried to find the audio.

Crystal: The rules were also stringent then.

Mills: I doubt that would happen now. I think people would be more casual.

Crystal: I think the other change -- I can't remember when it started -- the audience participation where they had voters up on stage and voters asking the questions.

Mills: The upside of that is that you do get a spontaneity, but the bad side of it is, it's hard to have continuity and have follow-up questions if you're bouncing all around. And you might get a frivolous question from the audience or something like that.

Q: Have the campaigns become more aggressive in setting the boundaries of the debates?

Crystal: Oh, they've always been aggressive, but I think the debate commission has been able to extend more influence and involvement recently in the last couple of debates than previously -- by small margins, because generally you've got to get both candidates to agree.

Q: The Democratic primary debates in particular saw attention turn from the candidates themselves to the moderators and the questions they asked. Does that attention make it harder for the moderators to do their job?

Crystal: Well, I have two thoughts. One is, to call what goes on during the primaries "debates" is a misnomer. They really aren't debates, and it's hard for them to be debates with so many people speaking. You seldom get to really explore a particular subject. And you've got people from the same party and so often, in the primary debates, there's relative agreement on a lot of topics. And so it gets down more to the campaign and personalities. Whereas I think the presidential debates tend very much to stay with the issues because they're organized that way. So it's hard to know how -- you can't predict how aggressive a particular candidate is going to be in putting forth his or her position or in attacking the other person's position.

Q: Earlier this year, John McCain proposed a series of town-hall-style debates. Would you have liked to see that happen? Do more debates produce a more informed electorate?

Mills: I think people lose interest. I think there's a media saturation point. We saw that with the primary ones. It was, yet again, another group having a debate. They're not always televised. It depends on if these town meetings are televised and who's televising them and what communities they're in, because they become highly specialized then: This is the debate for old people, this is the debate for young people.

Crystal: But certainly, if you get down to the final candidates... the more opportunities there are for them to discuss the issues together, that's valuable. I agree with Susan that there's going to be some point of diminishing returns in terms of voter interest, but certainly theoretically or conceptually, I think that kind of thing is very valuable. I think it doesn't work very well where you've got six or eight people up because inevitably you don't really get an interchange on the issues very much. Some, but not very much.

Q: One of the presidential debates this year will include questions submitted online. Where do you see the debate format going in the future?

Crystal: Well, prior to this year I would have said expanding the discussion between the two candidates without time limitations. The more that that could be done, even more than this one, the better. To give the moderator -- and really, the candidates -- a chance to explore an important topic without being concerned about the clock, I think is one of the most valuable things that you can do. Now, I realize that in the Lincoln-Douglass debates, they were longer than 90 minutes.