At what point does the specificity get bizarre?
I almost wrote this diary the other day when I was watch McNovaCane talk about the "town hall challenge", and I just saw the same thing again in my Newsweek and remembered.
Now, giving advice or suggestions to your opponent is a time-honored campaign trope--it has to do with Alderian power dynamics. Hence the gracious offer last week to "show around" Obama in Iraq. (Especially when your candidacy rests almost solely on a [purported] experience gap.) But there's a difference between challenging an opponent to a debate, or series of (fixed number of) debates, and challenging them to a debate on a certain date, at a certain time, in a certain state, in a certain city, in a certain, arbitrarily chosen building, in front of an audience selected by an arbitrarily chosen third-party organization.
He even was going to handle travel arrangements--"We can fly there on the same plane" (quote from memory, but near enough. There was a lame joke about fundraising disparity which was only funny b/c his loophole use of trophy wife's plane has gotten wide ink).
When does it get surreal? "The podiums will be 57.24 inches high. Yours will be oak, mine will be teak. The moderator will wear brown wingtips and part his hair to the right. The debate will be 74 and two-half minutes long. The weather should be slightly overcast."
The old adage is that travel bring out the worst in planners and non-planners alike, but this is borderline crazy. I think this amount of regimentation ties into the old thing. The image I can't get out of my head is cranky geezer going bonzo b/c Shoni's moved the early-bird special up to 4.45.
Old man yells at cloud!