Obama/McCain Town Halls: Which town, whose hall?

We can thank the powers that be that both the Obama and McCain campaigns have rejected ABC's proposal to air the first of the proposed Town Hall meetings.

The invitation came in the form of a joint letter on Sunday to the campaigns from Mr. Bloomberg and David Westin, president of ABC News. The two had proposed a 90-minute session at Federal Hall National Memorial in Lower Manhattan that would be moderated by Diane Sawyer, one of the hosts of “Good Morning America” on ABC. [...]

[B]oth campaigns issued statements Sunday saying that they had agreed that any sessions between the two would not be moderated by an individual network or news organization as a sponsor. They did not dismiss the locale, however.

Can you imagine a structure better designed to trivialize the debate than a command performance for Disney-owned ABC moderated by the deeply intellectual and serious political journalist Diane Sawyer of freaking "Good Morning America"?

Now I pray that they "dismiss the locale" as well. Federal Hall would be a wonderful venue if it weren't for Mike Bloomberg hovering in the immediate vicinity.

Ever since Bloomberg's presidential trial balloons were shot down, he's been looking for a way to thrust himself onto the national stage or, at least, stay in the spotlight when his term-limited mayoral stint ends. I'm afraid Bloomberg seriously thinks he has a chance to be a VP pick -- by either candidate!

Now the cash-strapped McCain may believe he needs Bloomberg's endorsement to get at the mayor's money, but Mike would have to beat off JoeMentum with a stick to get close enough to the Maverick for consideration. Obama doesn't need Bloomberg's money or the endorsement of an opportunistic changeling who went from Democrat to Republican to Independent but who never stopped being an autocratic CEO.

No, the candidates would find that attending any festivity hosted by Mike Bloomberg would be more like an Amway pitch party: They'd be expected to buy what Mike's selling and start working for his organization of bi-partisan prigs.