If, like me, you find the presidential debate format a rather meaningless exercise, you will be astonished at what one-on-one interviews by a skilled interrogator can accomplish.

At the Iowa Family Leader Conference, Tucker Carlson interviewed several leading contenders for president: Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis.

If the participants thought this was going to be another tongue bath, they were certainly surprised. He asked hard questions, and some of their answers exposed their muddled thinking. At least two of them – Asa Hutchinson and Mike Pence -- were clear losers and can now be safely considered out of the running.  If you haven’t had an opportunity to listen to all the interviews on the site, I’ll summarize some of the highlights.

Tucker chided Pence for being more concerned about defending Ukraine than with dealing with domestic problems. 

Tucker: "Where's the concern for the United States?"

Pence: "That's not my concern. Tucker I've heard this routine from you before. That's not my concern."

Pence tried to duck this gaffe by claiming it was out of context, but the video is undoctored, and the response is clear. I believe his campaign is now dead.

He offered up an extended clip in which he said, "Anybody that says that we can’t be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on Earth. We can do both. 

“And as president of the United States, we will secure our border, we will support our military, we will revive our economy and stand by our values. And we will also lead the world for freedom under my administration. I promise you.”  

I don't think his optimism about our present ability to achieve all these ends is shared by many.

Asa Hutchinson was asked if he’d changed his opinion after he vetoed an Arkansas Bill banning transgendering surgical treatment for children. “The bill made what it called an 'exception' for some intersex people with unspecified chromosomal makeup and hormone production, and those with difficulties resulting from previous gender-affirming treatments. It also would have banned ​so-called 'cross-hormone' therapy,​ a gender-affirming treatment that allows for trans people to ​change their physical appearance to be more consistent with their gender identity.”

Tucker noted that hormonal treatment of children created a permanent alteration, as did surgical intervention, and that Hutchinson forbade restricting surgery and cross-hormonal therapy.  How did he feel two years later about hormonal treatments?  Hutchinson did not offer a satisfactory answer. Probably because he could not. He began by saying “God says there are two sexes,” but then continued that parents have a right to change that. The response was so muddled, it was unconvincing. I mark that as another candidate out of the race.

Tucker was a bit softer on Haley, letting her off harder questions on her hawkish views on Ukraine. She showed a lot of political savvy and poise. Nevertheless, she did not do well on the questions of climate change, and fudged on the question of whether she thought that 2020 was a fair election, deflecting to a plea about achieving election integrity. She said there were a lot of irregularities but didn’t think it affected the results even though she agreed that the Intelligence Community had too much power and interfered with the 2020 election. She displayed great managerial instincts and was great on cleaning out those agencies and the Department of Justice. And she has a record to back this up, which she described. On homelessness, she argued that we need more mental health treatment and major changes to the present health care system. (Certainly, these are valid issues, though I don’t see how that can result in short-term changes.) On climate change, she notes that re the Paris Climate Agreement she was critical of the plan that hampers us while letting the China and India, the major emitters, alone. She argued for energy independence -- it’s “a national security threat,” contending that we need that and a strong military. Haley said she didn’t know who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline, which hurt our western allies. As for the White House cocaine find, she said only few people go into that area and surveillance cameras are placed at that spot and called the Secret Service report a “cover-up for Hunter or someone very close to the president.” (The latest of a series of changing reports is that the cocaine was not in the situation room, but outside it. Still, I wouldn’t hold her responsible for an account which has been so rapidly changing.)

She contended that the federal spending is seriously out of control and blamed both parties, noting Republicans doubled down on earmarks all while Americans are in debt and Social Security and Medicare will be going broke and said there was no reason to justify the refusal to release the JFK assassination reports.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a smart, very successful businessman and the only millennial in the race, was very impressive. He began by saying Americans were “Starved for purpose and meaning -- things like patriotism, hard work and family -- and widespread depression, suicide, transgenderism are symptoms of this." We have, he believes, an opportunity to fill that vacuum with more than “race, sex, transgenderism.”  We have a “moral hunger,” he claims, and that calls for a turn away from globalism and return to nationalism. He was firm on Ukraine, contending there is no basis  to send our military to secure some other country’s border while neglecting our own. He was critical of the support the war has received from both parties, which appear to feel that we have a politically correct war while ignoring the fact that it has actually, among other things, strengthened the Russia-China alliance, which is the worst threat. He offered up his ideas for a negotiated settlement that includes a promise not to add Ukraine to NATO and allows Russia some territory.

Unlike those who blame Trump for the January 6 events, he blames the Biden Administration-Big Tech censorship.  "You want to know what caused J6? Pervasive censorship in this country in the lead-up to J6. We were told you could not question where the virus came from. We were told that you could not send a private message to someone on the eve of an election that Hunter Biden's laptop story was true. You were told you had to be locked down, you had to take a vaccine that was mandated while Antifa and BLM roam and burn the streets. That's what caused J6. A cycle of censorship.” Several other striking statements of his seem to me to be of great appeal: “True ‘privilege’ is not based on the color of your skin. It’s being raised in a stable family with two parents with a focus on education and a faith in God. That’s the ultimate “privilege…” “Math isn't racist. But you know what might be? Not teaching black kids how to do math."

Ron DeSantis also came out well in his interview. As governor of Florida, he signed a bill that banned abortion after six weeks and would use the presidential bully pulpit to encourage more governors to pass more restrictive abortion laws. He acknowledged that this must be done by the consensus in each state. As for global warming, he said he concentrated on improving the environment which actually impacts peoples’ lives and that forcing people into electric vehicles is not going to work. Questioned about whether he was concerned that all the immigrants to his state from California and New York would turn his red state blue, he responded that’s not happening, that most of these new residents moved because they opted for freedom, away from “insanity” and toward traditional values. 

He chided our government’s foreign-policy leaders, saying we need to concretely define the mission there and, moreover, we must decide what is in our national interests -- our border or Ukraine’s. He was quite adamant about the invasion across our borders, and in particular the need to smash the cartels. Specifically he said we need to focus more on the threat from China, stop providing at our cost blanket security to Europe, end the war in Ukraine, and stop giving Iran a free pass. Asked about his thoughts on the Federal Reserve’s plan to rid us of cash and crypto currency, he said he’d nix any such plan, which he sees as a means to impose a social credit system on this country .As for the Intelligence Community and other agencies which sabotage the Chief Executive, he said he’d immediately name a new FBI director and fill all executive branch positions which do not require confirmation on the first day, and that anticipating media outrage if he did this, he said Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president that power. Furthermore, he would have used that power to fire Fauci and those government employees who colluded in censorship, and that on a case-by-case basis he’d pardon those who were targeted by a partisan Department of Justice.

He added that government censorship on COVID killed people and hurt schoolchildren and without a “major accounting” this “weaponization of government” will happen again. He said the practice of agencies classifying documents to protect themselves, is a big problem, that he would declassify as much as possible, requiring the agencies to meet a high bar to block declassification.

In the time allotted for these interviews, the candidates answered the questions put to them, and there may be more a voter might want to know which remained unasked.

It takes nothing, however, from Carlson’s brilliant interviewing skills to note that this is a far better method of letting voters know about the candidates, than what is ridiculously called “debates” -- kick lines of large numbers of contenders, predictable questions from biased moderators, followed by short, often obviously scripted responses and one-line sound bites.  No serious candidate should continue to participate in them and no intelligent voter should bother watching them.