Presidential Debates--Or Game Shows?

Alex Tabarrok came up with a really interesting idea last year, and he's repeating it now. Instead of holding presidential debates, which are OK as beauty contests, not so good as press conferences, and utterly abysmal as a forum for discussing policy, maybe we should have our candidates compete in a series of contests, which would test various skill sets that might be handy to have if you were president. Apparently somebody at the NYT is thinking along the same lines.