Which is stranger?—Newsweek’s report that Sarah Palin, an evangelical Christian, compared her supporters to “the people of Joe Six-Pack like me,” or that beer was publicly served for the first time on the campus of presidential debate host Belmont University, whose Web site describes it as a “Christian community with a rich Baptist heritage” and which has an alcohol policy banning “possession, which may or may not include consumption, of alcoholic beverages” and even “presence at incidents where violations” of the school’s alcohol policy occur?
Surely the latter, but there I was, last night, draining a complimentary Bud Lite at Anheuser-Busch’s media canteen, the same as I did on debate night at Ole Miss and Washington University. Belmont wanted that debate badly — badly enough that President Bob Fisher sold donor Mike Curb on the gift to fund construction of the Curb Event Center by asking him to imagine a presidential debate there; badly enough for the university to spend an estimated $3.5-million getting its campus ready for the debate; and badly enough to do whatever else the Commission on Presidential Debates demanded that it do, including allow a free-beer-for-the-media tent to be erected on its soccer field.
Is hosting a debate worth it for the the schools that compete for the privilege? Fisher thinks so: he told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that he wanted the debate “to put us on the national map.” Surely it did that this week. As for the debate’s lasting value, ask yourself: Which schools hosted a debate in 2004?
