Charlie Rose will moderate the GOP debate to be held on the Dartmouth college campus in Hanover, New Hampshire on Oct 11. Also on the panel will be Julianna Goldman, W.H. correspondent for Bloomberg Television and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post.

This debate may be a pivotal experience for the Republican contenders because it will focus on the economy and Charlie Rose and the panel will have at their disposal a Bloomberg Terminal. For those who don't know, this terminal is a coveted, high dollar mother lode of financial information. I don't know if the screens will be viewable by the television audience, but the presence of actual facts may sober up some of the participants.

The other pivotal experience will be the actual debate audience. It will be made up primarily of Dartmouth students and faculty who have received tickets on a lottery system. Having been around Dartmouth campus in the all white male days of yesterday I am tempted to joke about the reputation of Dartmouth students--the primary weekend image being lying drunk in a snowbank. Fortunately, that's changed. Dartmouth is as coed and multicultural as is possible to imagine.

I expect that the student audience will not embarrass the country and the Republican party with the kind of inexcusable behavior  evidenced in Simi Valley and Orlando. I rather think the audience will redeem America and that the intelligent questions may even uplift the discourse of candidates. But you never know whether a crazed zealot will slip through the door. Several years ago I attended a talk by the gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire held in a chapel on the Dartmouth campus. There's nothing like a gay cleric to make the blood boil. Gene Robinson spoke eloquently of his religious faith and his outreach to inmates in a female prison. It was sometime before I realized that the guy standing in the trench coat nearby the whole time was a body guard who was packing.

I think Charlie Rose has a challenge on his hands if he hopes to get anything factual out of this group of contenders. Using Perry as an example, he appeared on a CNBC interview last week (from a remote location) and couldn't handle direct questions from second stringers. When an interviewer had the audacity to follow up questions on social security, Perry's remote location went down. I think Perry is exceptionally vulnerable on his jobs claim. When you parse it he has actually under performed. Worse, 40 % of the jobs went to illegal aliens.

As for Romney, I assume he will be well prepared for direct questions involving facts on economics. Cain is a mystery. He will get a chance to demonstrate if he knows anything about economics other than running a retail food chain which puts him way down the chain in terms of Fortune 500 CEO's as well as Nobel prize winners in economics.

And what about Bachmann--we simply don't need taxes. Santorum, well he will trying to pivot to the evangelicals. And so forth. Hold on....

Ron Huntsman. Hmm. He was a trade negotiator, actually negotiated deals. Governor. Ambassador to China. Most likely can read a financial balance sheet. Doesn't necessarily have to pull his punches for a tea party audience. But most probably he won't get many questions and if he does he will probably blow it by greeting the Chinese students in the audience in their native tongue.(i.e., "showing off")

A distinction between "know" and "think". We know what these candidates think. We don't know if they know anything of substance. Matthew Dowd has been hanging around Charlie Rose and his schtick is that the only thing that counts is "passion". Let's hope that Charlie Rose dampens the passion enough to get some facts on the table. If I were one of those contenders I wouldn't be the least concerned about Christie getting into this debate. I would be worried about the Bloomberg Terminal getting into this debate. But maybe this stellar group of candidates doesn't know enough to think that.

Update. It's very hard to have a serious debate, a serious election or even a serious blog with the circus distractions of Donald Trump and now, of course, Chris Christie--who has just announced--"now is not my time". Thanks. As he won't be on the New Hampshire stage, Tom Keane of Bloomberg Radio keeps pining for Chris Christie to join him in the broadcast booth. Perhaps that will add some levity to this upcoming debate.