Apparently there was some confusion in Fox News' coverage of Hillary Clinton's proposal that she and Barack Obama compete in some Lincoln-Douglas debates.
I think there's an underexplored historical counterfactual in which the United States uses a different kind of electoral system -- like popular vote with a run-off -- that resulted in a Stephen Douglas presidency without any change in the underlying shape of public opinion.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/05/lincoln-douglass/44606/
