Through such town halls, presidential campaigns have attempted to create a means to reach through the media and directly connect with the voters. All across America, candidates for lesser offices have recognized the powerful political appeal implicit in such meeting and adopted similar strategies. All though such forums seem to offer the possibility of meaningful interaction, I argue that the town hall debate is a democratic fiction, an appeal to a cherished political institution designed to mask the mediocrity of contemporary political discourse. To prove this contention, the 1992 town hall debate among Bush, Clinton, and Perot is offered as an illustration. In the page that fallow, I consider the decision to adopt a town hall format…and conclude by arguing that the first town hall debate between presidential nominees was more of a political spectacle than an exercise in democratic self-government. Working from this experience, I briefly consider the possibility of an " electronic town square," a powerful democratic image invoked by President Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union Adress