Steinn offers an excellent suggestion, after noticing that CNN is soliciting debate questions from random people on the Internet:
Keith over at NASAwatch suggested his reader swamp it with NASA policy questions to try to get one into the actual debate. Scienceblog readers could do the same – send in a lot of good, coherent, concise question on science policy and closely related issues. Lots of questions.
Just do it. Don’t talk about it, don’t dither.
Pick a question that you think is important and interesting, on science, for this debate, and send it in.
They can still ignore the science questions, but maybe someone will sit up and take notice, and maybe even ask a question or two.
This may very well be futile– they can still sift through the questions and pick out inane ones about clothes or haircuts– but if enough smart people send smart questions, we might be able to make them have to work to be stupid. And if it’s enough work to be stupid, something halfway intelligent might make it into the debate just by accident.