After a presidential and vice presidential debate presided over – “moderated” seems the wrong word – by exemplars of the liberal press, having the American people pose questions directly to the presidential candidates, as happened at St. Louis, was a refreshing change. The issues facing America, it turns out, look different to average voters than they do to the state broadcasting operation at PBS.

Conventional wisdom gives Democrats an edge on domestic issues, but the questioners in Missouri came at the candidates from the right. One, James Varner, insisted that Senator Kerry pledge not to raise taxes on middle-class Americans. Another, Matthew O’Brien, took the president to task for failing to veto more spending bills from the Congress. The only question from the audience about jobs focused on how America could become more “competitive” in manufacturing.

At the vice-presidential debate earlier in the week, the presider, Gwen Ifill, reduced the issue of medical liability reform to a matter of campaign mudslinging. “Do you feel personally attacked,” she asked Senator Edwards, “when Vice President Cheney talks about liability reform and tort reform and the president talks about having a trial lawyer on the ticket?” Ms. Ifill further challenged Mr. Cheney, “Are you willing to say that John Edwards, sitting here, has been part of the problem?”

The issue turns out to be real to most Americans, and one Show-Me voter, Norma-Jean Laurent, finally gave those Americans a voice in the debate when she put the question to Mr. Kerry in sharp relief: “Senator Kerry, you’ve stated your concern for the rising cost of health care, yet you chose a vice presidential candidate who has made millions of dollars successfully suing medical professionals. How do you reconcile this with the voters?”

Ms. Ifill, in another softball for the Kerry camp, had asked Mr. Edwards, “What’s wrong with a little flip-flop every now and then?” But the voters in Missouri made it clear that principles are important, as illuminated in the question from Cheryl Otis. “Senator Kerry, after talking with several co-workers and family and friends, I asked the ones who said they were not voting for you, ‘Why?’ They said that you were too wishy-washy,” Ms. Otis told the Democratic nominee. “Do you have a reply for them?” “I have a plan to put people back to work. That’s not wishywashy,” the senator replied wishywashily.

The Missourians in the debate hall made clear that they expect moral clarity from a president even on social issues. “Wouldn’t it be wise to use stem cells obtained without the destruction of an embryo?” asked Elizabeth Long of the senator. “You know, Elizabeth,” Mr. Kerry replied, “I really respect your – the feeling that’s in your question,” but then he dismissed Ms. Long’s ethical concerns out of hand.

Another questioner, Sarah Degenhart, asked the senator to “suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?” ABC News’s Charles Gibson deserves some credit for picking that question Friday from more than 200 submitted ahead of time by members of the studio audience. But it’d be an unusual member of the nonpartisan press corps who posed two questions with anti-abortion premises in a presidential debate.

St. Louis was a more satisfying debate because of the questions. We say that not just because it disclosed the conservative instincts of the American electorate. The questions matter. All the more reason to be skeptical that elite members of the liberal establishment can adequately represent the public when they preside over the presidential debates – which is something to think about when tonight’s debate will be run by Bob Schieffer of Dan Rather’s CBS News.