At what point does the specificity get bizarre?
I almost wrote this diary the other day when I was watch McNovaCane talk about the "town hall challenge", and I just saw the same thing again in my Newsweek and remembered.
Now, giving advice or suggestions to your opponent is a time-honored campaign trope--it has to do with Alderian power dynamics. Hence the gracious offer last week to "show around" Obama in Iraq. (Especially when your candidacy rests almost solely on a [purported] experience gap.) But there's a difference between challenging an opponent to a debate, or series of (fixed number of) debates, and challenging them to a debate on a certain date, at a certain time, in a certain state, in a certain city, in a certain, arbitrarily chosen building, in front of an audience selected by an arbitrarily chosen third-party organization.
He even was going to handle travel arrangements--"We can fly there on the same plane" (quote from memory, but near enough. There was a lame joke about fundraising disparity which was only funny b/c his loophole use of trophy wife's plane has gotten wide ink).