Oh my but this was funny:

``What they're trying to do is basically gag that audience,'' said Alan Schroeder, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston and author of ``Televised Presidential Debates: 40 Years of High-Risk TV.'' The Bush team didn't want the town hall and agreed to it only after concessions on the other debates, he said. ``Their next thought was to try to get the rules that they thought might favor Bush.''

(from Bloomberg.com)

So Bush was afraid of the audience asking unscripted questions, eh? I wonder why...or maybe it was his writers and staff who were really afraid of the questions...