PotusGeeks Summer Reruns: Do Presidential Election Debates Matter?
In the 19th century, it is reported that political speeches would last for hours, often outdoors on hot days, with audiences standing and straining to hear the speaker in a time before audio amplification. This was also a time before radio, television, professional sports, or the internet (and before air conditioning) and so there were far more limited options for entertainment of the masses back then. Often it wasn't the candidates themselves who would speak, but rather a surrogate, someone who was seen as a spirited orator. There were no such thing as debates between candidates for President, even though there is a misconception that Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated one another when running for president. In fact their debates took place two years earlier, when the two debated ahead of state elections that would elect a legislature, which would in turn name one of them as the US Senator from that state. But the debates were useful in that they elevated the profiles of both men. Without these debates and the widespread reports of them, Abraham Lincoln might never have been considered a viable candidate for his party's nomination for President, and history would have unfolded much differently.
Presidential election debates didn't really begin until the John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon debates of 1960. The new media of television added an extra dimension to debating. It wasn't just what the candidates said, but how they looked, or at least that's what many people believe. Historians are not in universal agreement over whether the debates, or whether other reasons turned the tide in that election, reasons such as the desire to change parties, the appeal of a good-looking young candidate, or possibly even election fraud.
It would be another sixteen years before candidates for the Republican and Democratic Party would square off on the debate stage, as Gerald Ford struggled to hold on to a presidency that he had not been elected to, and strained to recover from his unpopular decision to pardon a much loathed president at a time when the public had lost their trust in the institution of the presidency. His opponent would use the debates to elevate his profile and to sell his message of being a Washington outsider at a time when change was badly needed.
Since then, debates have been used by campaigns to try to highlight their biggest selling point and also to spotlight their opponent's biggest weakness: age, inexperience, moral failings, spendaholic tendencies, or ties to special interest groups. Today, unlike in the 19th century, we live in an age of distraction, a time when there are better things to do than sit and listen to two politicians argue for two hours. We are now in the sound-byte age, the age of Twitter. We require our news in small bites, to match our attention spans. Modern debates have become all about the sound-byte answer, the "gotcha" question, the witty putdown. Perhaps most frustrating to serious voters is that candidates obfuscate and dodge questions. For example, in the current election, President Trump never answered questions about who he is personally indebted to for millions of dollars. Vice-President Biden has never said whether or not he will press for legislation increasing the number of seats on the US Supreme Court. Neither Vice-Presidential candidate answered a question about what discussions they had with their running mate over that candidate's age issues.
Most problematic is that the negative and polarizing rhetoric present in social media has carried forward on to the debate stage. If Kennedy and Nixon had rudely interrupted one another, if they had disrespected the moderator or had told one another "would you shut up man", audiences would have rightly concluded that neither deserved the honor of serving as their nation's chief executive. Today however, in world where reasoned response is set aside in favor of memes, falsehoods and profanity, many people tend to react to the kindergarten level of debating with amusement and support for their candidate, as if presidential politics had sunk to the level of a world wrestling federation match. Are these people hoping that one candidate will hit the other with a metal folding chair?
Presidential election debates take place in late September or October. At one time in history, political parties legitimately did not know who their candidate for president would be until the summer convention. A popular retort following the Democratic convention of 1844 was "who is James K. Polk?" For many people in the country, it was a valid question. After the Republican Convention of 1876, nominee Rutherford Hayes had no idea who the man chosen to be his running mate was. "Who is Wheeler?" he telegraphed, as if he was answering a Jeopardy question. ("I'll take obscure Vice-Presidents for $1000 Alex.")
Today however public campaigning for president begins after the midterms, with intra-party debates beginning 18 months prior to the election. By the time October of the next year rolls around, the majority of people will generally know who they are voting for, with the election becoming a battle for the hearts and minds (and votes) of less than 10% of the population of a handful of "swing states". Do debates tip the balance in these contests?
In his "13 Keys" system of predicting the outcome of Presidential elections, Professor Alan J. Lichtman suggests that there are 13 "keys" or conditions which serve as predictors of every presidential election. If 5 or fewer of these keys are false, the incumbent party wins the next election, but if 6 or more are false, the incumbent party loses the white house. According to Professor Lichtman, this formula has predicted every Presidential election in the modern era. Listed below, none of these suggest that any weight should be placed on debate performance. Some support for this conclusion is found in past history. George W. Bush's poor performance in the 2004 debates did not impede his re-election. Was the 1980 election won because Ronald Reagan asked Americans if they were worse off than they were four years ago, or because most Americans were actually worse off? If having to attend a debate and defend a recorded comment made by candidate Donald Trump about his being famous enough to be able to grab women "by the pussy" doesn't terminate a presidential candidate's chances to win, what does it take?
Debates offer the candidates access to a very large viewing audience. It allows them to attack their opponent's record in the presence of that opponent. Debates offer the opportunity to put pointed and direct questions to the candidate, targeting matters that voters want to know and that informed voters should know, even if the candidates refuse to answer those questions. But do debates really matter in the end?
My conclusion is that it is only in the very closest of election that a candidate's performance in a debate might make a difference to the voters and in the outcome of the election. Far more often than not, and in their present format, debates are generally a waste of time. This is so because there is no mechanism in place to require candidates to answer the questions put to them, or to enforce the rules of the debate that the candidates have agreed to.
Campaigns negotiate agreements over debate rules that will later be broken. Moderators get blamed for that, when they are doing the best they can under the circumstances. Campaigns that believe that they are ahead will refuse to participate in debates unless the debates take place on their terms. However neither campaign want to be accused of cowardice in refusing to debate, and so there are limits on what the leading campaign can insist on. But generally, it is the voters who are the losers in these negotiations.
So, here is my proposal for the reform of presidential debate procedure. These proposals are based on the premise that the debates are an entitlement of the electorate and not an indulgence by the campaigns. The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) should insist on certain basic rules of conduct, with meaningful sanctions for breaching those rules, before allowing a candidate to attend a debate. Any campaign refusing to adhere to these basic rules, crafted for the benefit of the voter, should be condemned for a lack of integrity and for lacking the courage to submit its platform and policies to fair and genuine scrutiny.
These are the rule changes I would propose:
1) Candidates' microphones should be turned on only when it is their turn to speak, and only for the allotted time. Otherwise they should be turned off. When the time is up, the microphone is silent.
2) The moderator's role is to pose the questions to the candidates. The moderator must not debate with or challenge or contradict the answers of the candidate, as was done by CNN's Candy Crawley in 2012. The candidates are there to debate one another, not the moderator.
3) There should be a maximum of two debates, one on domestic issues, and on on foreign affairs.
4) A panel (either of journalists, academics or voters) should be randomly selected, whose function it will be to grade each candidate as to whether or not the candidate has answered the question put to him or her. The grades could be: yes, partly, or no. In this way, those candidates who dodge a question, who obfuscate, or who pivot to another answer can be called out and shamed for doing so, and for denying the voters a straight answer to what voters want to know.
It is unlikely that the campaigns would agree to this kind of accountability. But if debates were offered to candidates on this basis, one of two things would happen: (1) either the candidates would agree and the debates would become more valuable to voters; or (2) candidates would refuse to hold debates and time would not be wasted on meaningless displays of hubris and disingenuous posturing.
I suspect that a very small percentage of people have had their minds changed during the 2020 election about where to park their vote because of the debates that took place. Polarization is strong, and it has resulted in an unhealthy lack of respect for and contempt of persons who do not think the same. Reform of the system for Presidential Election Debates would be one small step in the right direction of restoring dignity to the political process and respect for diversity of thought.
Presidential election debates didn't really begin until the John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon debates of 1960. The new media of television added an extra dimension to debating. It wasn't just what the candidates said, but how they looked, or at least that's what many people believe. Historians are not in universal agreement over whether the debates, or whether other reasons turned the tide in that election, reasons such as the desire to change parties, the appeal of a good-looking young candidate, or possibly even election fraud.
It would be another sixteen years before candidates for the Republican and Democratic Party would square off on the debate stage, as Gerald Ford struggled to hold on to a presidency that he had not been elected to, and strained to recover from his unpopular decision to pardon a much loathed president at a time when the public had lost their trust in the institution of the presidency. His opponent would use the debates to elevate his profile and to sell his message of being a Washington outsider at a time when change was badly needed.
Since then, debates have been used by campaigns to try to highlight their biggest selling point and also to spotlight their opponent's biggest weakness: age, inexperience, moral failings, spendaholic tendencies, or ties to special interest groups. Today, unlike in the 19th century, we live in an age of distraction, a time when there are better things to do than sit and listen to two politicians argue for two hours. We are now in the sound-byte age, the age of Twitter. We require our news in small bites, to match our attention spans. Modern debates have become all about the sound-byte answer, the "gotcha" question, the witty putdown. Perhaps most frustrating to serious voters is that candidates obfuscate and dodge questions. For example, in the current election, President Trump never answered questions about who he is personally indebted to for millions of dollars. Vice-President Biden has never said whether or not he will press for legislation increasing the number of seats on the US Supreme Court. Neither Vice-Presidential candidate answered a question about what discussions they had with their running mate over that candidate's age issues.
Most problematic is that the negative and polarizing rhetoric present in social media has carried forward on to the debate stage. If Kennedy and Nixon had rudely interrupted one another, if they had disrespected the moderator or had told one another "would you shut up man", audiences would have rightly concluded that neither deserved the honor of serving as their nation's chief executive. Today however, in world where reasoned response is set aside in favor of memes, falsehoods and profanity, many people tend to react to the kindergarten level of debating with amusement and support for their candidate, as if presidential politics had sunk to the level of a world wrestling federation match. Are these people hoping that one candidate will hit the other with a metal folding chair?
Presidential election debates take place in late September or October. At one time in history, political parties legitimately did not know who their candidate for president would be until the summer convention. A popular retort following the Democratic convention of 1844 was "who is James K. Polk?" For many people in the country, it was a valid question. After the Republican Convention of 1876, nominee Rutherford Hayes had no idea who the man chosen to be his running mate was. "Who is Wheeler?" he telegraphed, as if he was answering a Jeopardy question. ("I'll take obscure Vice-Presidents for $1000 Alex.")
Today however public campaigning for president begins after the midterms, with intra-party debates beginning 18 months prior to the election. By the time October of the next year rolls around, the majority of people will generally know who they are voting for, with the election becoming a battle for the hearts and minds (and votes) of less than 10% of the population of a handful of "swing states". Do debates tip the balance in these contests?
In his "13 Keys" system of predicting the outcome of Presidential elections, Professor Alan J. Lichtman suggests that there are 13 "keys" or conditions which serve as predictors of every presidential election. If 5 or fewer of these keys are false, the incumbent party wins the next election, but if 6 or more are false, the incumbent party loses the white house. According to Professor Lichtman, this formula has predicted every Presidential election in the modern era. Listed below, none of these suggest that any weight should be placed on debate performance. Some support for this conclusion is found in past history. George W. Bush's poor performance in the 2004 debates did not impede his re-election. Was the 1980 election won because Ronald Reagan asked Americans if they were worse off than they were four years ago, or because most Americans were actually worse off? If having to attend a debate and defend a recorded comment made by candidate Donald Trump about his being famous enough to be able to grab women "by the pussy" doesn't terminate a presidential candidate's chances to win, what does it take?
Debates offer the candidates access to a very large viewing audience. It allows them to attack their opponent's record in the presence of that opponent. Debates offer the opportunity to put pointed and direct questions to the candidate, targeting matters that voters want to know and that informed voters should know, even if the candidates refuse to answer those questions. But do debates really matter in the end?
My conclusion is that it is only in the very closest of election that a candidate's performance in a debate might make a difference to the voters and in the outcome of the election. Far more often than not, and in their present format, debates are generally a waste of time. This is so because there is no mechanism in place to require candidates to answer the questions put to them, or to enforce the rules of the debate that the candidates have agreed to.
Campaigns negotiate agreements over debate rules that will later be broken. Moderators get blamed for that, when they are doing the best they can under the circumstances. Campaigns that believe that they are ahead will refuse to participate in debates unless the debates take place on their terms. However neither campaign want to be accused of cowardice in refusing to debate, and so there are limits on what the leading campaign can insist on. But generally, it is the voters who are the losers in these negotiations.
So, here is my proposal for the reform of presidential debate procedure. These proposals are based on the premise that the debates are an entitlement of the electorate and not an indulgence by the campaigns. The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) should insist on certain basic rules of conduct, with meaningful sanctions for breaching those rules, before allowing a candidate to attend a debate. Any campaign refusing to adhere to these basic rules, crafted for the benefit of the voter, should be condemned for a lack of integrity and for lacking the courage to submit its platform and policies to fair and genuine scrutiny.
These are the rule changes I would propose:
1) Candidates' microphones should be turned on only when it is their turn to speak, and only for the allotted time. Otherwise they should be turned off. When the time is up, the microphone is silent.
2) The moderator's role is to pose the questions to the candidates. The moderator must not debate with or challenge or contradict the answers of the candidate, as was done by CNN's Candy Crawley in 2012. The candidates are there to debate one another, not the moderator.
3) There should be a maximum of two debates, one on domestic issues, and on on foreign affairs.
4) A panel (either of journalists, academics or voters) should be randomly selected, whose function it will be to grade each candidate as to whether or not the candidate has answered the question put to him or her. The grades could be: yes, partly, or no. In this way, those candidates who dodge a question, who obfuscate, or who pivot to another answer can be called out and shamed for doing so, and for denying the voters a straight answer to what voters want to know.
It is unlikely that the campaigns would agree to this kind of accountability. But if debates were offered to candidates on this basis, one of two things would happen: (1) either the candidates would agree and the debates would become more valuable to voters; or (2) candidates would refuse to hold debates and time would not be wasted on meaningless displays of hubris and disingenuous posturing.
I suspect that a very small percentage of people have had their minds changed during the 2020 election about where to park their vote because of the debates that took place. Polarization is strong, and it has resulted in an unhealthy lack of respect for and contempt of persons who do not think the same. Reform of the system for Presidential Election Debates would be one small step in the right direction of restoring dignity to the political process and respect for diversity of thought.