If you were one of the roughly 73 million people who watched the first presidential debate of the 2020 general election, there’s a decent chance you walked away feeling a sense of bleakness and mental exhaustion from the political spectacle you had just witnessed. Riddled with interruptions and insults, raised voices and falsehoods, those ninety minutes were perhaps the best argument for doing away with presidential debates as we know them. It’s important to note, however, that these debates haven’t been useful or necessary for a while now—dating back far before Donald Trump ever took the stage. So why aren’t these debates working for our democracy, and what are the better options?
Debates are staged by television networks that are more interested in viewership profits than accurate and intelligent civil discourse.
Have you ever watched a presidential debate and wondered how a simple conversation can escalate so rapidly and devolve into a petty squabble? To find the answer, we need to go to the source: the questions being asked by the network moderators. Debate questions are typically designed to pit candidates against each other, rather than to give each person a chance to explain their policy stances. The inclusion of phrases in debate questions such as “in comparison to your opponent” or “your opponent says…. how do you respond?” are deliberately chosen to trigger a flight or fight response in the candidate which most often ends in frustration and angered statements. We can’t stop television networks from being television networks, so we end up with debates that are political theater staged especially to attract viewership by boosting shock value.
Debate format doesn’t give candidates an adequate environment to actually explain their policy stances.
Public policy at the national level is an immensely nuanced and complex thing, and should be treated as such when being discussed on a debate stage. It’s difficult for candidates to properly and coherently express their stances and plans for the country’s most pressing issue when they’re only given a thirty second window of time. The fact of the matter is that real, comprehensive debate often isn’t snappy or entertaining, because it takes time for people to flesh out their opinions and to formulate responses that will best articulate their arguments. We’ve come to expect that candidates come prepared with soundbites, as opposed to fully-formed policy stances, which prevents voters from being more well-rounded in their understanding of hot-button issues.
Debates enforce the idea that personality is more important than policy when deciding who to vote for.
How many times have you heard someone say that a candidate seems attractive because “you could have a beer with them”? The flash-charm-handshake bit of politics is a hallmark of American campaigns, and the way we run our presidential debates encourages people to never look past the surface level of a candidate. Debates are a high pressure situation, and not everyone is cut out for television. It’s easy for candidates with less of a stage presence to be overlooked because of their seemingly lackluster debate performances, even when they may have comprehensive and intelligent policy plans. In short, debates force policymakers to be TV stars, and it’s simply wrong to try and make politicians into something they aren’t supposed to be.
Debates often lead to the over-generalization of important issues and policy records.
During last week’s debate, there were several mentions of Joe Biden’s policy record by President Trump, most frequently taking the form of “well, if it’s such a problem, why didn’t you fix it during your forty-seven years in government?” These combative statements are one example of how the rushed and hostile environment of a debate can lead to oversimplification of how government works and what politicians actually do during their careers. It doesn’t sound good on a debate stage for Joe Biden to explain that although he’s led a long career in government, one public servant can’t affect mass systemic change on their own, so instead viewers are left with the impression that any one person in government can fundamentally alter the country just by being there. It gets even worse when entire policy platforms are oversimplified and generalized, as candidates and moderators throw nuance out the window in search of that perfect, unifying soundbite. Policy debates should include concessions of point and exceptions and acknowledgements of changed minds, because that’s how real governing happens in this country. By allowing these superficial generalizations to occur, we perpetuate the idea that every issue exists in a black and white landscape with no nuance whatsoever.
Statistics show that debates don’t typically reach undecided voters or have any outsize impact on swaying anyone to vote a certain way.
Research done in 2019 by the Harvard Business School found that seventy-two percent of voters know who they intend to vote for around two months before the election, a window of time before presidential debates are even aired. Those who are swayed within those last two months before an election don’t do so following televised debates. The research initiative also found that voters who do change their minds on who to support don’t typically do so based on policy preferences, but rather based on whatever information is uncovered about campaigns and candidates as issues evolve in the media. Upholding televised debates as a crucial part of the democratic process simply isn’t accurate, and too many people use that argument to defend a practice that just isn’t working.
There are ways to have productive and educational debates that might actually inform voters and encourage them to put policy first—presidential debates should be job interviews.
If you’re like me and you’ve watched The West Wing three times through on Netflix, you’re familiar with the season seven debate episode. At the beginning of the episode, while the debate moderator is outlining the format and rules of the night, Republican nominee Arnold Vinnick interrupts and proposes that the rules be scrapped, allowing for a freer form of debate that flows more like an intellectual conversation than a series of shots being taken at either candidate. The Democratic nominee, Matt Santos, agrees to Vinnick’s proposal, and the two go on to have an hour-long discussion of issues ranging from job creation and immigration policy to foreign aid and debt relief that lasts the duration of the episode. If you’re not a policy junkie, you probably skipped that episode, because it’s an ideal debate: two people of opposing viewpoints having a detailed and complex conversation about issues which voters should know about. It was boring, but in a delightfully educational way. It wasn’t television at all, and it showed everyone who watched it what our presidential debates should look like. What’s more than that, a legitimate debate will weed out candidates who are underqualified, because ideas that can’t be defended in an intelligent and civil conversation are telling of a candidate that can’t be defended either.
Presidential debates should function like a job interview: someone asks questions and poses hypothetical situations, and the candidate responds civilly, with responses based on their own record and stances. It’s ridiculous to imagine a job interview where the candidate makes the case for themselves entirely based on what they find to be wrong with the other guy sitting outside of the office who’s also up for the job. Granted, politics is inherently rooted in opposition, but debates don’t have to be. In a productive debate, there would be very little discussion by any one candidate about their opponent. Questions would be directed towards an individual, to be answered based upon the merits of that individual, prohibiting candidates from standing on the flaws of their opposition instead of their own credentials. The moderators would ask nuanced and civilly-connotated questions with the aim to foster productive discussion instead of trying to get candidates to pick at each other. There probably wouldn’t be any viral moments or memeable comments, and that’s okay. People wouldn’t have to raise their voices or shout over one another or be fact-checked in real time. All of the things we’ve become accustomed to seeing in presidential debates would largely be scrapped, and hopefully as a result we all become more informed and decisive voters.