Again and again, he took the handkerchief and wiped a face that glowed under the hot TV lights.
Richard Nixon would abandon the first televised US presidential debate in 1960, facing a barrage of criticism: his performance was too evasive, too sweaty. After that race, he and other presidential candidates would refuse to participate in another debate for the next 16 years.
But in the 1980s, an organization was created to pressure Republicans and Democrats to participate: the Commission on Presidential Debates. It would orchestrate the debates for the next three decades.
That streak ended this year when candidates took matters into their own hands. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump bypassed the commission for the first time in their history, negotiating instead with television networks to host the debates.
On Thursday night, as the two candidates face off, viewers may not notice a big difference in the format. But behind the scenes, experts say there has been a shift in power – away from external management and towards candidate control.
A story of changing control
Television debates, however, have changed hands several times over their decades-long history.
In 1960, when Nixon participated in the first televised debates with John F. Kennedy – the eventual winner of that year’s race – the television studios were in charge and there was no audience.
“It all started with network television,” explained Alan Schroeder, professor emeritus of journalism at Northeastern University and author of a book on the history of presidential debates. “They took turns broadcasting the debates, and that was the only time it was done that way.”
After 1960, however, public debates ceased. It wasn’t until 1976 that they started again, largely under the auspices of the League of Women Voters, a nonprofit organization that emerged from the women’s suffrage movement.
“But they had a hard time negotiating with the candidates,” Schroeder said. “The candidates made many demands and made it very difficult for the sponsors to carry out their work.”
This left an opening for a new entity to emerge. In 1987, the two main US political parties – the Democrats and the Republicans – announced the joint creation of the Commission on Presidential Debates.
It was designed as a bipartisan body to host debates. But even so, critics questioned whether the change would put more power in the hands of major party candidates.
“I think they are trying to steal the debates from American voters,” Nancy Neuman, then president of the League of Women Voters, told the New York Times after the announcement.
The commission also marked a change from nonpartisan to bipartisan leadership, raising fears that third-party candidates would be excluded from debates.
“It took control of the presidential debates precisely because the League was independent, precisely because this organization of women had the courage to face the candidates that the main parties had nominated”, George Farah, author of No Debate: How the Republican and The Democratic Parties secretly control presidential debates, he told The Guardian in 2012.
How Trump changed the game
But the commission has historically positioned itself as representing the American people.
In an interview last month with The Daily Show, the commission’s co-founder and co-chair, Frank Fahrenkopf, argued that the group’s role was to be an “intermediary for the public.”
This characterization was also challenged, especially when a new, unconventional candidate began to reshape the political sphere: Trump.
The shift in power began in 2016, when then-candidates Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off. The first confrontation was the most watched debate in the event’s history, attracting 84 million viewers.
But Trump denounced the debates as “biased” and suggested he might skip them in the future.
He reiterated these criticisms again in 2020 when he faced re-election as sitting president. The first debate that year was chaotic. Trump repeatedly interrupted candidate Joe Biden, prompting the Democrat to remark, “Will you shut up, man?”
“Four years ago, these debates were a disaster,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution. She described the 2020 debates as a turning point – and as an “embarrassment”.
“It was out of control. The format was out of control,” Kamarck said. “The commission really couldn’t keep control of it anymore.”
This electoral cycle threatened to repeat itself: Trump and Biden are expected to once again be their parties’ respective nominees and, last November, the commission released its usual schedule of debate dates.
But then campaigns began demanding more control. Trump’s team, in particular, called the commission’s timeline “unacceptable.” He argued that the debates should take place before the start of the early voting period in September.
“The Presidential Debate Commission calendar only begins after millions of Americans have already voted,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.
He also warned: “We are committed to making this happen with or without the Presidential Debate Commission.”
Debating ‘on your own terms’
Finally, in May, Biden announced that he had accepted a debate invitation from the news network CNN – and challenged Trump to do the same. Trump agreed. The commission was completely excluded from the process.
But Kamarck said the public back-and-forth was the result of behind-the-scenes negotiations by the rival campaigns. Biden’s team, for example, requested that third-party candidates be excluded and that no members of the public be involved.
“The two political campaigns negotiated with each other and presented the format of the debate to the TV stations,” said Kamarck. “CNN didn’t start this – they just ended it.”
Kamarck emphasized that Trump’s opposition to the originally scheduled debates was likely a deciding factor.
“That was mostly Trump,” Kamarck explained. “At first he wasn’t going to debate, but then I think he realized that the election was a little too close to not debate. And because he’s a narcissist, he decides, ‘Well, when they see me, they’re going to love me.’”
Still, participating in debates carries risks. Unlike rallies, advertisements or social media posts, debates are not something candidates can choreograph, Schroeder highlighted.
“It’s something completely out of their control. So I think campaigns and candidates have always thought that they would rather not have debates, period, or do them on their own terms,” he said.
Schroeder added that candidates may perceive — rightly or wrongly — that there is an advantage to dealing with television networks as opposed to the Commission on Presidential Debates.
“They wanted to be able to make their own deals, make their own decisions about things like format and who asks the questions,” he said. “My guess is they are probably making life difficult for CNN.”
What does the change mean for voters?
On Thursday night, the CNN debate will not have a studio audience and the candidates’ microphones will be cut off when it is not their turn to speak – conditions previously agreed upon by both campaigns.
But Kamarck noted that the commission also chose to mute the candidates’ microphones during the second debate of 2020. There won’t be much of a difference, she said, in any noticeable way.
“The average voter won’t know the difference between something that was negotiated by the commission and between the candidates,” she said.
But the changes can still have an effect on public perception, as Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, explained. She participated in a “reform debate working group” that offered recommendations for both campaigns.
His group suggested that a live studio audience should not be part of the debate structure: after all, audience reactions could undermine the response of viewers at home.
Previously, the Commission on Presidential Debates’ financial model was one of the reasons a live audience was invited to the debates, according to Jamieson. Universities would compete to host the debates, and major financial sponsors and donors could gain access to seats in the audience.
“The process by which the commission organized the debates and funded them was creating a problem because the public could not be trusted to remain silent throughout the debate,” Jamieson said.
“The additional problem is that you saw candidates trying to game the system by putting people in the audience who could embarrass the opposing candidate.”
CNN’s financial model, on the contrary, does not depend on donations. As a for-profit company, it relies on advertising and subscriptions.
“Debates have never been seen as a way to make money, and unfortunately this is a huge money-making opportunity for CNN,” Schroeder said. “I’m sure they will charge well beyond normal prices for advertising because the audience will be much, much larger. So I think that’s problematic.”
The same would be true for any broadcaster, he added. “They are companies, they are organizations that make money. And I think their goal isn’t necessarily to enlighten voters — it’s to have a good TV show. That’s a big difference.”
Although debates are returning to the hands of television networks, Schroeder notes that the media environment has completely changed since 1960. Social media has increased the pressure candidates face.
“Now, you get real-time reactions and people react to the debate as it happens and post their reactions,” he said.
“Now you have millions of eyes on them, waiting for a misstep, error, mistake or insult, or some moment that could light up social media and boost news coverage.”
But Jamieson is optimistic about changes behind the scenes.
“They are returning to the traditional, studio format that started [televised] presidential debates in 1960,” Jamieson said. “It worked well in 1960. It should work well again.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
