That was easy. Donald Trump and Joe Biden briefly dueled on the airwaves over the debate.
“Any time, anywhere, anywhere,” the Republican candidate had challenged. “Make my day, friend,” the president replied in movie style.
Within hours the two men agreed Joe BidenProposal for two televised presidential debates before the November 5 election: at CNN headquarters in Atlanta on June 27 and at the ABC forum on September 10.
There will be more role-playing games between now and now. and the agreed confrontations. Biden has already rejected Trump’s counteroffer to hold two more debates, including one on Fox News.
But once again, the United States appears to be on track to hold debates between White House favorites, as it has done in most presidential cycles since JFK faced Richard Nixon in 1960. The United Kingdom has only managed maintain leaders equivalent to prime ministers. debates in 2010.
The two candidates will face each other in different circumstances than before. They will meet earlier in the election year cycle and without the usual rules.
Both sides have agreed to ignore the widely respected Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which had proposed three debates before mass audiences closer to election day.
Republicans and Democrats have decided that the CPD model is obsolete due to the changing nature of campaigning and voting, the changing demands of the media and, above all, due to the unique nature of this campaign in which the two main candidates have become so clear. at the beginning of the year and in which they are the oldest in the political history of the United States.
“It’s going to be entertaining and informative. Like those two old guys from The Muppets,” former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney joked to Huffpost.
Photo: Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock
Traditional CPD debates are one of many norms of American politics that have been subverted by donald trump.
According to subsequent opinion polls on “who won the debate?”, he is a poor debater.
He “lost” his three meetings with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and his two debates against Biden in 2020.
Biden also “won” both of his vice presidential debates against Sarah Palin in 2008 and Paul Ryan in 2012.
What is remembered, however, is Trump’s behavior. He wandered around the stage and appeared menacingly behind Hillary Clinton.
She invited her husband’s alleged ex-girlfriends to sit in the front row of the audience.
He called Biden “insane” before their first debate and abused him to his face, saying, “There’s nothing smart about you, Joe.”
Trump refused to follow the rules and talked about the moderator and Biden.
A senior White House correspondent summed up their first presidential debate as “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck.”
Trump refused to take the COVID test required to participate and then developed it, resulting in the cancellation of his next scheduled debate.
At their final debate, a technician was hired to turn off participants’ microphones except during allotted speaking time.
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Generally it is the underdog who challenges the debate. Biden has been trailing badly in major opinion polls and needs the debates to show that he is still up to the job at the age of 81.
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Many observers think the president is actually showing fewer signs of cognitive decline than Trump, who is only four years younger and whose rally speeches are becoming increasingly incoherent.
When the two men debate this summer, Biden may “beat” Trump again. But Trump’s antics may well dominate, and they certainly impress some voters.
The problems with the debates four years ago explain why neither side wants to put the commission in charge this time.
Republicans have accused the CPD of bias and Democrats blame it for failing to maintain order.
Significantly, this year’s first debate, on CNN, will be held in a studio without a live audience for the first time in US presidential history.
Both parties also wanted to have their meetings in early summer because there is a growing trend to vote earlier, and some states open their polls as early as September.
Biden and Trump during a presidential debate in Nashville in 2020. Photo: Reuters
The agreed debates will be head-to-head between Biden and Trump, which suits both of them because Robert F Kennedy Jr. is working flat out to get enough state ballots to qualify for a CPD debate.
Polls suggest he would take votes from each of them and could have a decisive impact on who wins.
President Biden’s gift wrapped his debate invitation with the cheeky label “I heard you’re free on Wednesdays” because the criminal court where Trump is currently being tried He doesn’t sit down on Wednesdays.
The dates they agreed upon are actually a Tuesday and Thursday, but the excavation is still going on.
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The first Biden-Trump debate in 2020 attracted 71 million viewers in the United States, making it the third most-watched presidential debate, behind only Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980.
But the average audience for debates is declining.
Nate Silver, a prominent political statistician, points out that they are one of the few fixed points in a campaign that can have some direct impact today, when “almost nothing moves the polls these days because the candidates are so well-known and everyone is very partisan.” .
American news networks have found that Trump boosts ratings even when the station’s editorial policy runs counter to him.
CNN gave saturated coverage of his rallies in 2016 and apologized more recently when Trump was allowed to monopolize a “town hall” on the channel.
Now the networks and their guest debaters have broken away from the protections provided by the CPD and its heavily regulated debates before live audiences on university campuses.
They will be under pressure to prove that they can deliver fair and informative programs for their viewers and not just entertainment.
The precedents for success are not good in the United Kingdom, where broadcasters abandoned collaboration following a rigid formula after 2010.
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By competing with each other, they effectively gave the whip to politicians, who were free to withdraw or grant them their favors.
Since then, subsequent debate-style election programs have not had a significant informational or influential impact on the campaigns. The spectators, that is, the electorate, have lost out.
This year, the two people competing to be the leader of the free world are the ones who decide how they will debate.
It is not encouraging for democracy that the first comparison of a high-ranking senator like Mitt Romney is to The Muppet Show.
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