An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Replace Presidential Election Debates With Candidate Forums by David Reel

Recently the Harris campaign and the Trump campaigns finally agreed on the following protocol for their debate on Tuesday night September 10.

90 minutes of debate time with two commercial breaks.

Moderators are ABC News anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis. 

No opening statements. 

Closing statements will be two minutes per candidate.

No live audience.

Each candidate’s microphone will be muted when it isn’t their turn to speak.

The candidates cannot ask each other questions. 

Each candidate has two minutes to answer each question with a two-minute rebuttal and an additional minute for a follow-up, clarification, or response.

Candidates will stand behind podiums and are prohibited from interacting with their staff.

No pre-written notes or props. 

It will air on ABC and stream on ABC News Live, Disney +, and Hulu. Viewers can also stream the debate on the ABC app on a smartphone or tablet, on ABC.com and connected devices.

Post debate, ABC News staff will provide their analysis, their fact checks and their opinions on the biggest takeaways from the night.

One has to wonder how much thoughtful analysis, reliable fact checks, and opinions on the biggest takeaways from the night can occur immediately after the debate rather than after more deliberative, rigorous, and objective thinking.

The bottom line is the current presidential debate process in broken. The reasons are simple and were addressed recently by the Washington Post’s Editorial Board and by Washington Post columnist Philip Bump. 

The Post’s editorial board cited a Post and Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University survey reporting only 3 in 10 residents of six of the most important states in this year’s presidential election trusted the media will fairly and accurately report political news. Bump has written “Americans simply don’t trust the media, particularly when it comes to politics.”

That media includes, but is not limited to the following major television broadcasting networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX NEWS, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, and CW.

Recently, the words “an existential threat to democracy” have been used ad infinitum.

I suggest one unaddressed existential threat to democracy is when the media who is not trusted by Americans proposes debate ground rules, develops debate questions, moderates a debate, and offers rapid response post-debate analysis and rapid response post-debate fact checking for presidential debates.

To address that threat, I suggest there is a much better system based a model on policy discourses from a time when America was deeply divided, just as we are now. 

Iin 1858, (three years before the start of civil war), Abraham Lincoln engaged in widely followed political dialogue with Stephen A. Douglas. All that dialogue was characterized by open, candid, civil, and issue- driven conversations focused on helping voters learn more about the views of Lincoln and Douglas. 

These conversations with voters often included supporters applauding for their candidate. When that happened Douglas said, “My friends, silence will be more acceptable to me in the discussion of these questions than applause. I desire to address myself to your judgement, your understanding, and your consciences, and not to your passions or your enthusiasms.”

To do that today, we need to reduce the currently outsized role of television in presidential election debates. Instead of debates they could broadcast candidate forums.

These forums could feature one candidate at a time in a 90-minute prime time broadcast. In that broadcast they could talk about whatever they wanted to, including, but not limited to why they want to be president, what has prepared them to serve, and what exactly they will strive to accomplish if elected. Speaking for a 90-minute forum will be a way to demonstrate to voters their stamina, their understanding of issues, and their communication skills.

Candidate eligibility for a televised forum could be the same as those in place for the current debates — polling thresholds and appearing on enough state ballots to theoretically get a majority of electoral votes in the November election.

Those forums could be broadcast on a rotating basis starting with the broadcast network with the highest levels of viewership, then rebroadcast, unedited, on all the other networks. 

In addition, verbatim unedited transcripts of the forums could be widely circulated by print and other electronic media outlets.

At a time when Americans do not trust the media on political news, candidate forums could:

Eliminate the media setting debate rules, preparing debate questions, serving as debate moderators, and offering their rapid reaction post event analysis and fact checks.

Maximize voter’s opportunities to reach their own conclusions about candidates based on what they observe during a forum and/or read about after a forum. 

Provide all voters with easily accessible and more reliable information prior to voting.

Now more than ever, candidate forums instead of debates are an idea whose time has come.

David Reel is a public affairs and public relations consultant who lives in Easton.