It's Time to Rethink Presidential Debates For Many Reasons = the lack of substance

Razoo said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...63e3e6-b6f7-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html

It’s time to do some rethinking about the debates.

Trump is claiming he would like to have four faceoffs with Biden, rather than the three (plus one vice presidential debate), that are currently scheduled to take place between Sept. 29 and Oct. 22.

This is not a serious proposal. Even under the best of circumstances, scheduling these much-watched events on the busy fall calendar is a difficult challenge for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has been in charge of the process since the 1988 election.

It has to find dates that are not on Friday or Saturday nights, do not conflict with sports and other events networks are committed to, or official presidential business, such as attending the U.N. General Assembly in September. Each debate generally requires the candidates to suspend public appearances for at least a few days to prepare.

Finding venues is a challenge, as well, particularly this year. The University of Michigan, which was originally supposed to host the second debate on Oct. 15, backed out earlier this week. University president Mark Schlissel said that with the challenge of trying to reopen the campus safely amid the covid-19 pandemic, it is “not feasible for us to safely host the presidential debate as planned.” It has been moved to Miami.

All of this could be simplified if the campaigns would drastically reduce the live audiences who attend the debates — or even do away with them entirely.
The debates would probably be better, too, if they were conducted — as the famed 1960 one between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon was — in a television studio. With modern technology, it would be possible even to hold a town-hall-style debate that way.

“I think the reason the audiences are there is to satisfy the demand for seats from contributors and major party figures and from those who support the Commission on Presidential Debates,” says Democrat Bob Shrum, who was a top adviser to candidates Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. “The debates would be better without competing cheering sections, who invariably ignore the advice not to applaud or react.”

Cutting back or eliminating the live audience would also make it more difficult for candidates to pull stunts like Trump did in 2016, when he brought four women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual abuse to a debate in St. Louis and attempted to seat them in his family’s box.

At the time, Trump himself was reeling from similar accusations, as well as the revelations of his own crude comments about women, which were recorded on a now-famous “Access Hollywood” tape. The plan had been to have the accusers confront the former president, who is also the spouse of the 2016 Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, on national television. When debate commission officials got wind of the gambit, they put a stop to it.

There remain a lot of details to be worked out between now and the first debate. Given the president’s love of theatrics, get ready for lots of wrangling over ground rules and the choice of moderators. Nor will it be a surprise if, at some point, Trump threatens to walk away from the debates entirely.

History also gives him reason to be wary. Sitting presidents — among them, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Barack Obama in 2012 — often stumble in their first debates because they arrived both overconfident and out of practice.

This year, the stakes for Trump could hardly be higher. His poll numbers are dropping, and there are signs that even Trump’s bluster-loving base is starting to have its doubts about him, now that it is seeing how he handles himself in a real crisis.

So as he looks ahead to the debates, the embattled president might want to focus on winning the old-fashioned way: by studying the issues, showing up prepared and commanding the facts.

If Trump were to manage to do that, it could be the biggest October surprise of all.

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Ikari said:

Paywall, so I can't see it. But I would say that our Debates are Debates in name only. They're produced affairs with screened questions and canned responses. We first and foremost need more than 2 candidates represented. I'd say 4-5 is fair. We need to nix the screened questions, we need to give more time for answers so that we can get an intelligent response if the candidate has intelligence to respond with. The debates are a mockery, I do think we need to fix them.

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Razoo said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...63e3e6-b6f7-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html

It’s time to do some rethinking about the debates.

Trump is claiming he would like to have four faceoffs with Biden, rather than the three (plus one vice presidential debate), that are currently scheduled to take place between Sept. 29 and Oct. 22.

This is not a serious proposal. Even under the best of circumstances, scheduling these much-watched events on the busy fall calendar is a difficult challenge for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has been in charge of the process since the 1988 election.

It has to find dates that are not on Friday or Saturday nights, do not conflict with sports and other events networks are committed to, or official presidential business, such as attending the U.N. General Assembly in September. Each debate generally requires the candidates to suspend public appearances for at least a few days to prepare.

Finding venues is a challenge, as well, particularly this year. The University of Michigan, which was originally supposed to host the second debate on Oct. 15, backed out earlier this week. University president Mark Schlissel said that with the challenge of trying to reopen the campus safely amid the covid-19 pandemic, it is “not feasible for us to safely host the presidential debate as planned.” It has been moved to Miami.

All of this could be simplified if the campaigns would drastically reduce the live audiences who attend the debates — or even do away with them entirely.
The debates would probably be better, too, if they were conducted — as the famed 1960 one between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon was — in a television studio. With modern technology, it would be possible even to hold a town-hall-style debate that way.

“I think the reason the audiences are there is to satisfy the demand for seats from contributors and major party figures and from those who support the Commission on Presidential Debates,” says Democrat Bob Shrum, who was a top adviser to candidates Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. “The debates would be better without competing cheering sections, who invariably ignore the advice not to applaud or react.”

Cutting back or eliminating the live audience would also make it more difficult for candidates to pull stunts like Trump did in 2016, when he brought four women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual abuse to a debate in St. Louis and attempted to seat them in his family’s box.

At the time, Trump himself was reeling from similar accusations, as well as the revelations of his own crude comments about women, which were recorded on a now-famous “Access Hollywood” tape. The plan had been to have the accusers confront the former president, who is also the spouse of the 2016 Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, on national television. When debate commission officials got wind of the gambit, they put a stop to it.

There remain a lot of details to be worked out between now and the first debate. Given the president’s love of theatrics, get ready for lots of wrangling over ground rules and the choice of moderators. Nor will it be a surprise if, at some point, Trump threatens to walk away from the debates entirely.

History also gives him reason to be wary. Sitting presidents — among them, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Barack Obama in 2012 — often stumble in their first debates because they arrived both overconfident and out of practice.

This year, the stakes for Trump could hardly be higher. His poll numbers are dropping, and there are signs that even Trump’s bluster-loving base is starting to have its doubts about him, now that it is seeing how he handles himself in a real crisis.

So as he looks ahead to the debates, the embattled president might want to focus on winning the old-fashioned way: by studying the issues, showing up prepared and commanding the facts.

If Trump were to manage to do that, it could be the biggest October surprise of all.

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SCrider said:

Why give Trump yet another platform to lie?

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Oborosen said:

So Biden is the only one who gets those I guess.

Then again, that's what moderators are for.

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SCrider said:

You Kidding? All trump does is lie. moderators don't do **** in these debates, too afraid of looking biased.

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Integrityrespec said:

Eliminating debates would be unfair to the American voters. Eliminating a live audience would prevent the people from seeing a candidate respond under pressure of the audience. The only reason someone whats to do away with the debates is Joe Biden is highly likely to fall apart because of his problem with memory loss and keeping facts straight. Heck Joe doesn't know where he is or maybe who he is.

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Oborosen said:

...looking biased, or worried about getting caught being biased?

Then again. This is the same issue we have most of the time with anything that Trump says. True, or false. More than a few anti-trump people are going to come crawling out of the woodwork to decry it as a lie and in most cases. They most likely wont even know the full sentence of what was said.

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Drawdown said:

They are reflective of the process the produces the participants.

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SCrider said:

Cultist always try to spins trumps lies into some sort of anti trump bias. The dude can't help himself and you guys lick it up.

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