by Miriam Levine Helbok
On May 15, 2024 we learned that President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump have agreed to participate in televised debates, the first on June 27, several weeks before each party holds their national conventions, and the second on September 10, seven weeks before Election Day. Of course, no one can predict whether either candidate or both will renege on that agreement.
Televised debates are not a mandatory part of presidential campaigning. The Constitution is silent about such debates, and no legislation requires them. Only 11 of the 45 people who have served as our chief executive (24 percent) ever participated in any debates. (Although Joe Biden is the 46th president, he is the 45th person, because Grover Cleveland, having served in two nonconsecutive administrations, is both the 22nd and the 24th. The celebrated debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were not presidential but preceded the 1858 contest for an Illinois U.S. Senate seat. Lincoln lost that election to Douglas, the incumbent. He did not participate in debates as a candidate for the presidency, in 1860 and 1864, or while president.)
As the MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell has pointed out, the presidential debates “are a show created by and for television. They did not exist before television, and no one thought they were necessary.”
Televised presidential debates provide scant evidence of the fundamental values or psychological health of the candidates or the knowledge, skills, and temperament necessary for serving effectively and wisely in the Oval Office. What occurs on the stage bears no resemblance to what takes place in the White House. For one thing, presidents never have to offer their thoughts about problems, issues, policies, or other serious matters in two-minute soundbites, as the traditional debate time-constraints require. They never have to respond in public to statements made to their face by their opponents, some of which may be nonsensical, false, or derogatory. They never make decisions on their own, without input from, among others, Cabinet members, advisors, and experts in myriad fields. And, except in public, they do not have to guard against slips of the tongue or anything else that the media might seize upon as “gotcha” moments.
The vast majority of federal government jobs require relevant knowledge, skills, and experience and, in some cases, acceptable backgrounds and security clearances. But people seeking the presidency need none of those. Rather, as is spelled out in Article II of the Constitution, they must only be natural-born citizens, be at least 35 years of age, and must have lived in the country for at least 14 years.
As the presidential debates are currently formatted, viewers rarely learn anything from them about a candidate’s honesty, trustworthiness, and moral compass--“their internal sense of right and wrong, which guides their ethical decisions, judgments, and behavior”; about their open-mindedness—their willingness and ability to gather and digest information and opinions from people with greater knowledge and experience than their own—and come to well-thought-out conclusions about what they’ve learned. We learn virtually nothing about their ability to compromise and respond to crises quickly, sensibly, and judiciously; or about their capacity for empathy and compassion, their ability to understand and connect with members of our immensely diverse population, and their tolerance for and appreciation of radically different cultures and lifestyles.
So, theoretically, what could we learn about the candidates from presidential debates? We could learn something about their knowledge of the Constitution, the structure of the federal government and how each branch operates, American and world history, and world geography—that is, knowledge that is crucial for our chief executive and commander in chief to have in order to lead effectively.
Toward that end, I would start each debate with a computer on each candidate’s podium and a large screen behind the candidates on each of which are projected a selection of 20 of the many questions that have appeared on the tests given to aspiring U.S. citizens, along with the multiple-choice responses and a mechanism by which viewers would be able to see how each candidate answered each question. Then I would give each candidate a map of the world on which they would be asked to identify a number of countries—a few members of NATO and one or two nations in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. Lastly, I would ask a few questions about events in American and world history with which every president should be very familiar. I would seek the questions from a committee of esteemed historians.
I envision all the above as a sort of prelude to the actual debates—which really should not be called debates, since they bear almost no relation to the sorts of debates that took place in ancient Greece, India, and China and the single-topic debate competitions in which high school students participate. What would be a better name for those televised presidential shows? I welcome your suggestions.
