Consider This from NPR - Zingers and Gaffes: A Look At the Utility of Presidential Debates

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

The presidential debate has been a right of passage for both primary and general election candidates for more than thirty years.Now in the midst of another election season, it looks like this well-established tradition might be fading away. But do debates inform voters, and do they change minds?We take a look at how the modern presidential debate came to be, and what their absence would mean for candidates and voters.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience. A memorable zinger from the 1984 presidential debate between Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Walter Mondale. At the time, Reagan comedically dodged a question about his age, and in hindsight, many experts think sealed a landslide re-election in that moment. Over the past several decades, debates between presidential candidates have produced memorable moments, moments that have reshaped campaigns. There was the time in 2011 when then-Texas Governor Rick Perry, Republican, had difficulty recalling all three

of the government agencies that he planned to shut down. You can't name the third one? The third agency of government, I would do away with the education, the commerce, and let's see, I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops. Perry washed out of the race.

And there was an awkward moment in this 2008 New Hampshire debate when then-Senator Hillary Clinton answered a question about her likability in comparison to Senator Barack Obama. He's very likable. I agree with that. I don't think I'm that bad. You're likable enough, Hillary. Thank you so much.

Clinton went on to win New Hampshire, turning what looked like a possible Obama romp into a prolonged, months-long primary. And then there was 2020, the first general election debate between then-President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden went off the rails when Trump wouldn't stop interrupting. The question is, the question is, will you shut up, man? Listen, who is on your list, Joe? Who's on your list?

All right, gentlemen, I think we've ended this one. This is so un-presidential. He's going to pack the court. We're not going to give a layover. Today, presidential debates feel like a pillar of campaigns, but they didn't actually start until 1960. Good evening. The television and radio stations of the United States and their affiliated stations. Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy and Republican nominee Richard Nixon suited up and made their way onto the screen for the first televised presidential debate. CBS's Don Hewitt, who would later go on to create 60 Minutes, was the producer.

I think Mr. Nixon is an effective leader of his party. I hope he would grant me the same. The question before us is, which point of view and which party do we want to lead the United States? Mr. Nixon, would you like to... It was a big deal. Kennedy came up to the podium looking young and fresh. He even had some makeup on. He was energized. That's compared to Nixon, who didn't wear any makeup and looked pale and tired,

and to be fair, had recently been ill. The debate was a success as Kennedy and Nixon answered questions from journalists and talked about various policies. So if the farmer's economy continues to decline as sharply as it has in recent years, then I think you would have a recession in the rest of the country. So I think the case for the government intervention is a good one. He has made the suggestion that what we need is to move in the direction of more government controls, a suggestion that would also mean raising prices.

Years later, Don Hewitt reflected on the impact of the debates in an interview with the Archive of American Television. When that debate was over, I realized that we didn't have to wait for an election day. We just elected a president. But now this practice could be fading away. Former President Donald Trump has refused to participate in the Republican primary debates, the norm-breaking president blowing up yet another norm. And this week, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley

said she would no longer participate in debates as well since Trump wasn't there. When it comes to the general election, the Republican National Committee has taken a hard stance on who they want to see moderating these debates, and Joe Biden's campaign has yet to commit to them, so they may not happen. Consider this. Debates have been a part of the American political process for decades, sometimes playing a decisive role in the outcome. But do they really matter, and are they going to stick around? From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Friday, from NPR. The presidential debate has been a rite of passage for both primary and general election candidates for more than 30 years.

Now it looks like that tradition might be fading away. The prospect of that is something I talked about with Aaron Call. He's the director of debate at the University of Michigan. I mostly want to zoom out and talk about debates as a whole and this broader trend. But of course, this came after a series of Republican primary debates that Trump skipped entirely. You saw viewership drop and drop and drop as that trend continues. In just looking at the 2024 primary cycle, did you see any value in the debates that were held

with Haley and DeSantis and the others when they were still in the race? Definitely. It was frustrating that the front runner Trump didn't participate in them, but even without him, I do think that they were valuable. Going back to the first one in Milwaukee in August,

it still, even without him, drew about 12.5 million viewers, which is pretty good for a primary debate. Had a much larger debate stage at the beginning, but I think you could see the impact just in this cycle they had even without Trump. Nikki Haley, part of the reason now she's in the upper tier and very competitive in New Hampshire is debates. She started out just polling in the low single digits, was all the way off on the side at the first debate in Milwaukee, but did very strong, held her own, and people liked what they saw and kind of gave her campaign a second chance

and really helped her work. Conversely, someone like Tim Scott came in with a lot of fanfare, but just wasn't very natural on the debate stage, kind of disappeared, made some gaffes, and his campaign didn't last very long. We saw that in previous cycles. So just like in previous cycles, yes, I do think the five debates that we had and even the wild card with DeSantis and Newsom, I thought they were very valuable, but they were much less watched this time and didn't have the frontrunner participating. What else do you think voters lose if this trend continues and debates become more of an endangered species? Because there's the cynical view that these aren't actually debates. These are just people repeating stump speeches, regardless of what the question is, like kind of parallel stump speeches that you see sometimes.

But on the other hand, there's a lot of conversation about policy in a way that doesn't seem to make its way into other parts of a campaign. Like if debates would be gone, what would voters miss? Yeah, I think that, you know, the candidates really have to subject themselves and put themselves out in these debates, and they would be invaluable and missed a lot if they totally went away. You're on a stage for two hours, depending on how many candidates there are. You don't know how much time you're going to get or when you're going to be called upon, so you really have to stay engaged and on your toes throughout the debate. Moderators can ask some excellent questions, ones that hadn't been on the campaign trail or maybe some of the candidates hadn't thought about before, and you're seeing the candidates

process that and come up with an answer in real time, how quickly they can think on their feet. Just those are all kind of qualities that I think voters, undecided voters especially, want to get out of their presidential candidates, especially to see if there was a crisis, international crisis that happened in the middle of the night and the president had to deal with that. How they operate in a two-hour debate with other very accomplished candidates gives them a real big insight to that. In the last Republican cycle, I think there was about 13 total debates going all the way through March, and you'd have them right before voting commenced in important states.

And those times would talk about important issues specific to voters of those states. And so we're going to miss out on those if the last one we had was just in Iowa. How concerned are you about the future of the general election debates? In 2020, one of them was skipped. The first one was unique, I'll put it that way. The third one was surprisingly typical, I think, given those other two. But right now, we're talking about the Republican National Committee having a real skeptical stance of how and when their candidate would participate in these debates. And you have Joe Biden's campaign also not committed to them. How worried are you that that just won't happen?

I say mildly concerned. As you mentioned, we just had two last time. There was some consternation over format and the moderator for one of them. But yeah, I think Nikki Haley's decision to kind of not debate in these may make that even a little bit more likely because just kind of normalizes a little bit more. And yeah, I mean, certainly President Biden could say, you know, Donald Trump didn't participate in debates in the primary, so why should I debate him now? And that's something the RNC had warned Trump about when trying to get him to do at least those early debates, that if you don't do that,

there will be a risk that you may not have general election debates. There's also controversy over those. The RNC specifically not liking the commission on presidential debates. They've been involved in these for the last several decades, and the moderators they select, and who's on their board, and things like that. But, you know, Trump hasn't signed that pledge. And so he's not technically bound to it. And if Trump decides that he wants to debate, the RNC is going to get in line there. And at least as of now, all indications are he wants to debate in the general election. He doesn't want to be in the primary because he's up a lot and doesn't want to kind of dignify the other candidates that are on stage, but thinks there'd be a lot of value in debating 81-year-old President Biden, thinks he could maybe commit a

gaffe that would be disqualifying. And so a little yet to be seen. I think there'll be a lot of pressure to do it, especially at the presidential level, and hopefully we'll get at least two like we did last time. But just like these past primary ones were canceled, know that there's a chance that we may not have them, which would be a shame. We went a large period without having them. After the Kennedy-Nixon debates all the way through 1976, there was a period of about 15, 16 years

where there were no presidential debates. And so I definitely don't want to return to a time like that. That was Aaron Call, Director of Debate at the University of Michigan. Thanks for joining us. Anytime. This episode was produced by Brianna Scott. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Gennigan.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.