Is This the End for Presidential Debates?

Jonathan Bernstein: “It’s sort of a miracle that televised general-election debates ever happened at all in the U.S. If the Republican National Committee gets its way, they may never happen again. Their apparent demise tells us a few important things about the Republican Party, but before getting to that it’s worth thinking about the institution itself.”

“To begin with, debates just never should’ve happened. Most campaign professionals don’t like to subject their candidates to high-profile unscripted events, and general-election debates are extremely high profile. That goes double for a campaign that thinks its candidate is winning. Why risk the possibility that something could go wrong? Moreover, the conventional wisdom has always been that by participating in one-on-one debates, incumbents elevate their opponent. Presidents always seem ‘presidential’ and challengers rarely do — but supposedly that gap is narrowed by watching them debate as formal equals. More basically: Given that both candidates have to agree to participate, a debate requires both campaigns to think they’ll benefit, which can’t be true.”