AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME — REPLACE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBATES WITH CANDIDATE FORUMS 

The first and perhaps the only debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is over.

Now will be much longer and heated debates between their respective supporters on which candidate won and which candidate lost in the debate.

I suggest the voters lost.

They lost because the current presidential debate process is broken.

The reasons are simple.

They were addressed recently by the Editorial Board at the Washington Post and by Philip Bump a regular Washington Post columnist.

The Post’s editorial board cited a Post and Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University survey reporting only three in ten residents of six of the most important states in this year’s presidential election trusted the media will fairly and accurately report political news.

The Post’s Philip Bump was especially blunt when he recently wrote “Americans don’t trust the media, particularly when it comes to politics.”

Interesting that Bump wrote “the media.” He did not write the left of center media or the right of center media. The media includes, but is not limited to the following major television broadcasting networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX NEWS, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, and CW.

Despite those conclusions the following were key elements of the November 10 debate.

The debate moderators were ABC News anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis.

ABC staff wrote the debate questions.

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

As soon as the debate ended the media launched into rapid response modes with their analysis of each candidate’s remarks, debate performance, fact checks and opinions on the biggest takeaways from the night. The moderators even did fact checking during the debate.

One has to wonder how much those rapid responses reflected pre-determined thoughts rather than 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.

Long before the November 10 debate 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, is empowered to propose debate ground rules, develop debate questions, moderate a debate or debates, fact check during the debate, and provide rapid response post-debate analysis, and rapid response post-debate fact checking.

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

That time was 1858, three years before the start of The War Between the States.

At that time, 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 respective views of Lincoln and Douglas.

These conversations with voters often resulted in 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 going forward today, we need to reduce the currently outsized role of television broadcasters in presidential election debates. Instead of debates, they should broadcast candidate forums.

These forums should feature one candidate and only one candidate at a time in a 90-minute prime time broadcast.

Speaking for 90-minutes straight will provide candidates opportunities to demonstrate their understanding of which issues resonate with voters, share their positions on those issues, and their stamina to exercise the duties of the most demanding job in the world.

Candidate eligibility for televised forums would 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.

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.

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