The Backstory: Susan Page moderates vice presidential debate, hopes it 'helped voters'
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At Wednesday’s vice presidential debate, moderator Susan Page had to prompt Vice President Mike Pence to stop talking 41 times and Sen. Kamala Harris 13 times. Despite this, Page said she wouldn’t recommend a debate “mute” button.
“The candidates got two minutes uninterrupted to answer the original question that I posed to them,” said Page, USA TODAY’s Washington bureau chief. “When that time ran out, which they could see on their camera, I counted to three to give them time to finish. And then I began to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Vice President, or 'Thank you, Senator Harris.’
“That didn't always prompt them to stop. So sometimes I said it over and over again. We didn't have a mic switch. I don't know that that would have been a good idea in any case.”
I spoke to Page in her Salt Lake City hotel less than an hour after she wrapped up the debate. The early feedback was it was a serious, substantial debate, but there was still too much talking over allotted time and interruptions. So why not favor a mic switch?
“Everything about a debate tells voters something,” Page said, including how the candidates handle themselves onstage. Also, “with both candidates, and especially with Vice President Pence, they didn't address the questions that I asked. That is frustrating to me because I spent a lot of time writing those questions, but that is illuminating in its own way to voters.”
Many times, Page would ask a question, and Pence or Harris would answer a previous question, or move on to a different topic. What goes through her mind when they don’t listen or disregard her question?
“I had to hold back. I had to restrain my normal reporter instincts, which would have been to interrupt, say 'No, that's not the question I asked,'” Page said.
“It’s not an interview, it's not a news conference. It's a debate. The goal of a debate is different and your agenda is different. In a news conference or an interview, I would've followed up and said, ‘You didn't answer my question.’ That was not, I thought, the appropriate thing to do in a debate.”
Onstage, Page said “you have two minutes, uninterrupted” before the first question to each. After those initial answers, the candidates, mostly Pence, often interrupted each other. Pence interrupted Harris 18 times. Harris interrupted Pence 8 times.
Where is the line between a healthy debate and disrespect?
Page said that after each candidate had an initial two minutes for answers, “I wanted them to challenge one another and debate. That's the point of a debate.”
And for those who think his interruptions were a sign of disrespect to Harris?
“When the opposition candidate was a male, which was last time in the 2016 debate against (Virginia Sen. Tim) Kaine, Mike Pence, not then vice president, did the same thing. So I do think women have often had to deal with that, but I would be surprised if Pence would have not interrupted a male counterpart.”
There was a point in the debate when both candidates aggressively talked over each other when discussing President Donald Trump’s feelings toward the military. Page had to forcefully interject and remind them their campaigns had agreed to the rules, and they needed to follow them.
She had prepared for that moment in a mock debate on her patio when stand-ins for the candidates got out of control. She had practiced for it, even putting her hands up as a signal to stop.
The coronavirus was always going to be the first topic, she said, but the questions changed with news that Trump and many in his circle had tested positive. The campaigns met and decided who would get that first question. It went to Harris.
“More than 200,000 Americans dead in the space of a year in a pandemic that is not yet under control: That is the most important topic facing the nation,” Page said. The next two topics were related to COVID-19, the question of presidential disability and the economy. “So in a way, the first half hour of the debate was focused on the coronavirus and its various repercussions.”
Managing Editor Lee Horwich partnered with Page to prepare for the debate, along with Anika Reed, a Life editor, and politics intern Sarah Elbeshbishi. The team was walled off from the rest of the newsroom to ensure that debate preparations did not mix with newsgathering activities. We couldn’t know the questions she would ask as we pursued our debate coverage – and we kept the two separate.
“We wound up preparing 14 topics pretty thoroughly, and then within each topic we knew we needed multiple questions,” Horwich said. The team wrote, and rewrote, questions as news continued to break, eventually winnowing to nine topics.
Page made it through eight, skipping immigration. She said they tried to draft narrow queries to try to get an answer. “This was perhaps less successful than I'd hoped,” Page said.
Page made it clear that her questions were on behalf of the American people. “There are issues that Washington journalists care about, there are issues that congressional correspondents care about, that are not necessarily issues that resonate with voters.”
And she made it clear she was refereeing on behalf of the Commission on Presidential Debates. She carefully balanced the time between the candidates, what she called “aggressive moderating.” She had clocks on her desk that showed the time used for each question as well as each candidate’s cumulative speaking time.
“Sometimes I gave Senator Harris a little extra time to talk to even things up,” she said. “I was prepared to let her go a little long on the two-minute thing, but she would stop at two minutes. And so that strategy did not work, but I was very conscious that they should have equal time to talk. Whether they're going to answer the question or not, they should have roughly equal time.”
In the end, each candidate had almost the exact same time to speak. Pence spoke for 33.9 minutes, Harris for 34.5, according to a USA TODAY analysis.
And in the end, Page was pleased.
“Well, I didn't get answers to all the questions I had hoped to get. I think sometimes I got prepared speeches instead of spontaneous responses. That shouldn't be a surprise,” she said. “I hope that voters who watched it thought it helped them decide who has the policies they support, who has the leadership characteristics that they want to see.
“I hope it helped voters.”
Nicole Carroll is the editor-in-chief of USA TODAY. Reach her at EIC@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter here. Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free experience or electronic newspaper replica here.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Moderator Susan Page opposes a 'mute' button after Pence, Harris debate
