OPINION: Let's talk about our political debates

Aug. 29—The debate among eight candidates for the Republican nomination for president in the 2024 election is history now. And, the leading candidate in the race for the nomination by polling, former President Donald Trump, did not participate.

Trump said he didn't see any benefit in his participation at this time. Granted, his plate is full with legal issues and he has a commanding lead in the polls. But the bottom line is anyone who wants to represent the people should be willing to stand before the people and answer questions along with other candidates.

Anyone who seeks public office — whether for the lowest rung of a county ladder or the highest office in the land — must be answerable and accountable to the citizenry.

The tradition of U.S. candidates debating in their races for public offices goes back 165 years in most recorded accounts.

That was when then-former Congressman Abraham Lincoln and then-Sen. Stephen A. Douglas faced each other for three hours in each of Illinois' seven congressional districts as they vied for the U.S. Senate seat.

On Jan. 5, 1859, the Illinois Senate and House of Representatives met in joint session and selected Douglas because U.S. voters were not able to directly elect U.S. senators until the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution took effect in 1913.

It would be another 90 years before the next debate of major note when Thomas Dewey, then governor of New York, and former Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen met face to face in the Oregon Republican Presidential Debate. The estimated radio listenership was 40 to 80 million. Dewey went on to win the nomination.

The defining moment for presidential debates came in 1960 between Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts with an estimated 66.4 million television viewers. The population of the United States then was 179.3 million. Kennedy won the election and served for just past 1,000 days before he was assassinated.

Communications research has found that voters use some of what they learn in debates to make decisions about how to vote.

Scholars Gibbs Knotts and Vince Benigni of the University of Charlestown noted in a recent commentary for The Conversation that "In fact, on the statewide level, the number of candidates taking part in debates has been declining since at least 2016. Based on these trends, it's likely that debate participation will decrease again — across the board — during the 2024 election cycle."

If true, what does that portend for how U.S. voters acquire and process information about the candidates seeking public office?

Most importantly, what can be done to ensure the integrity of the information voters do receive?

The viewership for this first 2024 debate was estimated at 12.5 million people out of a U.S. population of 331.9 million in the 2021 U.S. Census.

That's a far cry from the 66 million who watched Nixon and Kennedy, and, percentage-wise, a much smaller sample of the population.

It was during the Lincoln-Douglas debates that Lincoln, speaking of slavery and the union, said a house divided against itself cannot stand. Those words have lived for 165 years. Will any of the observations from the 2023 debate participants be alive in 165 years?

The Commission on Presidential Debates has been in charge of the debates since the League of Women Voters dropped its participation in 1988, refusing to bow to increasing demands from candidate campaigns.

We are a nation that increasingly turns to the quick fix of social media for its information. But not all social media information comes from credible or knowledgeable sources.

There is a difference between fact-based information and opinion. We need to understand the difference.

The Commission on Presidential Debates needs to make sure it holds its participants to issues of importance to the citizenry. The League of Women Voters, an organization that has conducted debates at all levels, proved it was an organization that could keep its ear to the ground.

Vigorous debate of the issues of the day — based on fact — is critical to an informed citizenry and the democratic process.

A general election debate should be ahead, which might prove easier since it's unlikely to have more than two candidates.

Those with whom the responsibility lies — the commission, the news media, the candidates and we citizens need to start now to make sure what happens in debates from now is beneficial to all of us.

We don't want to be a house divided. We need to be a house able to find consensus to govern — based on fact.

News and Tribune Editorial Board

— News and Tribune Editorial Board