The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.
If there was any question about the continued relevance of presidential debates, the previous meeting between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump should have settled that question. Biden’s eye-opening performance was so disastrous that it set off a series of cascading events including his withdrawal from the race and Vice President Kamala Harris being nominated as the Democratic candidate for president.
In other words, debates still matter. They give voters an important window into candidates, their capabilities, personalities, tone and plans for this country. Now that Trump and Harris are officially their parties’ nominees, it is important for voters that both candidates hold true to their commitment to debate each other before the American people.
Unfortunately, it seems that commitment could potentially unravel for the ABC News debate scheduled for Sept. 10, with Harris’ campaign attempting to change the previously agreed upon rules and Trump musing earlier this week that he might not show up after all (after going back and forth on his participation earlier this month as well).
“Why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” Trump wrote online on Sunday night, accusing ABC News of bias. However, late Tuesday Trump said in a social media post, which took swipes at both ABC News and Harris, that he had “reached an agreement” to take part in the upcoming debate under the same rules as before, as reported by CNN.
Despite that announcement, the Harris campaign was reportedly still in ongoing talks with the network about when candidates’ microphones will be on and off during the debate. So as of Wednesday morning, the Sept. 10 debate is still not a sure thing.
Why should Trump debate Harris on ABC? The simplest answer to his question, without buying into his attacks on the network, is that he already agreed to do so. The same general principle applies to Harris and her campaign as well, even though the initial agreement was between the Trump campaign and Biden campaign, which included Harris before she was at the top of the ticket.
When she and her team agreed to keep the debate as scheduled, it was reasonable to think the same rules would be kept as well. According to reports, her campaign is trying to change those rules so that the candidates’ mics will stay on even when they are not speaking. The previously agreed upon rules stipulated that these so-called hot mics would not be allowed.
Given the current tenor of the race, and Trump’s longstanding penchant for interruptions and false claims in particular, we think the muted microphone rules made sense for the first debate and continue to make sense now — and not just because everyone had already agreed to them. American voters don’t need to see an hour-and-a-half screaming match with candidates talking over each other. What they need is a substantive exchange of ideas, policies and visions for the country.
In a perfect world, candidates wouldn’t need to have their mics off when others are talking. But recent experience, like the disastrous first presidential debate in 2020, has sadly shown the value of such a rule.
The merit of the rule almost isn’t the point at all, because it had already been agreed to. So rather than trading campaign bluster about who does or doesn’t want to debate each other, or where the debate should happen, Harris and Trump should just stick with the plan and allow voters to assess their performances.
“We agreed to the same rules, I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me, I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time,” Trump said Monday when asked about the hot mic rules.
Harris’ campaign then cynically tried to use those comments as an endorsement of their attempted rule change.
“Unless Donald Trump allows his handlers to overrule him, we’ll have a fulsome debate between the two candidates with live microphones, where both candidates will be able to lay out their vision for where they want to take this country,” Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler responded on Monday, as reported by CNN.
This back and forth, and the waffling from each side, has done little but make the debate look less likely at times and the candidates look like backpeddlers. If they both actually are prepared to debate each other, they should proceed with the previously agreed upon network and rules. Enough debating about debates.
