After weeks of beating around the bush on whether he’d turn up to a debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and then trying to unilaterally set a date for a debate with friendly Fox News — Donald Trump emphasized in a typical Trumpish social media post that it would be “WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE” — he has agreed to an ABC News debate with Harris on Sept. 10.
Trump is also proposing additional debates with NBC and Fox; provided that the campaigns can agree to a structure that will strive to keep the encounters as primarily informative, Harris should agree to all three. Trump is right, the more the merrier.
The purpose of these debates should be to force the candidates to stake out and defend their positions, faced with sharp queries not only from moderators but their own opponents. They should not be mere spectacle, no matter how bizarrely sports-like the marketing and presentation of these faceoffs have become in recent years. That’s why rules like those used for the June CNN debate between Trump and then-candidate Joe Biden make sense: no jeering crowds, no dominance by willingness to speak over everyone, no endless back-and-forth.
That encounter was not just one of the most significant debates, but one of the most significant political earthquakes in presidential campaign history. It set off the sequence of events that culminated in the unprecedented voluntary stepping down of an incumbent president from the ballot months before the election.
The subsequent potential debates between Harris and Trump are unlikely to produce any shocks of that magnitude, but they are still one of the primary ways that would-be voters who don’t closely follow politics can see how their would-be presidents outline their approaches. Those of us who are following the daily ins and outs of these campaigns can easily forget that a sizable chunk of the population will only occasionally tune in to what is a monumental choice for them, and debates are a perfect way to have them see that in stark relief.
Trump has debated before a general election audience several times, in 2016, 2020 and in June. Harris, who ran a failed presidential primary race in 2019, never has.
His public persona often depends on his ability to ramble and lob petty insults, which will be constrained in this format and, if his recent public appearances are any indication, his answers will have hit-or-miss coherence. Still, that debate against Biden was a huge victory for Trump, forcing Biden out of the race. We doubt he’ll have the same level of success with Harris. But he can’t cede the stage to her and she’ll have her nominating convention in Chicago later this month.
Basically, he needs the screen time.
Whatever his reasons, Harris has reasons to want additional debates, too, and she should agree to them as long as the terms are fair. The American electorate deserves to see the two candidates up on a stage and working to present their visions for the country and highlighting the contrasts between them. Just a few weeks ago, neither Harris nor Trump was expecting this campaign. That’s all the more reason to have the debates and show voters what you’re all about.
