There Will Probably Be Presidential Debates in the Future...But It's OK If There Aren't

There Will Probably Be Presidential Debates in the Future...But It's OK If There Aren't

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Thursday, January 13, 2022

There Will Probably Be Presidential Debates in the Future...But It's OK If There Aren't

News broke on Thursday that the Republican National Committee was threatening to require its future presidential nominees to pledge to boycott general election debates organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has produced the debates every four years since it was formed by representatives of both major parties prior to the 1988 election. This threat, conveyed in a letter to the debate commission from RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, is being made amidst a set of demands for changes to the commission's membership and policies (the complete letter is available here). Republican dissatisfaction with the debate organizers has been apparent since at least 2016, and is in some ways a manifestation of the Trump-era party's larger suspicion of political institutions that are not under its direct control.

It's possible that this means there will be no fall debates in 2024 for the first time since the 1972 election. But we're still far from that point—despite some headlines suggesting otherwise—for a number of reasons.

First, the RNC is making demands that, in principle, the debate commission could find a way to satisfy, including an earlier start to the debate schedule, term limits on commission members, and public neutrality of commission members toward the candidates. The commission will be understandably reluctant to look like it's acquiescing to threats from one of the parties; on the other hand, in the end it would rather hold debates than not hold them. Nothing in McDaniel's letter looks like an ultimatum that would be impossible for the commission to address in some form.

Second, the parties lack control over the presidential nominees once they have been formally selected at the national conventions. Party organizations can require all kinds of signed pledges or commitments from candidates, but they lose the ability to enforce them once the nomination is granted. (If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination in 2024, and then decides he wants to attend the fall debates, would he let a previous pledge to the RNC stop him?) Responding to McDaniel, debate commission co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf—himself a former RNC chair—noted that the commission communicates and negotiates directly with the campaigns themselves, not the national parties: "we don't deal with the political parties [and] never have . . . we work only with those candidates for president and vice president who meet the criteria" for participation.

Finally, winning the presidency is the primary purpose of the national party committees, and has been since these committees were formed in the 1800s. Once the national ticket is selected, parties pursue this goal by becoming the loyal agents of their candidates. If participating in a debate boosts the campaign's chance of victory—perhaps the nominee is running behind in the polls and needs an opportunity to shake up the race—it would be entirely out of character, as well as an act of political malpractice, for the party to attempt to deny the candidate such a strategic option or to publicly criticize him or her for taking it.

This post is not intended to be an expression of reassurance. Honest Graft is a long-standing source of skepticism questioning the value of televised debates, swimming against an endless tide of debate-hyping voices in the news media who insist on treating as sacred civic rituals a series of events that have seldom proven edifying or substantively valuable in practice. If no debates occur in 2024 because the RNC, the debate commission, and the Republican nominee all choose inflexibility over compromise, American politics will not suffer. But—for better, or maybe for worse—we're still a long way from that point right now.

There Will Probably Be Presidential Debates in the Future...But It's OK If There Aren't

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