A not-so-modest proposal for how to improve debates

As I watched last week’s horror show of a presidential debate, it was immediately clear to me who won: Chris Obenshain and Lily Franklin, David Suetterlein and Trish White-Boyd.

Last fall, I moderated two campaign debates for General Assembly races in the Roanoke and New River valleys: a House of Delegates contest eventually won by Obenshain, a state Senate contest eventually won by Suetterlein.

Unlike President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump last week, all four candidates actually answered the questions put to them. Now, given the natural tensions between journalists and candidates, they didn’t necessarily answer them as fully as I would have liked, but they did at least say something about the issues that were posed.

That was my biggest complaint about last week’s presidential debacle: Neither candidate answered some of the questions, and there was no mechanism to force them to. 

One of the most flagrant examples came on the subject of Ukraine. Does Trump think Ukraine should be forced to give up territory to Russia? What kind of precedent does that set if it does? How does he intend to prevent further Russian territorial claims? Why do the lessons of the 1930s not apply here? We have no idea. For Biden, is it realistic to expect Ukraine to be able to expel Russia from every inch of its territory? What kind of military support would that entail? Should international borders be sacrosanct if they don’t match ethnic realities on the ground? We have no idea. Should Ukraine be considered for membership in NATO? Why or why not? What are the implications of either course of action? What message would something less than a full Ukrainian victory send to China regarding its territorial claim to Taiwan? Neither candidate said.

Whoever the next president is will have to deal with these questions, and some of them potentially involve national security of the highest order. Voters ought to know these things. This debate had a good question on the topic, but no answers.

The same could be said for other topics.

Speaking as someone who has moderated debates, and served as a panelist on others (including a gubernatorial debate), I can tell you this: It’s hard to get candidates to answer if they don’t want to. 

Sometimes it’s hard to get answers outside of a debate, too. I remember years ago I was interviewing then-state Sen. Malfourd “Bo” Trumbo, R-Fincastle (now a retired judge). I forget the topic, but every time I asked a question, he kept giving an answer related to a different topic. Finally, exasperated, I said: “Senator, you’re not answering my question.” He replied: “I know. I’m answering the one I wanted you to ask.”

At least there we both had a good laugh, and I think he eventually did answer my question, whatever it was. The debate format, though, works against getting answers if the candidate doesn’t want to give them. Candidates know they have a certain amount of time, so they can run out the clock; there’s also a limited opportunity for moderators to ask follow-up questions. In a more conventional interview, the questioner can keep coming back to the question — probing and probing, although even then there’s no way to force someone to answer something they don’t want to answer.

In a debate, though, a moderator may get one follow-up and then have to move on to the next subject.

As a journalist, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with debates. They’re great because you do get to see the candidates side by side, and there’s always the potential for a candidate to blurt out something unscripted that might be newsworthy. On the other hand, by their nature, debates as we know them today are also structured to produce only superficial answers if that’s all a candidate wants to give.

Elections are sometimes framed as hiring decisions. I’ve never heard of a company, though, whose hiring process involved having two candidates for the same job debating each other in front of the boss. Instead, there are interviews, often lengthy ones. Speaking as someone who has hired people, I’d think those interviews do a good job of weeding out people who give evasive or weak answers. Thought experiment: If two job candidates somehow got into an argument over their golf skills, as Biden and Trump did at one point, would I disqualify both of them? Probably.

The public likes the idea of candidates debating, though: It’s hard to envision a presidential campaign these days without debates. Ditto for a gubernatorial or senatorial race. Debates are certainly good for some things: for instance, forming impressions about whether candidates are likable or have a grasp of the issues. However, given the time limits, debates usually do a pretty poor job of educating people about policy. This is true for presidential debates; it’s also true for local campaign forums, of which there will no doubt be a fair number this fall, given all the local offices that will be on the ballot. (See our voter guide for a list of what’s on the ballot.)

As a practical matter, I don’t have a solution for what would make a good debate. As an impractical matter, I do: We should have more debates, not fewer; and we should focus them on a specific topic, so the candidates can’t get by with just sound bites and one-liners.

If you schedule things right, you can set up 20 debates — one a week — between June and a November election. Think of it as a political version of the old game “20 questions.” Let’s take 90 minutes and somehow make both candidates talk about nothing but Ukraine and Russian expansionism! Of course, that’s never going to happen, but it’s nice to dream sometimes.

For what it’s worth, the storied Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 — when Abraham Lincoln was seeking the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas — involved seven debates. They’d already spoken within a day of each other in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois. Douglas, as the incumbent, had little to gain from giving attention to the upstart challenger Lincoln. However, Lincoln had been scheduling appearances a day after Douglas, presenting rejoinders to the senator’s speeches that he couldn’t rebut. Lincoln was also starting to draw big crowds. Douglas wanted a way to counter his rising popularity. The two campaigns worked out a deal to appear together in the remaining seven congressional districts in Illinois. These weren’t debates as we know them today. One candidate would speak for an hour; the other would present a 90-minute rebuttal; then the first candidate got a 30-minute closing statement. I can’t imagine anyone today wanting to hear either Biden or Trump — or anyone else, for that matter — talk that long without having someone challenge something they had said. Times were different then.

If we had a version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates today, that would mean the candidates for Senate this year, or governor next year, would hold 11 debates, one in each of Virginia’s congressional districts. That won’t happen, of course. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democratic incumbent, recently announced he’d accepted invitations to three debates: July 20 before the Virginia Bar Association in Hot Springs, Sept. 19 before the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce in McLean and Oct. 2 at Norfolk State University. The campaign of Republican Hung Cao has said it wants to debate in principle, but hasn’t agreed yet to those specific events. I’m surprised that Kaine didn’t challenge Cao to debate in Staunton (whose newspaper Cao called a “podunk local newspaper”) and Abingdon (a place he said was too far to drive). For that matter, I’m surprised that Cao didn’t try to make up for those missteps by proposing debates in those communities. (He still could!) 

Still, it’s hard, if not impossible, to make candidates answer questions if they find it more useful to say something else. In the last gubernatorial election, Democrats made a point of scheduling one of the debates between their primary candidates in Bristol — a well-intentioned outreach to a part of the state where Democrats once did well but now do poorly. The candidates spent little time talking about Southwest Virginia, though. The debate was televised, and they knew the voters they were really trying to reach were somewhere else, which is why they spent time talking about off-peak passenger rail service in Northern Virginia rather than extending passenger rail to Bristol.

I noted earlier that sometimes elections are framed as hiring decisions. If an employer had job candidates who wouldn’t answer questions, that employer would cross them off the list and, if necessary, reopen the job search.

Too bad we can’t do that here.