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“Will you shut up, man?” It was hardly an oratory worthy of Abraham Lincoln, but Joe Bidenthe main plea in the face of relentless interruptions and taunts from Donald Trump provided a defining soundtrack of the 2020 presidential debates.
The two will face each other again Thursday for the first of two head-to-head debates for the 2024 campaign under new rules designed to prevent things from degenerating as they did four years ago. The US president and former president will meet in a television studio without the presence of a partisan audience, which some have seen as an essential ingredient of Trump’s approach to rousing the crowd. And to counter the repeated intrusion that so irritated Biden, the candidates’ microphones will be muted when they’re not speaking.
But the debates are also the first in decades to be conducted entirely by commercial television networks — including two commercial breaks — and without the oversight of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the long-established, independent, nonpartisan body that has long governed debate rules. Some critics say they fear that commercializing the process could lead to less substantive, shorter answers aimed more at generating conflict and soundbites than enlightening voters.
The 2020 verbal barrage between Biden and Trump, led by Fox News moderator Chris Wallace, became so fierce that CNN anchor Dana Bash was prompted, live on air, to describe the event as “shitshow”. Earlier this year, both campaigns chose to bypass the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has overseen presidential debates since 1988, and on June 27, Bash and her CNN co-host Jake Tapper will have the chance to one-up Fox’s efforts when chaired the first debate in Atlanta. A second debate will take place on September 10, hosted by the ABC.
No props or pre-written notes will be allowed on stage. Candidates will be given a pen, notebook and water bottle.
The decisions to mute a candidate’s microphone when it’s an opponent’s turn to speak, and to shut out biased audiences, were made in an attempt to reduce the theatrical gladiatorial blood element that threatened to overwhelm recent debates.
Some critics said the lack of oversight by the CPD, as well as the inclusion of two commercial breaks during the 90-minute event, undermined the nature of the debate.
“The introduction of commercial breaks will fundamentally change what makes a debate a debate, as the candidates will constantly be able to pause and regroup,” Clea Connor, CEO of Open to Debate, a research group that tracks presidential debates through recent decades said A politician.
“Although there will only be two ad breaks this time once we deem them acceptable, it’s a classic slippery slope; how much will it be next time and the time after that?
“[Candidates’] the arguments will have to be shorter, shortened for the ad clock, and lead to more outrageous interactions to boost ratings. Without the presence of an independent mediator such as the CPD, she argued, this would lead to “pure political theatre”.
Open for debate report the deterioration in the quality of the debate suggests the need for drastic changes to the format from 2020 to halt the decline in moderator control and candidate decency.
While there were only three blackouts in three debates in the 2004 election between George W. Bush and John Kerry — administered by the CPD — the first meeting between Trump and Biden in 2020 saw 76, the group noted. However, the second debate saw just four interruptions after the speakers’ microphones were silenced following criticism of the chaos three weeks earlier.
Stephen Fein, a professor of psychology at Williams College in Massachusetts who has studied the psychological dimension of presidential debates, said excluding live cheering audiences was “rational” and “good for democracy.”
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“[It] it will greatly reduce the chances that the focus of the debate will not be on what is actually being said, but on all these things around it – the audience reaction and the audience playing,” he said. “I think it changes what candidates are likely to do.
“It also changes what the audience at home takes away from the debate, what they remember, what they put on the news the next day – all based on audience reaction.” Because the audience reaction may or may not be valid.
However, he warned that commercial TV networks may abandon the new approach “because it makes for less exciting television”.
The candidate with the most to lose in the controlled, low-key environment is likely Trump, according to Tammy Vigil, an associate professor of communications at Boston University.
“He tends to feed off the energy of the crowd,” she said. “He’ll lose some of his energy if he doesn’t have a crowd to feed off of. The other part that will likely change is that candidates will be more willing to speak directly to the cameras.
“I think it will improve the overall feel of the debate for television viewers because it will feel like the candidates are speaking to them more directly.”
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