By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
Next week the presidential campaign — for good or evil — moves into the debate stage. As you know, there will be three televised debates between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. They will start next Tuesday, September 29, followed by one October 15, and the third October 22. Between the first and the second there will be a vice-presidential debate on October 7 between current Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris.
Debates have been part of the political tapestry of America since the beginning of the Republic but debating by presidential candidates is of relatively recent origin. One of the reasons is that during earlier times presidential candidates did not campaign in the modern sense. Surrogates campaigned in their place. In fact, it wasn’t until 1932 that a presidential candidate — Franklin D. Roosevelt — actually appeared before his national convention to accept his nomination in person.
Prior to that time a special committee from the convention would formally notify the nominee who, in turn, would write a letter — for publication, of course — to the party accepting. So face-to-face debates were out.
But in 1858 Abraham Lincoln did meet Stephen Douglas for a series of seven debates, without a moderator, in which one candidate would open the debate with an hour address, the opponent would then respond with an hour and a half reply, followed by a half-hour response by the first. At each debate the candidates would alternate who would begin the debate. However, that campaign was for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.
At the time senators were chosen by the legislature, not popular vote. Thus the campaign was to elect party members to the Illinois legislature. Lincoln lost; Douglas was re-elected to the Senate. However, the two would meet two years later as the respective presidential nominees of their parties.
When we think of presidential candidates debating most think of the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960. But they weren’t the first; only the first general election debates. Interesting side note: Those who watched the first debate on television thought Kennedy won; those who heard it on the radio thought Nixon had won. The era of televised politics was upon us!
The first debates between presidential candidates took place on the radio in 1948. Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey and former Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen, debated in Oregon before that state’s presidential primary. The debate topic was limited to a single issue: Should the Communist Party be outlawed? Dewey won the primary 52-48 percent, won the GOP nomination, but lost the election (“Dewey Defeats Truman”) to President Harry Truman.
In 1956 the first televised presidential debate was held between former Illinois governor and 1952 Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson and Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver during the Florida primary. Stevenson won the state’s primary on his way to the nomination; Kefauver won the nomination for vice president on the second ballot. The ticket lost as President Dwight Eisenhower rolled to a second term.
And in 1960, before he won the Democratic nomination, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy, and his primary opponent, Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, participated in a televised debate in West Virginia. The polls in West Virginia weighed heavily in Humphrey’s favor — it was more rural than urban, giving the folksy Humphrey an edge over the urbane Kennedy. Additionally, it was 95 percent Protestant which put Kennedy’s Catholicism at issue.
In the earlier Wisconsin primary, Kennedy’s victory came from heavily Catholic areas. His victory was smaller than predicted, which gave Humphrey hope that he could upset Kennedy in the West Virginia primary. The two debated May 4 on WCHS-TV in Charleston where Kennedy took the religious issue head-on, reframing it as tolerance versus intolerance. Kennedy ultimately defeated Humphrey with 60.8 percent of the primary vote cementing the nomination by proving that a Catholic could be elected president.
The era of televised debates between major party nominees followed Kennedy’s nomination when he met Vice President Richard Nixon in four debates. In the first Nixon was handicapped by several visual problems. First, his suit blended in with the background on the black and white television of the day; in contrast Kennedy’s dark suit stood out. Second, he was recovering from a brief hospitalization and had lost weight, and refused makeup which highlighted his five o’clock shadow. The visual comparison helped Kennedy, although, as mentioned above, radio listeners thought Nixon had won.
Nixon, recovering from his poor visual performance, was ready for the three subsequent debates. He was considered the winner of the second and third debates, and the final debate was considered a draw. However, the viewership of the first debate swamped that of the following debates which gave the debate edge to Kennedy who narrowly won the election.
After Kennedy-Nixon it would take another 16 years before general election candidates would debate again, although there were numerous debates between primary candidates. As you might expect, Nixon refused to debate in both his winning presidential campaigns, 1968 and 1972.
The Kennedy-Nixon debates themselves had to be authorized by an act of Congress. The Communications Act of 1934 required all candidates be given equal time on air. Thus for broadcasters to legally limit a broadcast debate to only the major party candidates, Congress had to temporarily suspend the 1934 act. A revision of the rules by the FCC in 1975 eliminated the requirement that the law be suspended.
The next debates were held under the sponsorship of the League of Women Voters starting with the Ford-Carter campaign in 1976. That campaign saw the first of the vice-presidential debates between Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole. The ’76 debates were working in President Ford’s favor and he was closing the gap between him and Gov. Jimmy Carter. However, in the second debate Ford made the statement that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and his momentum from the first debate stalled and he lost a close election.
In 1980 there were three major candidates: Democrat President Jimmy Carter, former California Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan, and Independent Cong. John Anderson from Illinois. Initially Carter had the lead over Reagan and debates were scheduled with the three candidates. Carter, however, refused to debate with Anderson present and Reagan refused to debate without him. Only Reagan and Anderson participated in the first debate, the second debate, and the vice-presidential debates were canceled. A final debate was held with only Reagan and Carter.
As Kennedy had done in his first debate with Nixon, Reagan took command of the stage and was considered the winner of the debate and went on to a landslide victory over Carter.
In 1992 there was a three candidate debate between independent businessman Ross Perot, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and President George H.W. Bush.
In 1987 the League of Women Voters withdrew from sponsorship of the debates and the nonprofit corporation, The Commission on Presidential Debates, took its place. Established under the sponsorship of both major national parties, it now produces both the presidential and vice-presidential debates. Under the commission rules any candidate with 15 percent support from five national polls can be included in the debates. The rule effectively eliminates third party and independent candidates from the debates.
Independent parties have challenged that rule in the courts, but have been unsuccessful in their attempts to lower the 15 percent threshold. The latest being a D.C. district court which ruled in June that “there is no legal requirement that the commission make it easier for independent candidates to run for president of the United States.”
So now the stage is set for the 2020 version of presidential debates. The rules have come a long way since Lincoln and Douglas were alternately given 60, then 90, then 30 uninterrupted minutes to thrust and parry.
Enjoy it: FOX News’ Chris Wallace will moderate. Pull up a chair, pop some corn, and be ready for it to be over-analyzed from what was said to what Chris Wallace wears. For better or worse, this is how we pick our leader. God save us from ourselves.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
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