| From | Michael Waldman, Brennan Center for Justice <[email protected]> |
| Subject | The Briefing: What to expect from the presidential debate |
| Date | June 25, 2024 8:41 PM |
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Democracy will be on the agenda.
[link removed]
Joe Biden and Donald Trump will debate on CNN at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday. As an alumnus of “debate camp” and a presidential historian, I’m eager to watch.
Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy held the first televised presidential debate in 1960. Those who watched on TV favored bronzed Kennedy over sweaty Nixon; those who listened on radio thought Nixon won. (Some scholars have debunked that. I say it’s too good to check.) The next debates were in 1976, and they have occurred every four years since then.
We remember them for gaffes and drama. But when you watch them on C-SPAN
[link removed]
, what is most interesting is the earnest discussion of issues and strategies.
Gerald Ford probably lost the election in 1976 when he bafflingly declared, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” That reinforced Lyndon Johnson’s unfair jibe
[link removed]
that there was nothing wrong with Ford “except he played football too long without his helmet.” In 1980, Ronald Reagan defused his greatest weakness, chuckling at Jimmy Carter’s charges of extremism (“there you go again”). Reagan made himself an acceptable alternative and won by a landslide.
This time, both candidates face perils.
For Biden, paradoxically, it is that he is the president. Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump all lost their first debate. Incumbents are rusty, cocooned. A military band plays “Hail to the Chief” when they walk into a room. Rarely are they challenged to their face. Biden has held few press conferences and given few interviews. He will have to fight hard against seeming peeved at criticism of his record.
Four years ago, Donald Trump was frantic, bombastic, and, it turned out, feverish from Covid-19. It is a big part of why he lost. These days, at his rallies he rails against his foes and promises retribution. But CNN’s format — with strict time limits and microphone cutoffs — perversely could help Trump, just as he was helped by being thrown off Twitter.
I was very involved in debate prep for Bill Clinton in 1996 when I was his chief speechwriter. Clinton knew well the incumbent jinx and worked hard to beat it. For the first debate, he prepped for most of a week at the leafy Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. Sen. George Mitchell played Bob Dole. He clobbered Clinton, who, like the other incumbents, was not used to being denounced to his face. At one point, Clinton slammed down his papers. “He’s cheating! He has notes!” Each day we would confide to lurking reporters that Mitchell had bested the president, and they all thought we were just spinning to lower expectations. With Clinton, we wrote and researched and practiced answers. Clinton grew more assured each day. The prep paid off: he was the only incumbent to prevail in the first debate, according to polls.
So as a political aficionado, I will watch for signs of a confident candidate.
But I will also want to see if the debate serves the public. CNN anchors will ask all the questions, and I hope that they rise to the moment.
The overarching issue — one that rarely has come up before — is the health of American democracy. “We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy,” Biden declared at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. No doubt he will pound Trump for his attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power four years ago.
Trump, in turn, has made his claim that millions of noncitizens will vote a central campaign argument. (That’s nonsense
[link removed]
, by the way.) Just as we saw in 2020, the Big Lie is being pre-deployed.
I hope the candidates will talk concretely about American democracy and how to fix it. For Biden, being pro-democracy cannot merely be a euphemism for supporting him. He should talk about his future agenda, such as the Freedom to Vote Act and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I hope the anchors will not hurry the candidates along if they want to discuss these things — voting rights and January 6 and the like — in their eagerness to get to other issues such as inflation or immigration.
We will likely hear about the Supreme Court. Trump has been eager to describe the kinds of justices he wants to appoint (judges like Clarence Thomas, he said). Biden, on the other hand, has long hesitated to discuss the Court itself. At his State of the Union, he did tell the justices that “with all due respect, justices, women are not without . . . electoral or political power.” Two weeks ago
[link removed]
, at last, he said that the next president might appoint two justices, and Trump would “appoint two more flying flags upside down.”
We can expect to hear about crime as well. Trump used to brag about signing the First Step Act, a bipartisan sentencing reform law. More recently, he has turned to angry rhetoric about supposedly soaring crime. Yes, violence spiked during the pandemic, but it has dropped sharply since then. And there is no evidence at all that criminal justice reform led to more crime.
The job for the Brennan Center in this moment: fight fear with facts. Not a bad goal for all of us as viewers.
What Ohio Shows Us About Money in Politics
Ohio’s 2024 congressional elections offer insight into the state of money in politics. Some notable takeaways: national megadonors are pouring millions into state races through super PACs, and a significant amount of campaign funding is coming from dark money groups that hide their donors. In a new analysis, Ian Vandewalker breaks down key trends in Ohio and across the country. Read more
[link removed]
Missing Checks on Presidential Power
A law that has gone largely ignored for more than a century poses a grave threat to our democracy. The Insurrection Act gives the president nearly limitless discretion to use the military as a domestic police force. Though this power is intended to be used in times of crisis, in the wrong hands, it can be abused. It’s up to Congress to quickly reform the law and implement safeguards. “The United States has been extraordinarily lucky that the Insurrection Act has not been misused more frequently. There is no reason to believe this good fortune will continue forever,”Joseph Nunn writes in the journal Democracy. READ MORE
[link removed]
Over a Decade of Diminished Voting Rights
Today marks the 11-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder that struck down crucial protections in the Voting Rights Act. There’s now ample evidence that the ruling has harmed representation and democratic participation for communities of color. Most disturbingly, the turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters has grown continuously over the past decade. In a new Q&A, Kareem Crayton discusses the repercussions of Shelby County and what can be done to repair the damage — namely, passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Read more
[link removed]
Meta’s Watchdog Has a Blind Spot
Meta’s oversight board aims to ensure that the company follows equitable and transparent rules for moderating speech on Facebook, Instagram, and now Threads. But the board’s limited capacity means that most day-to-day decisions about which posts to remove, demote, or boost are handled by algorithms that the board has no authority to review. “For the board to fully serve its function of providing accountability for Meta’s regulation of speech on its platforms, it must have access to the algorithms at the heart of this system,” Faiza Patel and Julian Melendi write in Just Security. READ MORE
[link removed]
Coming Up
VIRTUAL EVENT: Fix the Insurrection Act
[link removed]
Thursday, July 25, 3–4 p.m. ET
A law last updated 150 years ago gives presidents dangerous authority to use the U.S. military as a domestic police force. The Insurrection Act has virtually no limits on when and how this power can be used, making it a loaded weapon in the hands of any leader, Democrat or Republican, who is tempted to abuse it. Without urgent reforms, the law is a threat to civil liberties and American democracy itself.
Join us for a live virtual event on this issue moderated by Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center Liberty & National Security Program, featuring lawyer and writer Hawa Allan, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, and Brennan Center counsel Joseph Nunn. RSVP today
[link removed]
Want to keep up with Brennan Center Live events? Subscribe to the events newsletter.
[link removed]
News
Alice Clapman on efforts to curb direct democracy // STATELINE
[link removed]
Lawrence Norden on the risks of artificial intelligence in our elections // AL JAZEERA
[link removed]
Eric Ruben on the Supreme Court’s latest gun rights ruling // TEXAS TRIBUNE
[link removed]
Thomas Wolf on the rift between the Supreme Court’s originalists // CNN
[link removed]
Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
[link removed]
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271
646-292-8310
tel:646-292-8310
[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
Support Brennan Center
[link removed]
View Online
[link removed]
Want to change how you receive these emails or unsubscribe? Click here
[link removed]
to update your preferences.
[link removed]
[link removed]
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[link removed]
Joe Biden and Donald Trump will debate on CNN at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday. As an alumnus of “debate camp” and a presidential historian, I’m eager to watch.
Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy held the first televised presidential debate in 1960. Those who watched on TV favored bronzed Kennedy over sweaty Nixon; those who listened on radio thought Nixon won. (Some scholars have debunked that. I say it’s too good to check.) The next debates were in 1976, and they have occurred every four years since then.
We remember them for gaffes and drama. But when you watch them on C-SPAN
[link removed]
, what is most interesting is the earnest discussion of issues and strategies.
Gerald Ford probably lost the election in 1976 when he bafflingly declared, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” That reinforced Lyndon Johnson’s unfair jibe
[link removed]
that there was nothing wrong with Ford “except he played football too long without his helmet.” In 1980, Ronald Reagan defused his greatest weakness, chuckling at Jimmy Carter’s charges of extremism (“there you go again”). Reagan made himself an acceptable alternative and won by a landslide.
This time, both candidates face perils.
For Biden, paradoxically, it is that he is the president. Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump all lost their first debate. Incumbents are rusty, cocooned. A military band plays “Hail to the Chief” when they walk into a room. Rarely are they challenged to their face. Biden has held few press conferences and given few interviews. He will have to fight hard against seeming peeved at criticism of his record.
Four years ago, Donald Trump was frantic, bombastic, and, it turned out, feverish from Covid-19. It is a big part of why he lost. These days, at his rallies he rails against his foes and promises retribution. But CNN’s format — with strict time limits and microphone cutoffs — perversely could help Trump, just as he was helped by being thrown off Twitter.
I was very involved in debate prep for Bill Clinton in 1996 when I was his chief speechwriter. Clinton knew well the incumbent jinx and worked hard to beat it. For the first debate, he prepped for most of a week at the leafy Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. Sen. George Mitchell played Bob Dole. He clobbered Clinton, who, like the other incumbents, was not used to being denounced to his face. At one point, Clinton slammed down his papers. “He’s cheating! He has notes!” Each day we would confide to lurking reporters that Mitchell had bested the president, and they all thought we were just spinning to lower expectations. With Clinton, we wrote and researched and practiced answers. Clinton grew more assured each day. The prep paid off: he was the only incumbent to prevail in the first debate, according to polls.
So as a political aficionado, I will watch for signs of a confident candidate.
But I will also want to see if the debate serves the public. CNN anchors will ask all the questions, and I hope that they rise to the moment.
The overarching issue — one that rarely has come up before — is the health of American democracy. “We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy,” Biden declared at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. No doubt he will pound Trump for his attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power four years ago.
Trump, in turn, has made his claim that millions of noncitizens will vote a central campaign argument. (That’s nonsense
[link removed]
, by the way.) Just as we saw in 2020, the Big Lie is being pre-deployed.
I hope the candidates will talk concretely about American democracy and how to fix it. For Biden, being pro-democracy cannot merely be a euphemism for supporting him. He should talk about his future agenda, such as the Freedom to Vote Act and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I hope the anchors will not hurry the candidates along if they want to discuss these things — voting rights and January 6 and the like — in their eagerness to get to other issues such as inflation or immigration.
We will likely hear about the Supreme Court. Trump has been eager to describe the kinds of justices he wants to appoint (judges like Clarence Thomas, he said). Biden, on the other hand, has long hesitated to discuss the Court itself. At his State of the Union, he did tell the justices that “with all due respect, justices, women are not without . . . electoral or political power.” Two weeks ago
[link removed]
, at last, he said that the next president might appoint two justices, and Trump would “appoint two more flying flags upside down.”
We can expect to hear about crime as well. Trump used to brag about signing the First Step Act, a bipartisan sentencing reform law. More recently, he has turned to angry rhetoric about supposedly soaring crime. Yes, violence spiked during the pandemic, but it has dropped sharply since then. And there is no evidence at all that criminal justice reform led to more crime.
The job for the Brennan Center in this moment: fight fear with facts. Not a bad goal for all of us as viewers.
What Ohio Shows Us About Money in Politics
Ohio’s 2024 congressional elections offer insight into the state of money in politics. Some notable takeaways: national megadonors are pouring millions into state races through super PACs, and a significant amount of campaign funding is coming from dark money groups that hide their donors. In a new analysis, Ian Vandewalker breaks down key trends in Ohio and across the country. Read more
[link removed]
Missing Checks on Presidential Power
A law that has gone largely ignored for more than a century poses a grave threat to our democracy. The Insurrection Act gives the president nearly limitless discretion to use the military as a domestic police force. Though this power is intended to be used in times of crisis, in the wrong hands, it can be abused. It’s up to Congress to quickly reform the law and implement safeguards. “The United States has been extraordinarily lucky that the Insurrection Act has not been misused more frequently. There is no reason to believe this good fortune will continue forever,”Joseph Nunn writes in the journal Democracy. READ MORE
[link removed]
Over a Decade of Diminished Voting Rights
Today marks the 11-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder that struck down crucial protections in the Voting Rights Act. There’s now ample evidence that the ruling has harmed representation and democratic participation for communities of color. Most disturbingly, the turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters has grown continuously over the past decade. In a new Q&A, Kareem Crayton discusses the repercussions of Shelby County and what can be done to repair the damage — namely, passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Read more
[link removed]
Meta’s Watchdog Has a Blind Spot
Meta’s oversight board aims to ensure that the company follows equitable and transparent rules for moderating speech on Facebook, Instagram, and now Threads. But the board’s limited capacity means that most day-to-day decisions about which posts to remove, demote, or boost are handled by algorithms that the board has no authority to review. “For the board to fully serve its function of providing accountability for Meta’s regulation of speech on its platforms, it must have access to the algorithms at the heart of this system,” Faiza Patel and Julian Melendi write in Just Security. READ MORE
[link removed]
Coming Up
VIRTUAL EVENT: Fix the Insurrection Act
[link removed]
Thursday, July 25, 3–4 p.m. ET
A law last updated 150 years ago gives presidents dangerous authority to use the U.S. military as a domestic police force. The Insurrection Act has virtually no limits on when and how this power can be used, making it a loaded weapon in the hands of any leader, Democrat or Republican, who is tempted to abuse it. Without urgent reforms, the law is a threat to civil liberties and American democracy itself.
Join us for a live virtual event on this issue moderated by Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center Liberty & National Security Program, featuring lawyer and writer Hawa Allan, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, and Brennan Center counsel Joseph Nunn. RSVP today
[link removed]
Want to keep up with Brennan Center Live events? Subscribe to the events newsletter.
[link removed]
News
Alice Clapman on efforts to curb direct democracy // STATELINE
[link removed]
Lawrence Norden on the risks of artificial intelligence in our elections // AL JAZEERA
[link removed]
Eric Ruben on the Supreme Court’s latest gun rights ruling // TEXAS TRIBUNE
[link removed]
Thomas Wolf on the rift between the Supreme Court’s originalists // CNN
[link removed]
Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
[link removed]
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271
646-292-8310
tel:646-292-8310
[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
Support Brennan Center
[link removed]
View Online
[link removed]
Want to change how you receive these emails or unsubscribe? Click here
[link removed]
to update your preferences.
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
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