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VP Encounter Shows You Can't Have a Real Debate When One Party Refuses to Follow Rules Julie Hollar ([link removed])


[link removed]'s vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris may have lacked the bullying and blustering by Trump that characterized the first presidential debate (FAIR.org, 10/2/20 ([link removed]) ), but it still managed to reinforce the overall problem with the 2020 debates: You can't have a real debate if one party refuses to follow the rules.

Sure, Pence's interruptions didn't come close to matching his boss's the week before—though he did repeatedly talk over moderator Susan Page's meek attempts to keep him to his allotted time—but Pence managed to avoid answering nearly every question asked of him, and USA Today's Page did virtually nothing to steer him back on topic.

As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen (Facebook, 10/7/20 ([link removed]) ) pointed out, most of the evening felt less like a debate than alternating stump speeches. It's a problem rooted in the running of the debates, under the sponsorship of the bipartisan (not, as Page called it, "nonpartisan") Commission on Presidential Debates, which grabbed control over the debates from the League of Women Voters back in the late '80s (FAIR.org, 8/29/00 ([link removed]) ). Under the CPD, the parties, not an independent organization with the public's interest at heart, make the rules and vet the moderators.


Infected people at White House event (CNN)

Photos of the White House superspreader event show Mike Pence sitting directly in front of Sen. Mike Lee, who later tested positive (CNN, 10/3/20 ([link removed]) ).

In fact, if the debates were run by a truly independent organization, it's hard to imagine this week's debate would have even taken place in person. Given CDC guidelines ([link removed]) that asymptomatic individuals with negative Covid tests should isolate for 14 days if they have been within six feet of an infected person for more than 15 minutes—a category into which Pence almost certainly falls, given the widespread nature of the White House outbreak—the CPD had no business approving the in-person debate to go forward.

Some in the press, meanwhile, unhelpfully framed the question of debate safety as merely a "he said, she said" issue (PressWatchers, 10/7/20 ([link removed]) ). "Pence, Harris Teams at Odds Over Plexiglass at Debate," read a Washington Post headline (10/6/20 ([link removed]^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1313579216005468165|twgr^share_3&ref_url=[link removed]) ); to the New York Times (10/6/20 ([link removed] Stories&pgtype=Homepage) ), "the complaint [about plexiglass dividers] from Mr. Pence’s staff—which was quickly brushed aside by Ms. Harris’s team—was another salvo in the fraught negotiations over the debate."

Trump's tantrum ([link removed]) in response to the CPD's recent move to take the second presidential debate virtual reveals the partisan pressures that render impossible debates that are both safe and edifying.

As I wrote last week (FAIR.org, 10/2/20 ([link removed]) ), when you've got one side whose strategy derives from reality TV and depends primarily upon falsehoods, personal attacks and breaking all the rules, no amount of rule-changing will solve the problem. And so, I repeat: The only reasonable thing for journalists to do at this point is to not just call for an end to these debates, but to call for an end to the Trump presidency.
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