Mulvaney: We need more presidential debates, not fewer

At some point even Republicans have to feel for President Biden’s campaign team. They have the unenviable task of trying to manage a candidate who, at his best, might claim at any given time that he walked on the moon. At worst, he is likely to say that he thinks it is made of green cheese.

You have to figure the team longs for the days of COVID, when it was entirely possible to run a national campaign in an almost 100 percent controlled environment. No press gaggles, no impromptu stops at the local deli and blessedly few off-the-cuff remarks.

But, of course, 2024 isn’t 2020, and the Biden team cannot simply park its man in the Rose Garden and have him do choreographed exchanges with MSNBC and NPR. So they look for the next best thing — softball interviews with Biden-lovers or Trump-haters — and hope that their man won’t make too much news.

Unfortunately for them, the gaffemaster-in-chief is capable of bringing chaos even to the most controlled media environment. Such was the case last week on the Howard Stern radio program.

Stern, who was once edgy long ago, heaped praise upon Biden for an hour or so on such hard-hitting topics as his elementary school years, his stellar career as a life-guard, and his wife Jill. Biden then mumbled that he would debate Trump, was in fact “happy” to do it, but that he just didn’t know when that would happen. 

You could almost hear the collective gasp from the Biden team off-stage, followed quickly by a rush of tapping on phones to start the damage control.

That’s because the Democratic Party line going into the interview was that Biden’s willingness to participate in debates “depends on (Donald Trump’s) behavior.” That’s obviously code for “no debates,” as it is impossible to imagine anyone in Biden world thinking that Trump’s behavior could ever “earn” him the right to a debate.

The Biden campaign’s no-debate policy makes complete sense from a self-interested perspective. The Biden team is concerned about his ability to participate in such a format. And putting him onstage has dramatically more downside than upside. 

Yes, Republicans have said that before, specifically with regard to the State of the Union address in March. And yes, give credit where credit is due: Biden broadly exceeded expectations and gave what can only be described as a good speech. But as one Democratic consultant noted this week, what little bump Biden got from that speech has already run out.  

More to the point, however, a State of the Union Speech is not a debate. Notwithstanding the now-inevitable attempts of attention-hogs to get social media hits with meaningless interruptions, the State of the Union is one of the most controlled environments in which presidents perform. 

Debates are entirely different, off-the-cuff affairs whose participants need to be at their sharpest.  While certainly they do significant preparation, there are no scripts, no notes and no teleprompters. All the candidates are, in a very real way, winging it in debates.

Joe Biden is capable of saying literally anything under those circumstances. Democrats know it and tremble.

The Biden team had been laying the foundations for avoiding debates for months now. They had been noting, for example, that it was Trump who actually set the stage for skipping debates, in light of the fact that he refused to debate during the Republican primary. Why should Biden debate, they were asking, when Trump did not?

Biden threw all of that by the wayside last week.

The Trump team is now calling for debates anytime, anywhere, any place and any time. Setting aside such political bombast, it would be the best policy.

The conventional wisdom might be that we don’t need many debates during this election cycle, given the familiarity that voters already have with both candidates. But debates are more than about getting to know candidates. The world is a very different place than it was the last time Trump and Biden went toe-to-toe. 

Yes, the media gives regular attention to inflation, immigration, Israel, Ukraine and abortion. But at a time when most “news” more closely resembles campaign surrogacy for one candidate or the other, neither candidate really gets pressed on those issues. And while many voters may have well made up their minds on their chosen candidate, the election promises to be so tight that even the small sliver of people who have not yet settled on a favorite may well determine the direction the country takes.

We need more presidential debates, not fewer. And while “anywhere, anyplace, anytime” is probably too much to ask for, more than one or two seem called for. Sadly, that seems unlikely to happen.

Unless, of course, Biden does another unscripted interview.

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.