Bring back the Commission on Presidential Debates

This year, the U.S. has taken a giant step backward in presidential debates. The Republican presidential candidate at first declined to debate on ABC News, although he eventually agreed. The Democratic opponent is weighing whether to accept a debate offer from Fox News. Each network is considered biased by one side or the other. A vice presidential debate is set for Oct. 1.

All of this could have been avoided. This is why we had a Commission on Presidential Debates in the first place. It was created in 1987 to prevent this kind of uncertainty over whether debates would occur. 

Many Americans may not remember what presidential debates looked like prior to 1988. For over a century and a half, presidential candidates didn’t debate at all. It wasn’t until 1960 that presidential candidate debates even began. 

For the next quarter century, whether they would be held each year was an open question. The League of Women Voters sponsored some debates. Others were organized by a television network. There was no structure, organization or predictability as to when or how debates would be held from election to election.

The commission changed all that. Formed by representatives of the two major parties, the Commission on Presidential Debates institutionalized presidential candidate debating. First, the debate venues and dates were set a year in advance. The venues were geographically diverse college campuses across the nation. For example, this year, debates were scheduled at colleges in Texas, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Utah. Neither Republicans nor Democrats benefited from the locations.

The debate moderators were chosen by the commission. Those who moderated were well-respected journalists such as Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill of PBS; Bernard Shaw and Candy Crowley of CNN; and Martha Raddatz of ABC. The rules of engagement were largely set in place by the commission, not by the candidates.

The CPD’s example spawned state-level debate commissions in Indiana, Utah, Ohio and Washington and a city-level commission in New York City. Thanks to the CPD, debating at various levels of government became more institutionalized. That gave voters the reassurance that they would see candidates for local and state office in a professional, neutral debate setting.

A knock on the CPD was its high threshold for participation. In its history, only one third-party candidate (Ross Perot) was included in debates. Third-party candidates like Ralph Nader (Green) and Ron Paul (Libertarian) were eliminated from the debates because they didn’t get 15 percent support in national polls. 

Nevertheless, the commission-backed debates had become such an institution that no invited presidential candidate declined to show up for more than 30 years. Only in 2020, during the COVID-19 epidemic, did the commission cancel a debate because a candidate (Donald Trump) refused to participate in a virtual debate designed to avoid the transmission of COVID-19.

What caused the commission’s demise this year? The Republican National Committee announced two years ago it would withdraw from participation in its debates. And then earlier this year, President Biden’s campaign made it official when the campaign chair announced that the president would not debate Donald Trump in the commission’s debates. 

Both actions were a disservice to voters generally. The commission guaranteed to voters debates that were substantive, non-partisan and independent of the candidate campaigns. Now, candidates can play one network against another to gain advantage in the encounter. They can insist that the debates occur on their favored territory, as Trump has done with his proposed Fox News debate.

The commission could still be resurrected this year. It has offered to organize presidential debates this fall. As it explained in a press release: “The reason for the [the commission’s] creation remains compelling: a neutral organization with no other role during the general election is well-positioned to offer formats that focus on the candidate and the issues that are most important to the American people.”

Vice President Kamala Harris has the opportunity to start an entirely new campaign. She is not bound by what President Biden decided.

One of her actions could be to restore the Commission on Presidential Debates to its role as the debate sponsor. 

She could turn down Fox News and ABC News and instead accept the commission’s offer to run the kind of highly professional, well-respected debates they have excelled at for well over 30 years.

If she did so, not only would she be helping restore neutral, professional debates this year, but signaling that, in the midst of intense political polarization, the Commission on Presidential Debates is a much-need institution for the future.

Richard Davis is a founder of the Utah Debate Commission and is an emeritus political science professor at Brigham Young University.