Traditionally, there are three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate — or at least, that’s how it worked in 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000 and 1992. (Bill Clinton and Bob Dole debated only twice in 1996.) The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates scheduled three debates in 2020, but Donald Trump caught covid-19, and organizers said it would be held virtually “to protect the health and safety of all involved.” Trump pulled out, then his campaign demanded the debate be held later, and the two campaigns could never agree on a time and place for the third debate.
For this year, the commission had proposed a familiar lineup — three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate, falling between Sept. 16 and Oct. 9. As recently as last month, Trump and his campaign were calling for earlier and more frequent debates.
On Wednesday, President Biden managed to talk Trump down to two debates — June 27 on CNN and Sept. 10 on ABC.
The guy whose name is on the cover of “The Art of the Deal” just got outmaneuvered.
Trump is convinced he’s a much better debater than Biden, boasting on Truth Social on Wednesday, “Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced - He can’t put two sentences together!” The record on the 2020 debates suggests otherwise. The first debate was an incoherent mess, with Trump attempting to talk over Biden half the night, infuriating the moderator, Fox News’s Chris Wallace. The second debate went better for Trump, in part because if you let Joe Biden talk, sooner or later his runaway mouth will get him in trouble.
Still, if you’re Trump, you want as many opportunities as possible for Biden to appear doddering and hapless before a large television audience, as close to when people cast their ballots as you can get.
Given the choice between no debates and this abbreviated and early debate schedule, it’s good that the debates will occur. But if this schedule holds, the 2024 presidential debates will be complete 12 days before the end of summer. “Debate season” will end absurdly early.
The Trump campaign had a legitimate gripe with the original Sept. 16-Oct. 9 span for debates proposed by the commission. The earliest start of early voting, in Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia, is Sept. 20. By the time the third and last debate was held, the Trump campaign estimated, about 8.7 million Americans would have already cast their ballots.
Instead, the first of only two debates this year will be held a week before the Fourth of July, when most people’s thoughts are focused on summer vacations, three months before anybody casts a ballot early and more than four months before Election Day. Unless either candidate has a heart attack onstage, no one is likely to remember much about that late June debate.
Then the second and final presidential debate will occur the week after Labor Day, when kids are getting back to school. If the Biden team aimed to pick two times of year when Americans will be least tuned-in to the political world and the news cycle, they did quite well.
After the second of these debates, Trump will almost certainly call for more. But Biden and his campaign will argue, accurately, that there were two presidential debates in 2020 and two presidential debates in 2024, and that no one is getting shortchanged. They’ll also point out, fairly, that Trump refused to participate in Republican primary debates for this election.
It’s entirely possible that the debates aren’t going to change anybody’s mind. Biden and Trump are the ultimate known quantities in American politics, so maybe it’s fitting that, at this point, it appears we have two old men opting for the early-bird special, more interested in appearing eager to debate than in actually doing it.
