Voters deserve a debate. Here’s how to make sure it happens

I’ve been thinking about an experience I had as a guest on Fox News in 2006.

I’d just resigned from my teaching position at Boston College, via an open letter in the Boston Globe, to protest that school’s selection of Condoleezza Rice as commencement speaker.

Fox News invited me to appear on one of their flagship shows at the time, “Hannity & Colmes,” to discuss my decision. Alan Colmes was Sean Hannity’s liberal sparring partner on that show, and I assumed my appearance would be devoted to a serious debate of whether Rice had lied to justify our invasion of Iraq.

But the segment turned into the kind of screeching interrogation now so common on that network, in which the conservative alpha male host berates a naïve liberal on air.

This experience leaped to mind when I read that Joe Biden had accepted the challenge to debate Donald Trump, and that two dates have been set: Thursday, June 27, and Tuesday, September 10.

The looming question is what rules will be in place.

Why? Because Donald Trump doesn’t really want to “debate” any of the pressing issues facing our nation: boring stuff like economic policy, America’s role on the world stage or climate change. It’s not just that he’s ignorant about policy. He’s emotionally incapable of functioning in any rhetorical environment that he can’t dominate.

What he wants, now and forever, is the chance to display his dominance, to mock and accuse, to proclaim his grievances, and — like Sean Hannity — to sabotage any serious discourse by constantly interrupting Biden.

We know this because we all witnessed what happened the last two times Trump and Biden shared a stage. Trump's boorish behavior reduced the events to brawls.

This is why the Biden team wisely sidestepped the Presidential Debate Commission and insisted on the imposition of rules the Commission never saw fit to impose.

Much has been made of the demand for no live audience, which Biden’s team believes will help curb Trump’s demagogic impulses. But the only way the debates can function as such is for organizers to focus on the microphones, and to silence each candidate the moment their allotted time has elapsed.

Obviously, it would be better if this wasn’t necessary, if the candidates could engage in a spirited “back and forth.” But history tells us that’s not going to happen. If Trump is given any opportunity to interrupt, to distract, to drag the discourse into the gutter, he will.

There’s a strategic advantage to Trump’s disruption

There’s a strategic advantage to Trump’s disruption, as well. It helps him dodge the tough questions voters have about him: whether he condemns the violence of the January 6 insurrection, for which he’s been indicted in a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, for instance. Whether he supports a national ban on abortion, whether he will accept the results of the election if he loses, or why he undermined a bi-partisan bill to reform American immigration policy at our border.

Trump doesn’t want to have to answer for his record as president, either, especially his tragic mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, which led to an economic collapse that resulted in a net loss of 3 million jobs under his watch.

Given Trump’s dismal record, in fact, Biden would be wise to agree to more debates, as Ezra Klein argues. The more the better, I say. Because each debate creates the opportunity for Biden to draw a contrast between himself and his opponent—and to combat the rampant misinformation that Trump peddles on the daily. Just so long as the mics are shut down after the time allotted for each response expires.

No filibustering. No cross talk. No ad hominem. Debate, not disruption.

Then let the voters decide.

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