Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in the final presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle on October 22, 2020. File Pool Photo by Chip Somodevilla/UPI
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have reached a loose agreement to hold two debates this summer without the Commission on Presidential Debates. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI
May 24 (UPI) — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have reached a loose agreement to hold two debates this summer without the Commission on Presidential Debates.
The two sides have agreed to hold the first debate in Atlanta on June 27. The second debate will be held on Sept. 10 at Virginia State University, a historically black college in Petersburg, Virginia.
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Tammy Vigil, associate dean of the Boston University School of Communication, told UPI that while the candidates have agreed on a date and location, it is not a guarantee that the debate will take place.
“I don't know if there was a virtual or symbolic handshake on this arrangement,” said Vigil, co-author of The Third Agenda for the US Presidential Debates: Debate Observation and Public Response. “They're locking in the location more than the date. Virginia State was arranged by a committee. They're kind of using the work of the committee without going through the committee.”
The move to bypass the Commission on Presidential Debates is unusual: Republican and Democratic candidates have never scheduled their own debates outside the commission since it was created in 1987.
The nonpartisan, nonprofit organization was created solely for this purpose after the League of Women Voters organized the debates from 1976 to 1984. Prior to that, news organizations had organized presidential debates, starting with the 1960 debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
The committee is co-chaired by former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf and Democratic philanthropist Antonia Hernandez, and is made up of eight Republicans and Democrats.
Both sides shared their reasons for bucking tradition, agreeing that the timeline the commission laid out would not serve voters, especially since early voting will begin in some states before the final debate takes place.
Early voting begins 40 days before Election Day in Illinois, 30 days in Maine, 29 days in California, and 27 days in Arizona.
The dates proposed by the committee were September 16 at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, October 1 at Virginia State University, and October 9 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. The vice presidential debate will be held on September 25 at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.
The campaigns have not disclosed their intentions for the vice presidential debate.
In an emailed statement to UPI, the Presidential Election Commission said it remains prepared to hold the debate as scheduled.
“The American people are entitled to substantive debates between the leading candidates for president and vice president,” the statement said. “The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) was established in 1987 to ensure that such debates are held and reach the widest possible television, radio and streaming audiences. All 2024 venues, institutions of higher education, are prepared to host debates on dates selected to accommodate early voters.”
Biden advisers Anita Dunn and Ron Klain were part of a task force that issued a report calling for debate reform in 2015. Holding debates earlier was one of the main recommendations, along with eliminating live audiences except for small town halls, requiring moderators to sign rules and format agreements, and expanding the pool of potential moderators.
There has been tension between Republicans and the committee in recent years, with the Republican National Committee severing ties with the committee in 2022.
Trump particularly objected to some of the guardrails the commission put in place during the 2020 election, particularly the muzzling of candidates who wouldn't concede to their opponents, which were put in place after Trump ignored Biden and continued to debate him during the first debate.
“In 2020, the first presidential debate was ugly. It was absolutely awful,” Vigil said. “The commission came in and said they needed to do something about it. That's when they added the ability to mute the microphone. That caused an uproar.”
Trump also declined to participate in one of the 2020 debates because it was held virtually, and has also criticized the commission's selection of the moderator.
“Donald Trump has a long history of cheating in debates – complaining about the rules, breaking them, backing out at the last minute or not showing up at all – and he has done so in each of his three presidential elections,” Biden-Harris campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said in a statement. “Mr. Trump has said he would debate President Biden anytime, anywhere, in any setting – and in fact he has said and posted this dozens of times, with varying levels of understanding and grammar. President Biden has made the terms of two one-on-one debates clear, and Donald Trump has accepted those terms. No more cheating. No more confusion. No more debate arguing.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to UPI's request for comment.
Vigil worries that these debates could shift their focus from informing to generating ratings, pointing to the 2020 debates that were heavily criticized for being more about entertainment than substance.
“The committee had pretty strict rules about what a moderator could do when taking questions, and all of that was tightly controlled,” Vigil said. “I don't know if it's still controlled the same way.”
Mr. Vigil also thinks it might make it easier for third-party or independent candidates, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to appear in a presidential debate without a commission. Ross Perot was the last non-party candidate to appear in a presidential debate in 1992.
There is little research to document that presidential debates have a significant effect on voters, at least in terms of swaying them from one side of the aisle to the other, but at best they may solidify votes or encourage voters to vote.
It remains to be seen whether this year's presidential debate will be different from previous ones, and whether it will proceed as the campaigns claim.
“I'm not saying this is the end of debates as we know them,” Vigil said. “I think this is significant for the Commission on Presidential Debates. It shows a lack of flexibility on their part.”
