A Debate Suggestion
I'd like to see the moderators refuse to ask Trump normal policy questions until he answers abnormal misdeed questions
Having been forced earlier than expected to contemplate a Biden-Trump ’24 debate, I find myself intensely uncomfortable with the (dare I use the term) “normalizing” image of the former President spending most of 90 minutes on live national prime-time television taking questions on policy positions.
So I’d like to offer a suggestion to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who have been announced as moderators for the planned June 27 affair: don’t do that.
It’s not that those forward-looking policy topics are unimportant—see for example Eric Cortellessa’s valuable Trump interview for Time, which I wrote about recently. It’s just that asking Trump about his second-term policies feels a little like asking Charles Manson how he plans to decorate the Tate house when he moves in.
Pardon my questionable taste, and the rather dated reference, but hopefully you get my point.
Some of that normalization is sadly inevitable at this point; Republicans have chosen him as their nominee, so we’re kind of stuck going through the process now. But the moderators of this first major event of the general election could, and I think should, make a serious effort to ask him about his various assaults on the democratic process, the abuses of his office, and various outrageous acts from sexual assault to stealing classified documents. (And extorting Ukraine for his political gain! And asking Justice Department leaders to lie for his political gain! Man, there are a LOT of things that he should be asked about.) I daresay Bash and Tapper, following my suggestion, would run out of time before getting to any policy questions at all.
In particular, I would recommend framing many of these questions as ethics and judgment tests. So for example:
--Regardless of whether you concede that you did take classified documents and hide them from investigators, is that something you think would be wrong to do, and that you promise to never do again?
--Granting for the moment that you say you did not commit the acts described by E. Jean Carroll, do you agree that the acts she described would constitute rape?
--Former aides have described you as President routinely tearing up and throwing away documents that you knew were legally required to be maintained as public records; whether you admit to doing so or not, do you agree that this would be wrong and illegal, and do you promise not to do so if you serve as President again?
—Do you agree to accept and acknowledge results of this year’s election *once the proscribed legal review and certification processes are complete* unlike what you did in 2020?
And so forth.
Let me brush aside two obvious objections to this plan that might be formulating in your head.
First, you might rightly be thinking that we all know how Trump will respond to such questions: with the usual aggressive, filibuster-style denials, counter-accusations, conspiracy theories, and preposterous lies. That’s true.
Second, you might reasonably suggest that pestering him with misconduct questions (while presumably asking Biden more debate-typical policy questions) will enable Trump to play victim, and quite possibly actually help him in election terms.
My response is that neither of those concerns should be foremost goals of the debate hosts. A journalist can never make someone answer what you want them to answer (I have considerable experience trying, believe me); and cannot, and frankly should not, base questions on what effect you might have on voters’ psychological sympathies. Best to prioritize the most important questions pertaining to the fitness of the candidate to hold the office.
Also, I would recommend that Bash and Tapper occasionally say that yes, we’ll ask you normal policy questions after you actually answer these questions about abusing your power and authority.
I am sympathetic to a third potential objection, as mentioned a bit earlier: that it would be a terrible shame to leave out questions pertaining to Trump’s plans for running the federal government.
I tend to believe that substantive policy discussion doesn’t matter much in partisan debates. It’s different in primaries, and certain non-partisan elections, where candidates can distinguish their policies and priorities in ways that voters can’t easily assume. In a general election, the Democratic and Republican candidates are usually divided pretty clearly in very predictable ways—and that goes a hundred-fold for Biden and Trump.
Seriously, how useful is time spent discussing their specific approaches to, say, climate change, when everybody knows or can rightly assume that Biden tries to prevent it and Trump thinks it’s a hoax?
The upshot is that, in my opinion, vibes matter more. Does one sound more or less knowledgeable than expected on a topic? Does either come across as more or less extreme than expected? More ‘caring about people like me’ than expected?
I must, however, put a caveat on that for my emptors. Julia, contributing to this newsletter from a position of actual knowledge, wrote last week that “studies of general election debates find that these events enhance voter knowledge about where the candidates stand on issues, but don’t do much to change their perception of candidate traits like leadership potential.” So it seems that my opinion might be just vibes, and bad ones at that.
Nevertheless, I’d like to see Bash and Tapper feed Trump a steady stream of questions about his misdeeds, particularly those involving abuse of the office he held before and wishes to hold again. After all, that truly matters.