The Fascinating History Of Presidential Debates

The Commission on Presidential Debates recently announced the moderators for the events, a hard task considering the challenge of finding seasoned vets who are unoffensive enough to be seen as objective and fair. “Pw5bm&source=sp_email”>an online petition that urges the Presidential Debate Commission to add more women to the list of moderators.

Monday’s debate between Clinton and Trump will take place on the 56th anniversary of that first debate.

“Their appearance was very important”, recalled Sander Vanocur, the former NBC newsman who was a questioner in the 1960 debates. And there’s already been a lot of talk about how he’ll go about it, especially regarding whether he should be fact-checking the candidates’ answers. Even though he has been running for president for over a year, has taken in $166m in political donations and has a pollster in charge of his campaign, Mr Trump still manages to avoid being thought of as a politician.

Fahrenkopf says if “Candidate A” says something that is wrong or inconsistent with what they’ve done or said in the past, “it’s not the moderators job to say, ‘hey, Candidate A, that’s not what you said last week.’ That’s for Candidate B to do”.

The vice presidential debate, on October 4 at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., will be moderated by a woman – Elaine Quijano of CBS News and CBSN.

The first of three debates (the other two are on October 9 and October 19), the showdown will be moderated by NBC News anchor Lester Holt, who is expected to divide the 90-minute session into three different topical segments: the Direction of America, Achieving Prosperity and Securing America. In a “real debate” judges assign points and declare the victor.

Fahrenkopf says the commission solved the problem by building what he called “a pitcher’s mound” behind the Dukakis podium.

Clinton likely will arrive with heaps of statistics and refined policy points that she can employ to her advantage or that can make her seem pedantic at an event created to reveal personality and character.

“I think it’s going to be a big debate”. And there were Al Gore’s audible sighs during his debate with George W. Bush.

One advantage modern debates have is that they’re available in many more places than they used to be.

Will there be any such memorable moments on Monday?

Debates are overhyped media events that mostly serve to reinforce voter predispositions to support one candidate or the other.

NEW YORK (AP) – Since he entered the presidential race, it’s been Donald Trump’s style to break with convention. However, the event may set the standard for what we can all expect during the general election.

BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: Debates have been a mainstay of presidential campaigns it seems forever, but that’s not quite the case. There have been 30 presidential and nine vice-presidential debates, beginning with the first on September 26, 1960.

HOWARD SMITH: The candidates need no introduction.

This time it is not a populist third party that is threatening to siphon off tens of millions of votes from the Republican and Democratic candidates, but powerful feelings of reluctance and repulsion. People hear what they want to hear, so most Hillary Clinton supporters will wind up convinced she did well, while most Donald Trump supporters will think he “won”.

The website goes on to suggest that Gwen Ifill of PBS, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Christiane Amanpour of CNN and Tamron Hall of NBC News and MSNBC would be good candidates for moderators. But moderators can not be expected to serve as full-time, live-time fact-checkers. The moderator is usually a pretty well-known person like a national news anchor. He told a panel discussion at the University of Notre Dame recently how he approached the task. “I think they view it similar to a auto crash; the “anything can happen, unpredictability” aspect has their attention”. In their first debate, Kennedy seemed confident and polished, Nixon uneasy and perspiring.

Makes no difference that Holt is actually a Republican, having registered in 2003.

Let’s not forget: It’s the candidates who must be able to win debates not only by providing highlight-worthy answers but also by effectively challenging and questioning their opponents.

Trump can argue we are a compassionate people, but nobody remembers the Founding Fathers bringing the Barbary Pirates into the country.

I don’t expect anything to change in this debate, though.