Interruptions and insults: What rules of decorum were trampled in presidential debate?
The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on Tuesday has been described as a lot of things — “ugly,” “unwatchable” and “strange,” among them.
Civil, however, didn’t make the cut.
Fox News host and moderator Chris Wallace spent much of the night pleading with the president to stop talking, while Biden took turns calling Trump a liar and a clown before eventually telling him, “Will you shut-up, man?”
There was an established set of rules going into the night — as well as six decades of nationally televised debates providing a blueprint for decorum — but critics say evidence of both was lacking.
Now the Commission on Presidential Debates says it’s going to change the format.
“Last night’s debate made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues,” the commission said in a news release, adding that it “intends to ensure that additional tools to maintain order are in place for the remaining debates.”
The written rules
The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private and non-partisan body tasked with sponsoring the general election debates every four years. It’s an independent nonprofit that neither endorses any candidate or party nor receives any federal funding or campaign donations.
It’s also in charge of setting the debate rules.
The commission announced the moderator and format of the first presidential debate on Sept. 2. It was to be divided into six, 15-minute segments on major topics effecting the election cycle and chosen by Wallace in advance.
Wallace was to “open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond,” the commission said. They could then respond to each other, and any remaining time would be used “for a deeper discussion of the topic.”
Because of the coronavirus, Politico reported, there would be no pre-debate handshake and a limited audience of fewer than 80 people.
Wallace was also instructed not to fact-check either candidate during the debate, the commission’s co-chairman told CNN, according to Boston.com.
Historical debates
The Commission on Presidential Debates has sponsored presidential debates since 1988, but the first nationally televised debate dates to 1960 between Democrat nominee John F. Kennedy and Republican nominee Richard Nixon.
Kennedy was seen as “calm and collected, well groomed, and handsome,” according to the right-leaning Bill of Rights Institute. Nixon, meanwhile, appeared sweaty and unshaven with shifty eyes, and he ultimately lost the election.
Columnist Eric Black for the Minnesota Post re-watched the 1960 debate during the 2016 election cycle and described it in an opinion piece as “incredibly civil and polite.”
“There were basically no personal attacks at all, of any sort, and a constant assertion of mutual respect,” Black wrote. “Each listens respectfully to the other. Each asserts that the other is a good person and that both want what is best for America, but that they have differences of opinion on how to bring that about.”
In the decades since, the Bill of Rights Institute asserts a few things have changed: “soundbites and pithy retorts” are valued over “constructive dialogue,” and “substantive discussions of public policy and principle” have given way to “brief statements of opinion and platform.”
The format has also changed, according to the presidential debate commission.
In the late 1980s, it involved one moderator, a panel of three journalists and the candidates. It wasn’t until the 1990s and early 2000s that a single moderator and the Town Hall format with questions from the audience were introduced.
The format of six 15-minute segments devoted to individual topics started in 2012 and 2016, which the commission attributed to its “sustained effort over many years to foster meaningful discussion of the issues and to eliminate restrictive time constraints.”
An expectation of decorum
There was no “meaningful discussion” during Tuesday night’s first presidential debate, critics said.
“General election debates — which have been a recurring feature of elections since 1960 and an institutional fixture since 1976 — had been until Tuesday one of the few dimensions of the nation’s public life to preserve a certain aura of solemnity,” Politico reported. “That changed in the opening moments of the Cleveland debate.”
Trump “shred the official debate rules, and shed any pretense of decorum,” according to the media outlet, leaving Biden to either “draw a contrast by deferring to the rules” or join in.
“He could try to embrace the spirit of the evening in what often sounded like a saloon argument, at the moment when the bartender is trying decide whether things are about to turn physical and he should call the cops,” Politco reported.
A seven-minute segment on NPR’s Morning Edition about the debate was titled “Decorum Goes Out The Window.”
“I think when you had Chris Wallace saying ‘Mr. President, Mr. President, you’re going to really like this next question’ as a way to kind of calm (Trump) down, that just was — the lack of decorum and respect and dignity really was beneath the office of the presidency,” Democratic strategist Karen Finney told NPR.
Some are questioning whether there will be a second debate and, if so, how to keep the candidates on track.
The left-leaning Brookings Institution suggested turning their mics off to “allow the next debates to go on with a modicum of decorum.”
“We might actually be able to hear what the candidates are saying,” Elaine Kamarck wrote. “The split screen could still allow the candidates to laugh, smirk, shake their heads in outrage, or whatever. But at least we would be able to hear what the candidates had to say, a modest improvement over the most awful presidential debate ever.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 3:36 PM with the headline "Interruptions and insults: What rules of decorum were trampled in presidential debate?."
