Structuring Debates

For 1992, the Commission on Presidential Debates proposed an innovation: eliminating the panel of reporters, and instead having a single moderator for each debate. But the Bush campaign rejected the proposal and proceeded to negotiate an agreement with the Clinton campaign. Reportedly, the Republicans favored panels of journalists, on the theory that they would ask Clinton more questions about the draft; and the Democrats favored audience questioners in a town hall style, a format that Clinton had excelled at during the primaries. The campaigns compromised on four debates with four different formats: a panel of journalists, a single moderator, a combination of panel and single moderator, and a town meeting.

One wrinkle arose in choosing the reporters to participate as questioners. Each campaign had a veto right over proposed media participants, which prompted several prominent journalists and news outlets to announce that, if invited, they would decline to participate. Candidates had played a role in choosing the questioners in every previous debate except 1960, and some journalists had refused to take part in 1984 and 1988 -- some protesting the campaigns' involvement in selection, and others believing that the reporter's role is to cover campaign events, not to participate in them. The boycott "is now catching on," said Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. "I think large numbers of reporters and their news organizations will, as a matter of policy, not be able to participate."

Of the four debates of 1992, the debate in Richmond was the most talked-about and the most heavily viewed. In that town hall debate, moderator Carole Simpson of ABC News took questions from an audience of voters.

Many people, Simpson said, have told her that the Richmond debate was "one of the most important, defining moments" in the campaign for them. In her view, voters are eager to see other voters talking with the candidates. "They want that connectedness, and I hope that the town meeting format will be institutionalized."

Others, however, suggested that the town hall format isn't ideal. Jonathan Alter said that it doesn't force the candidates to explain how they will govern. By 1996, predicted Jennifer Lawson, an executive vice president of PBS, the town meeting may be "so overused that we will want to evolve toward something entirely different." CNN's Ed Turner agreed that "the town hall will become a bit tiresome."

Some speakers contended that different formats serve different but equally important objectives. "We still need professional journalists with lots of expertise in the candidates' histories, records, and flip-flops," Carole Simpson said. "I favor a combination of town hall and panel," said CNN's Turner. "Town hall, because people like to watch people, and a panel of journalists, because there must be follow-up -- these people have to be pinned down."

The voters "liked the variety of formats" in 1992, according to Diana Carlin, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas and a member of the advisory board of the Commission on Presidential Debates. In focus groups held in seventeen cities, Carlin said, voters rated the town hall format highly, "because the questions were being asked by real, live voters." Those questions, she added, reflected voters' concerns to a much greater degree than did the journalists' questions at other debates. At the same time, however, focus group respondents valued follow-up questions that "nail the candidates down on specifics."

The respondents voiced other suggestions, Carlin said. They preferred single moderators to panels. They recommended that each debate address a smaller range of topics in greater depth. They wanted the debates to continue over a longer period in the campaign. "They also wanted some direct cross-examination between or among the candidates, chances for them to ask one another questions." But they were displeased by the blustery exchanges at the vice-presidential debate. "In fact, they even suggested that the moderator be able to turn the microphones off and on to make sure that people were polite."

University of Virginia political scientist Michael Cornfield offered a more far-reaching suggestion. He advised abolishing the vice-presidential debate, because "it serves no purpose other than to give the writers on `Saturday Night Live' material," and putting in its place a debate between the leading candidates for Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader. Limiting debates to presidential candidates "perpetuates the myth that presidents run the government," Cornfield said.

Carole Simpson
Senior Correspondent, ABC News
Moderator of the October 15, 1992 debate

I have been stopped almost every place I go by people who want to talk about the debate. Airline pilots, salesclerks, waiters and waitresses, taxi drivers, men working jackhammers, car wash attendants, even convicts -- I get a lot of prison mail.

I have heard many people say that the man with the ponytail who called on the candidates to end the mudslinging expressed their sentiments exactly. Like the Richmond audience, they wanted to hear about the issues.

Scores of people have mentioned the young black woman who asked how the national debt had personally affected the candidates. You will remember that the question was not phrased as well as it could have been, and Bush said, "I don't get it." I tried to help him by suggesting that I thought she meant the economy and the recession. He went on to talk about his grandchildren and a black church with pregnant teenagers. I felt sorry for him. It was a question that I thought he could have hit out of the park, and he just did not connect. A lot of people, especially young ones, said to me that right then and there, that decided the election for them.

I remember the criticism of the debate. I was lambasted for acting like a schoolmarm. I was accused of manipulating the debate. The questions from the audience were called vacuous, obvious, soft.

Well, excuse me! This was the people's debate. Those were the people's questions. Isn't that what the election is all about, the people and their decision on who they want to lead them? I was distressed by my colleagues' snobbery, but in the court of public opinion the second presidential debate was the clear winner.

Jonathan Alter
Senior Editor, Newsweek

Carole did a wonderful job in the Richmond debate, but it has been overrated as a format. You'll also have a situation, if Clinton runs for reelection, where the town meeting format is his fireside chat. They think this format best suits Bill Clinton, and so they will push for as many town meeting debates as they can. The question will be raised whether that gives the incumbent an unfair advantage.

I prefer the Hal Bruno and Jim Lehrer debates in terms of eliciting the most useful information about how a candidate would govern. To me, that is still the most under-covered and underanalyzed dimension of presidential campaign reportage.

The key question now is how could Clinton have proposed an investment strategy that would also reduce the deficit and not raise taxes on the middle class, how he would square that circle. The only time Clinton had to grapple with that issue was in that last debate, under questioning from Jim Lehrer.

Diana Carlin
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, University of Kansas

The Richmond format was rated very highly by members of our focus groups, not so much because you had a town hall meeting, but because the questions were being asked by real, live voters. There was a sentiment that the media has its opportunities day in and day out to ask questions, and that often those questions deal with things that are not high on the public agenda.

Research has shown that many of the questions asked in the debates since 1960 don't register with what opinion polls say are on people's minds. But the Richmond debate, to a question, was consistent with what focus group members had told us they would ask if they could be there.