Say this much for Thursday’s presidential debate in Atlanta: It’s got to be better than the boorish display we suffered through in 2020 when Donald Trump went off the rails.
The rules for this one include two welcome changes. The big one is that microphones will be shut off once the candidate hits his time limit.
So, we won’t have to suffer the spectacle of Trump’s relentless interruptions, which prompted Joe Biden’s best line of the debate: “Will you shut up, man?”
It’s a safe bet that Trump will break these new rules, too, by talking past his allotted time. But while his gums will flap, we won’t have to hear it. It’s a dream come true, as welcome as the local bans on leaf blowers on weekend mornings.
Another new rule: There will be no audience, just the candidates, and the CNN moderators. So, unlike past debates, this won’t have the feel of a high school pep rally, with blue team and red team trying to outshout each other. This will be unvarnished, two old men slugging it out on their own.
Alan Schroder, author of Presidential Debates: Risky Business on the Campaign Trail, predicts the format will allow Biden to avoid “the distraction of boisterous Trump supporters carrying on with loud applause or laughing, all those things that happen when you have a live audience, and particularly a very politicized live audience.”
These rules were negotiated by the campaigns and CNN directly, not the Commission of Presidential Debates, which has sponsored every presidential debate since 1988. That’s a return to the roots of this tradition, which began with the four debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960, negotiated by the networks. Those debates had no audience either, though the microphones were not muted, as it was a more civil age.
A huge TV audience could be a help to Biden. A recent New York Times poll found that he is ahead by five points among the most engaged voters, those who cast a ballot in the 2022 primary and presumably are following this election closely. Trump is ahead by 14 points among the least engaged voters, who may be more malleable.
In any case, this debate has got to be better than the 2020 pie fight, when the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, proved unable to corral Trump. ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos called it “the worst presidential debate I have ever seen in my life” while others panned it as “a disgrace” or “a shitshow” or “mudwrestling.”
After the 2020 debate, Biden picked up a few points in the polls, and in the end beat Trump in the popular vote by 81 million to 74 million.
That debate, recall, is the one that almost killed Chris Christie. He helped Trump prepare in the weeks leading up to it, sitting for hours in a room rehearsing with him. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, later revealed that Trump was tested for Covid three days before the debate, and knew he was infected.
But he never told Christie, whose obesity and asthma put him at grave risk. Not surprisingly, he got the virus and landed in the intensive care unit of Morristown Medical Center for a full week. He later said it was “undeniable” that he got it from Trump.
So, mark that debate as a low point in the history of presidential debates. This time, we’ll at least have a mute button.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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