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Matthew Gagnon of Yarmouth is the chief executive officer of the Maine Policy Institute, a free market policy think tank based in Portland. A Hampden native, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C.
Two and a half years ago, I asked a very simple question: Have you ever made a decision about who to vote for based on a debate?
The reason for my question was the decision by the Republican National Committee to push any candidates running for president in 2024 to refuse to participate in debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
The commission, which was founded in 1987 as a supposedly independent body to organize debates fairly, had sponsored every presidential and vice presidential debate from 1988 through the 2020 election cycle. Over the years, however, criticism of the commission increased — particularly in Republican circles — and in the wake of the RNC’s announcement, it became likely that debates, if they happened at all, would not be sponsored by the commission. Some speculated that the presidential debate tradition would disappear entirely.
Ergo my question. If the tradition died, would anyone miss it?
My argument at the time was no. I have never made any voting decision based on a presidential debate, and I have never (that I know) met a person who has. It is my belief that presidential debates have become a worthless entertainment spectacle, a bit of political theater for the masses.
Well, it turns out that despite expectations, we are in fact going to get some of that theater this year. Thursday evening, President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump will square off in Atlanta for the first of two scheduled debates. This debate, hosted by CNN, will be a great deal earlier — the first is usually in September or October — than any general election debate in the modern era.
So again I ask the question: Will it matter?
Even though I believe debates are, in general, meaningless, there is good reason to argue that this one will actually be important to Americans.
First, consider the questions that loom over both candidates. This is a fairly unprecedented election, in that each of the two major party nominees has what would ordinarily be considered a “fatal flaw” in their candidacy. For Donald Trump, this takes the form of a felony conviction, and several other outstanding legal cases.
For Biden, it is the fundamental question of his fitness for office. Biden is 81 years old already, and will turn 82 two months before he is sworn in for a second term, were he to be re-elected. This means that he would be 86 years old by the time he left office, and many voters have expressed genuine and very fair concerns over his age.
The age question has been exacerbated by anecdotal observations of the president’s declining mental acuity. These observations were largely written off or dismissed until earlier this year, when Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents was released. In the report, Hur stated that Biden showed “diminished faculties and faulty memory,” and that any prosecution of him for mishandling documents would be hampered by his “significant limitations.”
The age issue has emerged as a fundamental threat to the Biden re-election effort. In March, an Associated Press poll showed that roughly six in 10 Americans are “not very or not at all confident in Biden’s mental capability to serve effectively as president.” The growing concern among Americans of Biden’s perceived infirmity has begun to cause panic in Democratic circles. Trump, at 77 years old is not immune to age concerns, but the issue doesn’t hamper him like it does Biden.
Then there is the “double hater” phenomenon. As recently detailed by the Washington Post, there is an enormous number of voters — particularly in swing states — that despise both Biden and Trump, and are beside themselves with grief over the choice they are going to be forced to make. This backs up polling that has long found that Americans don’t like either candidate, and wish they had other choices.
All of this conspires together to create not only great interest in the first debate, but to increase the stakes for both candidates. Millions of Americans will be watching Biden to see if they feel like he still looks up for the job. Millions more will be watching Trump to see how he reacts to his guilty verdict, and whether or not he has mellowed in the last four years. Millions still will be watching just to figure out who they would be able to stomach more easily.
So even though it will remain the same empty, vapid spectacle that it always is, this time the debate might actually help decide who the next president of the United States is.
