This could well be, predict the American media, the main highlight of the presidential campaign: this Thursday evening, in a CNN studio in Atlanta, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will face each other during a 90-minute debate in which no one will knows what to expect. This debate will, in fact, be unlike any other. Unlike the previous ones, it will take place without an audience and its organization was for the first time entrusted exclusively to a television channel, the outgoing President having refused to cooperate with the independent commission which established the modalities since 1987. It will mainly oppose two personalities whom a majority of voters consider too old to still occupy the White House, and whose mental faculties, in both of them, raise questions.
Contrary to recent tradition, there will also be only two presidential debates this year, compared to the usual three (one of the three debates had, of course, been canceled in 2020, but because Donald Trump had then contracted Covid-19 ). The second confrontation is scheduled for September 10. The two television meetings are also scheduled much earlier than before – the debates usually took place between the end of September and mid-October. The desire is to now take into account early voting which, depending on the States, can begin up to two months before the November 5 election. This is also why we are talking about the dates of July 23 or August 13 for the additional debate between the vice-presidential candidates – if it takes place.
Records d’audience
Under these conditions, will the exercise excite the crowds? During the previous election, the first of the two battles between Trump and Biden, on September 29, 2020, in Cleveland, recorded the third best score in the history of presidential debates with 73 million viewers – behind the memorable clash between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan of 1980 and, above all, the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. On September 26, 2016, in New York, this one broke all audience records with 84 million viewers (not counting those who followed the event online or in public places). Joe Biden’s campaign team is confident in promising that seven out of ten voters will be in front of their screen.
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A boon for CNN
For CNN, this would be a godsend. She fought vigorously to secure an event through which she hopes to redress an audience curve which is sagging dramatically, in a gloomy climate still marked by the dismissal of her boss, Chris Licht, in June 2023. Her successor, the former Director General of the BBC Mark Thompson, said he was inspired to prepare it by the legendary 1960 debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon – the one which brought American political life into the era of television. He can count on two moderators to succeed: Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, star political analysts of the channel who enjoy an excellent reputation.
The challenge for Bash and Tapper, who have never moderated a presidential debate, will be both sparking a substantive exchange and keeping it on track. The difficulty promises to be all the greater as they will have before them a President who sometimes suffers from absences and confusion, and a former President who has become accustomed to making incoherent or incomprehensible speeches.
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From nonsense to nonsense
In an article published Wednesday in the “New York Times”, Hillary Clinton underlines the magnitude of the task by evoking her three debates with Donald Trump. “He unleashed a blizzard of interruptions, insults and lies that overwhelmed the moderators,” she recalls. “It’s a waste of time to try to refute Mr. Trump’s arguments like you would in a normal debate. It is almost impossible to know what his arguments really are. It starts with nonsense and then strays into nonsense.” And, warns the ex-candidate, “it has only gotten worse over the years.”
However, there will be no shortage of topics, from immigration to the economy, women’s rights (that of abortion, in particular) to the future of American democracy since the assault on the Capitol and the attempts of Donald Trump , endorsed by many Republican elected officials, to reject the 2020 electoral results. What reminds us, as Hillary Clinton further emphasizes, that beyond the show offered Thursday evening, Americans are called to “choose a president, not the best actor”.
