During Nebraska’s gubernatorial race in 2022, I voted for Brett Lindstrom. A deciding factor in my decision was that he, unlike front-runner Jim Pillen, was willing to engage in debates.
I saw him on stage more than once, debating Charles Herbster, Theresa Thibodeau, and a handful of other candidates on why he should have my support. While I still liked Jim Pillen, I felt his decision not to debate, either in the primary or the general election, was a mistake. Nevertheless, he won the election by a wide margin. This wasn’t a surprise, since Nebraska is largely a Republican state, but I noticed this was part of a trend across the country.
In the governor’s race in Arizona, for example, Katie Hobbs refused to debate Kari Lake, and she still won. Josh Shapiro refused to debate Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, and he also won. This year in Nebraska, Deb Fischer refused to debate her opponent, Dan Osborn. She also won. Pete Ricketts wouldn’t debate either Preston Love Jr. or his Republican primary challenger, John Glen Weaver. Ricketts won as well.
There doesn’t seem to be any political penalty for refusing to debate. This bothers me, as I believe it’s important for candidates to put themselves in front of voters and be challenged on their ideas. They should have to lay out their policy proposals and explain them in a forum where they can be asked tough questions.
Then something changed my mind.
In September, Donald Trump had a contentious debate with Kamala Harris. It turned out to be a three-on-one ambush, with two moderators fact-checking him while allowing lies from his opponent to pass unchecked. I noticed that every answer had to fit inside a one- or two-minute window—soundbites that the candidates often memorized, sometimes having nothing to do with the questions asked. (“I grew up in a middle-class household…”) In this format, I didn’t learn anything about either candidate, and I’m fairly sure it didn’t change the minds of anyone who watched.
What may have changed some minds, however, was a three-hour conversation between Donald Trump and Joe Rogan. Trump sat down and chatted casually with Rogan about policy, his plans as president, and topics like wrestling, the UFC, and life on Mars. While it was a friendly interview, it’s impossible to be anything other than authentic in such a setting. No pre-scripted soundbites could fill a three-hour, free-flowing conversation. It did a lot more to display who Donald Trump was and what he wanted to do as president than an antagonistic “debate” with responses limited to one or two minutes at a time.
What’s amazing is that this format is nothing new in American politics. The renowned debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 were much more like the long-form podcasts we listen to today. In fact, their format was also three hours long—with a 60-minute opening statement by one candidate, a 90-minute response by the other, and a 30-minute rebuttal by the first candidate.
Perhaps if our presidential debates returned to their 19th-century roots, they would be less like the soundbite smackdowns we’ve become accustomed to and more like an actual conversation—one in which candidates are forced to be authentic, because it’s impossible to be anything else.
