The 2016 Presidential Debates Could Become a Slugfest
Few could doubt the impact of nationally televised presidential debates after Republican Mitt Romney set President Obama back on his heels in their first encounter in October 2012.
Romney was articulate and aggressive while Obama appeared frazzled and very much off his game. Romney’s commanding performance helped the former Massachusetts governor briefly energize his floundering campaign and regain its momentum.
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Moreover, with home viewership topping 67 million, the debate -- moderated by Jim Lehrer, the former news anchor for the PBS News Hour – broke a 32-year gross viewership record dating back to the first debate between Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Yet amid dramatic changes in political campaign tactics and fundraising and the way Americans consume the news, these televised general election presidential debates actually are suffering from diminished reach.
A new study issued on Wednesday by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania seemed to compare presidential debates to TV entertainment. Their assessment: the more than two-decade old debate format is to blame for the low viewership among millennials, although baby boomer viewers have increased.
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So what to do? In an era when large audiences pay far more attention to “Game of Thrones,” “House of Cards,” “Master Chef” and “So You Think You Can Dance” than to increasingly lengthy presidential campaign seasons, how can the political parties and the National Presidential Debate Commission jazz up the debates to attract and keep a wider audience?
The Annenberg panel, of course, stops well short of recommending the equivalent of no-holds barred political mudwrestling to heighten audience engagement and sustained interest. The goal, the group says, is to expand and enrich debate content and produce a better informed group of voters.
To that end, the advisory group appears anxious to get rid of the moderator or middle man as much as possible and allow the two candidates to set the agenda and duke it out. They want to get rid of the one or more prominent journalists who set the ground rules and determine the pace and course of the evening’s discussion.
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If, for example, Hillary Clinton were to slam, say, Marco Rubio in a debate, Rubio shouldn’t have to wait patiently for his opportunity to reply but should be allowed to jump in with a rejoinder. Think of it as the resurrection of CNN’s Crossfire.
To add a smidgeon of Jeopardy to the proceedings, each candidate would have a total of 45 minutes to spend to make their case or defend it.
While the candidates would have plenty of opportunity to get their political messages across, they would also have to respond quickly to attacks. A well-scripted candidate wouldn’t necessarily do well in that setting, and the possibility of “oops” moments would be increased. Welcome to reality TV, Beltway style.
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Ah….but dead air is not an option, so a filibuster is off the table. No answer, rebuttal or question could exceed three minutes, according to the panel. When a candidate runs out of total time, he or she has exhausted the right to speak. Remaining time at the end of the moderator-posed topics can be used for a closing statement.
The recommendations are advisory only and it will be up to the presidential debate commission and the national parties to iron out the final ground rules next year.
Stat of the Day: 0.2%
The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”
Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.
Number of the Day: 44%
The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”
Number of the Day: 4,229
The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”
The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.
Number of the Day: $3 Billion
A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”
Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs
President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.
