Obviously, this would be a politically foolish thing to do, but could one of the two main presidential candidates in a presidential election boycott the televised debates and refuse to participate - “My opponent’s ideas are not worth debating” - or so forth?
This might only work as a sensible strategy if one is already leading in the election by a huge margin - say, 20% or more - and in which debating one’s opponent could only lead to potential risk, not benefit - you’re not likely to add to your 20-percent lead, but you could easily commit some verbal gaffe that could suddenly cut your lead in half.
But my question is, are candidates *allowed *to boycott? Are they under some sort of broadcasting contract that requires them to participate?
My understanding from a previous election was that there was no obligation to appear, which would therefore give one’s opponent an hour of free air time to answer compelling questions of the day in front of a national audience. Even for someone who was leading in the polls, this would be unwise.
No, there is no such contract. The way the debates work is that the guy behind wants as many as possible and the guy in the lead wants as few as possible. They usually settle on 3 (for president) and 1 (for VP).
How on earth would you imagine there could be a contractual obligation to debate?
It’s only been since Ford/Carter that presidential debates have been an expected thing, televised or not. W even hinted that he might not debate Kerry (as I recall), but then of course did because of the perceived downside.
Between Kennedy/Nixon and Ford/Carter, there weren’t any. And I don’t know of any before Kennedy/Nixon.
I find it unlikely that a debate would even be broadcasted that did not include one of the candidates. Certainly the candidates are not in any way required to appear, and the only hit for refusing to appear would be the public reaction, but no network is going to show one of the candidates performing a monologue. Unless they’re paid for it.
Bush Senior attempted to avoid debating Clinton in 1992. At some point, someone started showing up to HW’s public appearances in a chicken costume and his henchmen…er, campaign staff finally convinced him it was better to debate than to let the chicken define him.
I think just as interesting a scenario would be if a candidate decided to take part in fewer of these Presidenial debates. From memory the default number of debates for the past few Presidential elections have been three per election. I can imagine a candidate putting his/her foot down and agreeing to only two, or possibly one.
The formats of the debates are negotiated by the candidates’ staffs. There couldn’t be a televised debate where only one candidate appears, unless that candidate was willing to pay for the hour air time. Two candidates debating is news. One candidate spouting just his side and criticizing his opponent for an hour is a commercial.
It does seem like the campaigns have settled on multiple rounds as a way to avoid a single sucktastic performance taking down the campaign (ref.: first Obama/Romney debate, 2012). Also the media seem to badly want the debates to work along the lines of one for global policy, one for domestic issues, one for a “town hall”, but of course the candidates talk about whatever they want to talk about and the respective campaigns try to avoid formats where they know their guy is ill at ease. So yes I can imagine a two-day rather than three-day format.
In “open” election years like 2016, there’s much posturing and chest-thumping from both sides to be seen as the one who’s asserting dominance in the organizational dance. There will be quite a bit of huffing and puffing and fake walkouts in the process of programming the debates.
What happened in the debate? Obviously Clinton won in the end, did he crush him in the debate or was it the usual both sides claiming victory, no major gaffes etc.
Also, remember that 1992 had Perot (and Stockdale) in the debates, as well. I think that Bush was actually more afraid of confronting Perot than he was of confronting Clinton.
This was the only year where the debate(s) influenced my vote. I saw the VP debate and was impressed by the directness and simplicity of the answers Stockdale gave. So I vote for Perot/Stockdale.
Yeah, John Mace, for shame! The correct response is: I am unable rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
