OPINION:
Former President Donald Trump does not seem very excited about the opportunity to participate in the first Republican presidential primary debate. He has talked about skipping it. He has talked about counterprogramming the debate with an interview with a media personality of his choice — probably Tucker Carlson — or some such diversion.
Despite entreaties from Fox News personalities and his own hand-picked Republican National Committee chairwoman, he has managed to remain evasive on the question. Even his favorite personal emissary, Kellyanne Conway, has been recruited to muddy the waters by suggesting that the former president might make an appearance at the debate after all.
That all makes a lot of sense for the Trump campaign. The simple reality is that the former president is not a particularly good debater. Recall the disaster that was the first presidential debate in 2020, when Mr. Trump continually interrupted President Biden, making it impossible to raise or develop any questions about Mr. Biden’s mental or ideological fitness to be president.
The truth had no chance of piercing the cacophony produced by Mr. Trump.
It is also easy to understand that the former president is not going to cheerfully endure questions about his management of COVID-19 (“15 days to stop the spread”) or the explosion of federal spending under his watch.
Let’s be clear. Presidential debates now resemble theater more than anything else. They are intensely scripted, and therefore, not of tremendous value to anyone — voters, candidates or consultants. But the media loves them, the national committees still believe they are important, and they at least give the voters a chance to see the candidates in action.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Barry Goldwater — the likely nominees of their respective parties in 1964 — talked to each other about how best to restructure the presidential debates.
They appeared to have settled on an approach in which the candidates would travel on the same plane to a town. After arriving, they would each give remarks on a previously agreed-upon topic and then have the opportunity to question each other.
Then they would get back on the plane and repeat the process in the next town.
Such an approach — shorn of the media and mostly beyond the reach of handlers and propagandists — would have been a most welcome change. It would still be a welcome change.
Despite it all, debates retain some of their fundamental value. Voters have an opportunity to assess the candidates’ ability to think on their feet and their command of relevant facts.
It is a needed, if nostalgic, nod to the idea that elections are partly about ideas and that candidates owe the voters some sense of what they might do if elected.
As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently noted: “Nobody is entitled to be nominated. You’ve got to earn it. You got to earn everything in this world. I think you show up; I think you participate; I think you make your case. And I think you answer questions. We’re going to be doing that, regardless of who else shows up.”
It is fairly easy to understand Mr. Trump’s intentional indecision with respect to the debate. He has nothing to gain and much to lose from an open contest on equal footing with his rivals.
That said, the debates are not for the benefit of the candidates but for the benefit of the voters. By skipping, minimizing or devaluing the debates, Mr. Trump is choosing to deprive the 50% of the Republican primary electorate that is still not completely sold on his candidacy a chance to reexamine their preferences.
That’s unfortunate for them and for him.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House. He can be reached at mike@mwrstrat.com.
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