Up for Debate - The Weekly Standard
Needless to say, The Scrapbook is strictly neutral on the results of last week’s Republican presidential debate on Fox News. So neutral, in fact, that we won’t even mention any of the highlights—or lowlights, if you prefer—and certainly won’t weigh in on who swept the floor with whom, who embarrassed him/herself, or who should have been invited to this particular... No, we’ll leave the handicapping to those who spend more time around the racetrack than The Scrapbook is inclined to do. Our interest is not in this particular debate but in the institution of presidential debates themselves. Or put another way: Are these televised debates good for our democracy, or not so good. The first presidential debates took place as recently as 1960—which is to say, we managed to elect Thomas Jefferson and Calvin Coolidge, and defeat William Jennings Bryan and Adlai Stevenson, without the benefit of candidate debates. Yes, Abraham Lincoln once participated in some famous debates (1858) with Stephen Douglas, but that was for a Senate seat, not the presidency—and Lincoln lost the race. Moreover, after 1960, there were no more debates until the idea was revived in 1976, pitting Gerald Ford against Jimmy Carter. All of which means that Lincoln, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, both Roosevelts, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were elected to the White House without ever participating in a single debate. Source: www.weeklystandard.com
