Debate rules for Harris vs. Trump come into force on September 10
The biggest sticking point in the negotiations was whether the microphones should be muted during parts of the debate.
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump seemed so confident of defeating Kamala Harris in a televised debate that he proposed holding three such debates last month.
We will find out on Tuesday whether he was right.
In the vice presidential debate on October 7, 2020, when she faced Mike Pence, Harris held her own. She showed her competence as a prosecutor by telling Pence to stop interrupting her—a potentially useful practice when Trump is her opponent on the debate stage. She showed the discipline to stick to her arguments even when—or perhaps especially when—she dodged the real question.
I know. I was the moderator for Harris’ last appearance on the debate stage.
The event was sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates and took place in Salt Lake City before an audience that generally heeded my advance requests to stay out of the way and not to cheer or boo until the event was over.
This time, ABC News is sponsoring Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Harris, with moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis.
When Trump and President Joe Biden debated on CNN in June, Biden’s performance was so weak that the ensuing uproar prompted him to withdraw from the 2024 election altogether. This may have boosted Trump’s confidence in his ability to prevail in the debates.
Now Trump is even comparing Harris unfavorably with the president. “She’s actually not as smart as he is,” he said at a press conference in Mar-A-Lago in early August, expressing his enthusiasm for debate by also accepting invitations from Fox News and NBC. “I don’t think he’s very smart either, by the way.”
During some of the Democratic primary debates in the 2020 election cycle, Harris seemed unsure about how she felt about Medicare-for-all and other big issues – failures that helped push the California senator out of the nomination race before the Iowa caucuses were even held.
Since becoming her party’s presumptive presidential nominee this time around, Harris has been more witty and forceful at campaign rallies than Biden and has the ability to tease Trump with humor (“I know his type,” she says in an oft-repeated riff that resonates with her audience.)
Debates, of course, require a different skill set than rallies, which typically follow a script and often use teleprompters. Backstage before the 2020 debate, both Harris and Pence seemed quite tense, and understandably so.
Here are some of my insights from what happened next.
“Mr Vice President, I’m speaking”
Although Pence had a reputation as a polite, rule-abiding citizen of Indiana, he seemed to have taken a page from Trump for the vice presidential debate. He exceeded the speaking time agreed upon in advance by both campaign teams and repeatedly interrupted Harris.
Or at least she tried.
“Mr. Vice President, I am speaking,” she said after nine minutes when he interrupted her answer about the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 crisis.
“Well, I have to give my opinion on this,” he began.
“I’m speaking,” she repeated with more emphasis. It was an effective and probably pre-planned tactic. The “Mr. Vice President” address made her sound respectful. The “I’m speaking” address made him risk appearing disrespectful if he continued.
This time, the rules are different: The candidates’ microphones will be muted when they are not supposed to speak. Still, a similar conflict could further unsettle Trump, who is struggling to find the same firm footing in challenging Harris that he showed against Biden. Among other things, Trump has been criticized for questioning Harris’ ethnic identity in front of an audience of black journalists.
At the 2020 debate, Pence re-entered the discussion 30 minutes into the debate when Harris spoke about taxes.
“Mr. Vice President, I am speaking,” she said.
“Well-” he began.
“I’m speaking,” she repeated, with a nasty look in his direction that tested her.
“It would be important if you told the truth,” he replied, setting off a verbiage of mutual protests about what exactly Biden would do about taxes if elected.
“If you don’t mind hearing me finish…” Harris finally said.
“Please,” Pence replied with a sarcastic undertone.
“…then we can talk,” she concluded.
Finally, in the 65th minute, Pence tried again when she wanted to answer a question about the Supreme Court.
“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said. “I’m speaking.”
Pence finally stopped speaking at the wrong time. It’s entirely possible that she enforced that rule more successfully than I did.
The discipline of evasion
The value of debates lies in their spontaneity and in the fact that they force candidates to address issues they would otherwise have wanted to avoid at the campaign events they control.
This spontaneity also poses a danger for the candidates.
Hence the avoidance of the debate.
I asked Harris four years ago whether she had discussed with Biden “any safeguards or procedures relating to the question of presidential incapacity” given his age. Did she think she should?
“So, let me start by telling you that the call from Joe Biden – it was actually a Zoom call – when he asked me to support him in this election was probably one of the most memorable, unforgettable days of my life,” she began, filling her two minutes with an appreciation of Biden’s willingness to pick a groundbreaking running mate and a loving memory of her mother.
She “came to the United States at age 19 and gave birth to me at age 25 at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, California,” she said, although Biden’s birth date would have been more relevant. Biden was 77 at the time of the Harris-Pence debate, while Trump was 74 and had received a COVID-19 diagnosis just days earlier.
By the way, when I asked Pence the same question, he went even further off topic and instead praised the Trump administration’s record-breaking development of a COVID vaccine.
At the time, the Supreme Court was considering Roe v. Wade. If the Supreme Court did indeed overturn the abortion access enshrined in that decision—which later happened—I asked Harris if she would want her home state of California to enact abortion rights without restrictions.
“I will always fight for a woman’s right to decide about her own body,” she replied after some warm-up words, without going into whether she would support any restrictions. She then attacked Republicans for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a completely different issue.
Remember the fly?
The plexiglass barriers between Pence and Harris, intended as protection during the pandemic, looked a bit strange on stage.
But nothing was stranger than the fly that somehow managed to break through security, fly into the middle of the University of Utah stage and land on Pence’s head, where it remained for a while. The vice president’s silver-white hair made it hard to miss – at least for the millions of television viewers.
Not for me. I couldn’t see it. Pence didn’t know it was there either, he told me later. I heard that Harris could see it but chose not to mention it. What exactly could she have said? “Mr. Vice President, there’s a fly on your head”?
This was probably not a topic the strategists had discussed during debate preparation, so their restraint showed good judgment. So to speak.
And the winner was…
When the debate ended and the television cameras stopped, both candidates seemed more relieved to have survived than convinced they had won. As agreed beforehand, Pence left the stage on the right and Harris on the left, where their family members were waiting.
That was, by and large, what the polls showed afterwards. Harris had a good night, but Pence had a bad one – and neither performance had any significant impact on the outcome of the election.
An Ipsos poll conducted before and after the election found that Harris’ approval ratings improved slightly from 45 to 51 percent, while Pence’s approval ratings increased by a hair, from 37 to 39 percent. According to a CNN poll, 59 to 38 percent of respondents said Harris did a better job than Pence.
But the neck-and-neck race in the presidential election in the Ipsos poll remained unchanged, and in the CNN poll a majority said the debate had no influence on their vote.
This is not surprising considering that it was a debate between the vice presidential candidates.
Because this time there will be a debate between the leading candidates, the stakes are higher and the impact will almost certainly be greater.
Susan Page is USA TODAY’s Washington bureau chief.
