Importance of leaders' TV debates
Updated on 03 October 2009
They've furnished some of the defining moments of America's political discourse: who could forget Nixon sweating under the studio lights, Walter Mondale's "where's the beef", or Lloyd Bentsen's ultimate putdown to Dan Quayle - "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy". Felicity Spector reports.
Presidential debates are part of America's political tradition: attracting millions of television viewers, to prime time set-piece events.
Last time, the organisers experimented with new formats, with the first online debates inviting ordinary voters to submit questions over the internet. But control over the debates is as much a struggle as the confrontations themselves.
They used to be run by a nonpartisan organisation called the League of Women Voters, which pulled out in disgust in 1988, complaining that the parties were intent on perpetuating a "fraud on the American voter" and accusing the candidates of turning them into "campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions".
"The league has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public", it declared.
In 1980, Jimmy Carter refused to take part in his first election debate because it included a third party candidate, John Anderson.
The event went ahead anyway, pitting Anderson against Ronald Reagan, who managed to put his case to a national audience, unchallenged by his main Democratic rival. That didn't do Carter many favours.
More recently, last year, John McCain almost didn't turn up to his first clash with Barack Obama - then thought better of it.
If the debates are sometimes the place for biting rhetoric and the memorable sound bite - they can prove a candidate's downfall. Witness Al Gore in 2000, sighing and rolling his eyes and droning on constantly about his economic lockbox.
The aw-shucks approach of George W. Bush might have contained little actual policy detail, but he looked like the kind of guy you'd be happy to listen to for the next four years.
Nowadays they're all tightly controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates - highly staged, tightly controlled by the TV companies which moderate and screen them.
But that hasn't stopped the constant rows over format: who should chair them, who should take part, who should ask the questions.
In 2008 the town hall-style format emerged as most popular - and the advent of the internet certainly loosened things up.
But the word 'debate' is something of a misnomer. There's little chance for actual back-and-forth, or any real political arguments. Like so much of American politics, it's most often style, rather than substance, that wins the day.
