Debates should be more important than football

Good, political discourse has been hard to find in this presidential election year. Not that it’s easier in other years – mudslinging, name-calling and other forms of personal attacks seem all too common methods for gaining the highest office in the country.

But this year has been particularly rancorous, if the primary season was anything to gauge the future by and especially with the Republican field. Just to be fair though, Democrats weren’t exactly all charm and manners.

Part of political discourse stems from debates, and again, if the primary season is any indication, the upcoming three presidential and one vice presidential debates don’t hold much promise of substance. But, one can always hope.

In fact, Republican nominee Donald Trump has hinted he might skip one or two of the presidential debates because they coincide with National Football League game broadcasts. Trump even claimed he had received a letter from the NFL protesting the debate times, and has accused his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton of rigging the debate schedule.

Trump is a liar. On the first point, the NFL said it sent no such letter, saying in a statement that “While we obviously wish the debate commission could find another night, we did not send a letter to Trump.”

On the second point, the Commission on Presidential Debates released the 2016 debate schedule and locations on Sept. 23, 2015. Any candidate should have been aware of this and planned for the occasion.

The commission’s release also contained a description of the structure of each debate, with the first and third presidential exchanges divided into six, 15-minute segments with each focusing on a different topic. The second debate will be in town hall style, with citizen participants being uncommitted voters selected by the Gallup Organization.

Debates are an important part of the political discourse, and we would hope that even football fans might just once use their DVR or Tivo options to record that night’s game in order to tune in and watch what might be the most important exchanges in modern political history, exchanges that could go a long way in defining our nation’s future.

Debates are opportunities to see what candidates really know about issues, and how they would deal with challenges. It’s a chance to get away from the scripted safety of campaign rallies into a format where they can’t control the dialogue.

Debates let us see how candidates handle the unknown, what their temperament is when moved outside their safety zone. It gives us an opportunity to gauge how well they handle mistakes.

One aspect of the debates is they only take place between the two major party candidates. In the current election cycle, when most voters aren’t happy with what they perceive as two less than desirable candidates and are clamoring for more options, that’s unfortunate.

According to the commission’s criteria, besides meeting the constitutional requirements, candidates wishing to appear in presidential debates must be on the ballot in enough states to have a reasonable chance of receiving the 270 electoral votes needed to win the office, and 15 percent support from the national electorate as determined by the average of five public opinion polls.

While the ballot access is understandable, we wonder if the 15 percent support might be a bar set too high. The only other non-major party candidate to achieve that and appear on a presidential debate stage in the modern era was Ross Perot in 1992.

The electorate desperately craves more choices when it comes to selecting people for political office. Restricting debate access hampers our ability to hear more voices, and thus reduces discourse to a small set of ideas.

But, those ideas will be made available to us. If we want to hear them outside of 30-second news sound bites, there’s no excuse for not delaying kickoff for a couple more hours.