Will TV step up to make debates useful?

Could this be the year that televised presidential debates serve a purpose more ambitious than swelling the networks’ coffers and the talking heads’ resumes?

Certainly the nation would be the better for it because, judging by the shifting sands of opinion polls, choosing between the two least-respected candidates in our history is civic drudgery, an unrewarding slog through a swamp of false claims, dreary prospects and visceral, mutual hatred.

Against that backdrop, the four television personalities who will moderate three 90-minute debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face a choice: to be the lobbers of questions and obsessive time-keepers or to assume their broader responsibility to conduct a useful, factual discussion of real issues.

If they choose the latter, as they should, they necessarily assume another responsibility: protecting truth.

In totally different ways, these two candidates have at best a fickle relationship with the truth. Clinton, as a life-long politician and high-level diplomat, uses nuance and deflection to project her preferred version of reality. Trump, a life-long con man and high-level risk-taker, lies incessantly because he is wholly interested in the momentary leverage effect of his words and not at all interested in their accuracy.

If the moderators choose the higher road, they also need to be creative with their questions, aiming to guide the candidates where they have not yet gone. That would mean asking not what the candidates believe – there’s a sound-bite for that – but specifically how they would accomplish what they want to do, and what facts support their plan.

Voters don’t need more of Trump’s content-free list of impossible aspirations or Clinton’s unapologetic apology for her private e-mail server. Benghazi, Melania Trump’s immigration status and other tempting gotchas were long ago asked and answered insofar as they ever will be.

Choosing that higher road might require departing from the rigid plan, in debates one and three, of six segments of 15 minutes on six subjects. Achieving real clarity on two or three major issues would be preferable to robotic servitude to a format.

And in all three debates, the moderators must not let outright factual errors slide by. They must either allow the opponent to challenge the statement or break the time straightjacket to do it themselves. If, as some argue, that’s not an appropriate role for debate moderators, then why select journalists? Any bright seventh-grader with a stop-watch would do.

If the moderators signal their intent early, the candidates will either adjust or come across to viewers as uncertain, evasive and uninformed.

No previous debate moderators have done this. In most cases they have slavishly followed the format or the candidates have seized control, or both.

Some creative vamping by moderators would bring criticism and complaints raining down, but neither candidate has shown respect for the journalistic role anyway, so the moderators should serve voters instead of outmoded traditions.

This story was originally published September 20, 2016 at 5:04 AM with the headline "Will TV step up to make debates useful?."