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Presidential Debates: Republican Party
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Presidential debates are a modern television age creation. The nominees of the two major parties did not debate until 1960, when Republican Vice President Richard Nixon faced John Kennedy, the junior Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. Although the 1960 debates were popular with the public and broadcast nationally on network television, presidential debates took a hiatus until 1976. Their absence is due, for the most part, to incumbents refusing to debate and federal communications laws which required equal time for all presidential candidates, even minor ones.
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Face-to-face presidential debates in the 20th century began their broadcast history in 1948. Republicans Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen faced each other in a radio debate during the Oregon Republican presidential primary.Also on May 21, 1956, Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver, rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, participated in a televised debate during the Florida Democratic primary. Other debates since then are listed below.
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Because of this, “debate viewership has plummeted; 25 million fewer people watched the 2000 presidential debates than watched the 1992 presidential debates,” the report said. “Walter Cronkite called the CPD-sponsored debates an ‘unconscionable fraud’ and accused the major party candidates of ‘sabotaging the electoral process.’ ”
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With over a hundred declared presidential candidates, limiting the number of debate participants is necessary. But simply requiring that candidates appear on enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance to win immediately drops the field to a maximum of six-- the same number as in most of this year's Republican primaries. After an initial debate, the field could fairly be narrowed with more stringent criteria.
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[F]ar this election cycle, there have been 5 presidential debates: 3 Republican primary debates (hosted by MSNBC, Fox News and CNN) and 2 Democratic primary debates (hosted by MSNBC and CNN). In all of these debates, the participating candidates were not offered equitable time allotments.
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The Washington University Field House, located in the university's Athletic Complex, was the site of the first nationally televised three-candidate presidential debate in 1992, featuring President George Bush, Gov. Bill Clinton and Reform Party candidate Ross Perot. That year, the university had just seven days to transform the hardwood-floor gymnasium of the Field House into a red-carpeted debate hall.
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