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Biden Should Not Debate Trump [1]

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Date: 2024-04-16  

Yesterday, a consortium of networks publicly invited President Biden and that burnt umber guy to participate in debates carried on their platforms. In response, David Frum (yeah, I know) published a piece in The Atlantic urging Biden to refuse to debate Trump. I agree with Frum on this. My thinking is that by characterizing Trump in so many words as a criminal, traitor, fraud, national security risk and whiner, Biden could use his refusal to define/brand Trump as such even if none of the trials in which Trump is a defendant has been concluded, which seems quite likely but for the current one. But Frum has some other, perhaps more substantive reasons related to the role of TV/media in normalizing Trump:

A consortium of television networks yesterday released a joint statement inviting President Joe Biden and his presumptive opponent, Donald Trump, to debate on their platforms: “There is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation.” President Biden’s spokesperson should answer like this: “The Constitution is not debatable. The president does not participate in forums with a person under criminal indictment for his attempt to overthrow the Constitution.” In their letter of invitation, the networks refer to presidential debates as a “competition of ideas.” But one of the two men they’re inviting turned the last election into a competition of violence: Trump tried to seize the presidency by force in 2021.

The single most important question on the ballot for 2024 is: Does any of this matter? Is violence by losers to overturn election results an acceptable tool of politics? Is anti-constitutional violence by election losers just another political issue, like inflation or immigration or foreign policy? The television executives apparently believe that, yes, violence is just another issue. “If there is one thing Americans can agree on during this polarized time,” they write, “it is that the stakes of this election are exceptionally high.” “The stakes are high” would be a fair way to describe an election like that of 1980, when Americans faced a choice between two very different approaches to taxes and spending. It would be a fair way to describe the 2004 election, when Americans were asked to choose between an early exit from the Iraq War and staying the course. But it seems a morally trivializing way to describe an election in which one of the candidates has been criminally indicted for his part in a conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution. Imagine such a presidential debate. “President Biden,” you could hear the moderator say, “we’ll get to Mr. Trump’s alleged violent coup in a moment, but in this segment, we are discussing food prices.”

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