The US presidential election is still a year away but Americans have been getting an earful — and eyeful — of the candidates mainly via highly publicized televised debates. Are the debates just political theater or are they useful vehicles that help voters make wiser decisions? 

Perhaps everything that’s gone wrong in this year’s presidential debates can be encapsulated in one testy exchange between CNBC moderator Becky Quick and the presumptive and often presumptuous frontrunner Donald Trump. Quick cited a news article in which Trump tagged Marco Rubio as the “personal senator” of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg thanks to Rubio’s sponsorship of a measure that would enable Silicon Valley tech giants to hire low-paid immigrants to replace American workers. Trump was quick as ever on the uptake: “I never said that. I never said that.” Quick: “So this is an erroneous article the whole way around? …My apologies I’m sorry.” Trump: “Somebody’s really doing some bad fact-checking.” The television cameras had barely gone to black when PolitiFact leaped into the fray. PolitiFact is a division of the Tampa Bay Times that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for its exhaustive fact-checking during the 2008 presidential election. This time their researchers dug up a page on Trump’s campaign website referring to Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator Marco Rubio in those very words. Trump got away with a white lie. He may not have ever said it but it appeared in his written campaign material. And Quick let him off the hook too soon: She hadn’t adequately digested the article allowing Trump to squirm out of the question.  “A seasoned moderator should have the understanding of where that information came from ” says Ed Lee executive director of theBarkleyForumCenter for debate education atEmoryUniversity inAtlanta. “Trump makes the claim he never said that. They could have said: ‘That info is on your website.’ ” Had the researcher printed out the page for Quick she could have waved it in Donald’s face. That might have produced a real “gotcha” moment one akin to a confrontation at the same debate when Jeb Bush failed to offer a counterattack to a well-delivered Marco Rubio riposte sending his campaign into a tailspin. This most recent debate before press time — the October 28 CNBC debate at theUniversity ofColorado — was broadly criticized for both the tone of the questioning and the candidates’ pushback. Both combined to drown out any discussion among the candidates on policy a discussion that could have helped voters form an opinion on candidates just three months before theIowa caucus and theNew Hampshire primary officially kick off the 2016 presidential selection process. “I’ve said a lot of this over the past year. Our politics in theUS is all about gossip and entertainment ” says Hank Sheinkopf head of Sheinkopf Communications who was a top media advisor to the 1996 Bill Clinton presidential campaign and still a sought-after campaign strategist and political commentator. “And that’s exactly what we have here in these debates; a gladiator style of elimination. Whoever doesn’t get killed goes on to the next round.” While potential voters may have been shortchanged by the paucity of the debate on the issues CNBC cashed in big. The network trying to make its mark as a major league player on the political level drew a record (for them) 14 million viewers. While this was far fewer than the 24 million who viewed the previous debate on Fox News CNBC had some tough competition: Their debate went head-to-head with the fastballs of Game 2 of the World Series which apparently held more interest to viewers than the curveballs tossed by the moderators. But even a crowd of 14 million represents some 15 percent of the approximately 100 million Americans who vote in presidential elections while the 24 million Fox drew represents almost a quarter of the electorate. Both numbers prove that the debates still have the capacity to be influential.  Bill Southworth a professor of speech and debate at the University of Redlands sat on the Associated Press (AP) panel of experts that graded every presidential debate from 1976-2000. He contends that a voter can learn a great deal from the interplay between the moderators and candidates even if a debate is light on the issues. “As a potential voter I want to hear how they cope with difficult questions. To me that reflects on how well prepared they will be to cope with [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin and how they will cope with the challenging situations and adversity they will face as president ” Southworth says. As we went to press another debate was scheduled for Tuesday November 10. Seven more Republican debates and five more for the Democratic candidates are scheduled between now and mid-March by which time slightly more than half of the delegates will have been selected to both party conventions. We asked our panel of experts to weigh in on the style and tone of the debates share their experiences and insights in their respective areas of expertise and give us a prism through which we can view the debates. 

 1. In the post-mortem of the last debate the journalism and political professions traded charges and countercharges over the fairness of the questions posed. What’s your take after having watched the debates?  

Ed Lee: I actually thought the journalists were being extremely fair. The purpose of the journalist in a democracy is to probe explore and gain information so the public is aware of all the ramifications of a politician’s policies. There is very little that I consider out of bounds and that would be personal questions or attacks but I found a vast majority of the questions to be policy oriented. 

  Bill Southworth: Let’s face it without Trump very few people would have watched the first debate let alone the second one. Trump has leveled an enormous amount of one-line attacks on the other candidates. People are watching because they’re hoping someone explodes or gets upset and when they do they can criticize the politicians because it looks like they don’t have the right temperament to be president. So the journalists are trying to get them off script. The candidates don’t want that so that’s why they criticize the journalists. 

 Hank Sheinkopf: What is the purpose of the debates in the first place? Their value is not in what actually occurs it’s what’s in the papers the next day and what the national news cycle decides to cover and emphasize. It’s not about anything else. It turns into reality TV on a national scale. Reality television is highly rated but these debates are devoid of political content. 

2. What then did the candidates hope to accomplish with their pushback? Is that approach a help or a hindrance? And what could they do to handle the questions better and get themselves across more favorably? 

Ed Lee: In any debate or communicative act the first thing to ask is: Who is the audience? The candidates are not trying to communicate with CNBC. Their audience is die-hard Republicans and they are trying to solidify their bona fides by speaking to their constituents who are primed to think that the media is liberal and politically oriented to the left. They didn’t think answering the policy questions would be the most effective way to communicate. They felt the more effective way would be to attack the media and you could tell that by the applause in the audience. But I think that’s the difference between being a journalist and a news entertainer. What we have in the debates are news entertainers — people who can speak in a coherent way and offer a turn of phrase that is mildly intelligent. The debates would be much better if we had investigative reporters who could have an engaged conversation with the candidate and follow up on their initial questions. 

Hank Sheinkopf: What is interesting here is that it’s not clear in this campaign what the American public is looking for. People are looking for someone who can lead the nation but they want outsiders. That’s whyCarson Trump and Sanders are able to poll in the 20s. Ted Cruz is in the Senate but he positions himself as an outsider. Another thing to remember is that American politics is changing dramatically. The Democrats are aging. Hillary’s in her late 60s. Bernie Sanders in his 70s. The Democratic leadership in the House and Senate are in their 60s and 70s. The Republicans appear to be younger and fresher and that combativeness is part of the dynamic they’d like to put across. 

Bill Southworth: There is so much disgust with Washington and what is perceived to be prepared staged politicians. Trump is unique and appealing in that regard. Carson is also unique and appealing because he has this calm intellectual demeanor people find comforting. Marco Rubio is doing better because his speaking time has increased. He sounds persuasive controlled and he’s young so he contrasts very well with Trump in that regard. On the other hand Jeb Bush — for whom the expectations are highest — is coming across relatively weak and mild. His demeanor is not that authoritative. In a group of 11 or 12 he finds himself in the middle and no one finds him particularly appealing. He would do much better in a debate of three or four or better yet one-on-one where his experience would offer a much better contrast. 

3. How would you define a “gotcha” question and how is this style of question impacting this year’s debates and the candidates’ fortunes? 

Ed Lee: A “gotcha” question is an apolitical question or one that’s not politically relevant that tries to take a candidate by surprise. But the candidates are using that as an excuse when they feel the appropriate answer might put them in a poor light politically. Asking Marco Rubio about his ability to run his household budget when he is running so to speak as chief financial officer of the country seems very relevant to me. Asking Ben Carson about his participation in a pharmaceutical company [accused of false advertising] when he holds himself out as a medical doctor and speaks about his commitment to protect innocent lives is an appropriate investigation. He says it’s a gotcha question because it puts him in a poor light but if the question provides the public with more information on how the candidates will make decisions and govern the country then it’s a fair one.   

Bill Southworth: A lot of what we’re seeing from the candidates comes from mistake avoidance. The candidates all remember the Gerald Ford foible in 1976 when he said that Eastern Europe was not under the Soviet thumb or the way Mike Dukakis fumbled in 1988 over the question of whether he would support the death penalty if his own wife were murdered. So they’re always trying to avoid making mistakes instead of addressing and engaging the issues and their opponents. They’re afraid to say something off-the-cuff that will come back to haunt them. No one wants to say anything that can be directly challenged by the moderator or one of the opponents but they all want speaking time. That’s why they spend so much time preparing for the questions they will receive and what we’re hearing is their stump speeches condensed into one-minute answers. 

Hank Sheinkopf: The debates have been idiotic because you don’t really have a campaign yet you have a horse race. The way the race works is that people judge the candidates by their actions in the debates and figure out who’s going to be eliminated next. The debates have largely eliminated Jeb Bush for a host of reasons. People watch Donald Trump and look at his behavior and figure out if he’ll survive. The level of the debates to this point has been very distressing. There’s no policy discussion on the real issues facing this country and the world. Americans are watching the candidates say extraordinary things about complex issues in ways that have little value.

4. If you could offer the networks and the campaigns advice on how to improve the upcoming debates and also tell viewers what to watch for what would you recommend? 

Ed Lee: The notion of debate is a competition of argument. A proposition is put forward and the arguments on all sides help decide the appropriate course of action. I don’t think that the current model where we have 10 or 11 candidates being asked a wildly different set of questions constitutes an effective form of debate. It’s just dueling oratory and I’m not sure that gives us an understanding of the candidates’ abilities to make an argument defend a set of policies or reason through a set of issues. The best thing we can acquire from a debate is how a candidate reasons through and processes information and deals with difficult subjects. In running the US or any other country you have no idea what issues will fall on the president’s plate. What we are interested in is how they will deal with them. 

Bill Southworth: When I sat on the AP panels years ago judging the debates we would take notes to see how responsive the candidates were to the questions and how they responded to opponents’ answers. Did they refute them or did they respond with set speeches? We judged the level of support they lent to their arguments the evidence they used their demeanor their temperament and how well they conveyed control and authority and at the same time compassion and interest. I really think to make the upcoming debates more effective you have to reduce the number of candidates. Right now it’s just one big press conference. The best way to run a debate is to have a debate. Ask Donald Trump: ‘This is your position on immigration’ and turn to Carson and say ‘This is yours’ — why is his wrong? Force one of the candidates to respond to the other candidate’s stated position. This would at least force them to articulate their differences and address their opponents’ stances on the issues. 

Hank Sheinkopf: This all may end up being for naught. There’s enough data that’s been taken by political scientists to indicate that party elite — those really running the party — have the ability to determine who’s nominated. There are other factors at play. The Evangelicals will decide the outcome of the Iowa caucuses on the Republican side and that favors either Carson or Cruz. They are also going to be a major factor in South Carolina and some of the other southern states. So the whole exercise we’ve seen in the debates has been great entertainment but not very descriptive of what will happen politically.