Make Politicians Debate Again
Imagine if our elected officials squared off publicly against each other instead of bickering or reciting talking points.
By Michael J. Reitz
When I signed up my kids for a local debate club, I hoped they’d learn some valuable lessons about civility and sound reasoning. But at our most recent competition in April—attended by 206 students hailing from three Midwestern states—an elected official came away with the best insight.
Sarah Kile is the nonpartisan mayor of Gladwin, a small town west of the “thumb” on the Michigan mitten. She served as a judge for the competition, and when I spoke to her, she praised the high-school students for deftly handling complicated topics and keeping their cool. Ms. Kile said she wished more elected officials could do the same, musing that it would be nice if politicians debated regularly. Maybe they’d show the same decorum as the students. And perhaps the temperature of American politics would be lower if politicians occasionally defended their records and proposals in the public square.
Ms. Kile was on to something. While politics itself is more rancorous than ever, politicians themselves don’t deliberate nearly enough. That’s especially the case for younger elected officials who were raised online, either in echo chambers that exclude dissenting opinions or on platforms that stoke debates without regard to the consequences. The lack of real debate forums helps explain why American politicians, regardless of age, seem so uncivil and emotional. They look like a deer in headlights when asked a tough question.
Presidential debates are performative, but it’s still a shame that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had only one before the 2024 election. Senate races have seen declining numbers of debates for years—down from 17 in the five most competitive races in 2010 to only six debates in 2022. In state and local races, it’s common to have no debates at all. In Michigan, state and local candidates rarely debate.
Debates among current officeholders never happen. When is the last time you heard about a mayor, a state representative or even a governor having an hourlong argument, televised and streamed on social media? California Gov. Gavin Newsom debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Fox News in 2023, but it was headline news precisely because it was an oddity. The debate forced two sitting politicians to defend their records while their actions were still fresh.
In the U.K., the party in power defends itself weekly in Parliament via the prime minister’s questions. Officeholders also appear at university debate clubs such as the Oxford and Cambridge unions. Imagine if American politicians did something similar, engaging in real back-and-forth instead of bickering or reciting talking points.
Voters should demand that local and state officeholders hold monthly debates. Pressure senators and members of Congress to square off publicly against each other. There are tricky details to work out—who picks the interlocutors, who decides the topics—but it’s better to seek answers to these questions than to accept a world where politicians never answer hard questions at all.
If nothing else, more enterprising elected officials should agree to debate each other, as often as possible. Their example could inspire others, reminding Americans that we can disagree without being disagreeable and argue without being arrogant jerks. I know a mayor who could lead by example.
Mr. Reitz is executive vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.