What to know about the history of presidential debates
CNN
The decisions by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Wednesday to agree to two presidential debates will ensure the continuation of a tradition that dates back to 1960.
The decisions by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Wednesday to agree to two presidential debates will ensure the continuation of a tradition that dates back to 1960. But it might look a little different this year: the candidates will first debate on June 27 on CNN, months ahead of the usual fall matchups, in events that will not be organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has overseen debates in every US presidential election cycle since 1988. It’s just the latest evolution in the history of US presidential debates. The first televised presidential debates, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, occurred in television studios with no live audience present. Debates did not take place again until the 1976 election, and from then on, took place in front of live audiences that were instructed to not make noise aside from the beginning and ends of the debate. “In ’76, the president was Gerald Ford. He had come into office because of Nixon’s resignation. So he was in kind of a weak position. He’s the one that actually challenged Jimmy Carter to debates, and that set in place this tradition that has existed ever since then of presidential debates,” Alan Schroeder, professor emeritus of journalism at Northeastern University, previously told CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf. Schroeder said there are typically two or three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate per cycle.
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