Civility a casualty in Biden-Trump debate

K. P. Nayar

Strategic Analyst

ANOTHER hallowed beacon of democracy died in the US last week on the day the country’s two main presidential candidates in this November’s election held their first debate in a cable TV studio.

The independent Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) had steered some of the mainstay quadrennial events in US presidential politics, beginning with the election to the White House in 1988. Its 36-year record has been so outstanding that presidential debates hosted by the CPD became one of the most popular events of every presidential cycle in the oldest democracy in the world. At least 15 nations around the world, especially emerging post-Cold War democracies like Romania and Ukraine and newly born countries like Bosnia-Herzegovina, have adopted the US presidential debate model. CPD staff have worked with these 15 struggling democracies to implement its model during their presidential election cycles.

The US Supreme Court has made it explicit that its judges are no longer going to sit back and watch their country descend into a banana republic.

This year’s US presidential aspirants — Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump — junked the CPD and opted for a studio debate at the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. For the first time, the debate was held without an audience and without its customary welcome applause for the candidates. Having been part of the foreign media contingent at 12 previous presidential debates, the revelry associated with them is memorable for this writer. Popular participation in those debates was not confined to the auditoriums where the candidates sparred. Such democracy in action eventually became folklore and legends in towns which hosted the debates. Festivities on the streets, in pubs and at debate-watch parties, combined with the serious business of politics, saw the dramatis personae in election after election travel to small towns and diverse states. The CPD debates mostly took place in universities. This, in turn, motivated young people to vote in a country where the turnout has been low for many decades. The CPD may live on in East Europe and Africa, but in the US, the institution is dead, for now.

Customary civility was a casualty during the first Biden-Trump debate of 2024. The two candidates did not shake hands like they used to amidst thundering bipartisan applause from the audience. That tradition now lies buried amidst partisan acrimony. At the two Biden-Trump debates in 2020, too, the candidates did not shake hands on the way to the lecterns. But that was under medical advice because the Covid-19 pandemic was raging at that time. Physical contact was discouraged, especially among those over 60 years of age, and social distancing was encouraged among all. The wives of the candidates did not hug each other after the debates in 2020, as was the practice because of the pandemic. Nor did they do so last week. There was no audience the spouses could be a part of to climb the podium and join their husbands at the end of the 90-minute grilling by the moderators, usually TV anchors with coast-to-coast name recognition. Such gracious acts in the past were integral to the idea that when the elections were over, the US would go back to truly being the united states of the American people. No more.

No matter who wins the November election, the US Supreme Court made it explicit last week that its judges were no longer going to sit back and watch their country descend into a banana republic and hurtle towards African- or Latin American-style chaos in public life. Judicial activism will restrain Biden and Trump, whoever of the two gets to occupy the White House for the next four years. The violence on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, has deeply impacted every American who believes in the rule of law. A spate of Supreme Court decisions, coincidentally made during the debate week, warned that Trump appointees to the highest court would not be his poodles or be grateful to him for their lifetime jobs. Already, in the period after Trump disputed the 2020 election results, the Supreme Court has, in a series of actions effectively upheld the sanctity of Biden’s victory.

Now, in throwing out a lower court ruling which criminalised activism — the case related to the Capitol Hill riot — the apex court signalled that Trump would not have a free pass to suppress dissent if he is elected President. During the CNN debate, Trump repeatedly said that he would have used the National Guard against protesters for multiple causes — especially against police excesses — in several cities during Biden’s tenure. Some other decisions severely curbed the powers of federal government agencies to prosecute individuals and businesses for violations of their rules and interpretations of laws.

In the Indian context, these decisions by majority US judges would be tantamount to restraining the Enforcement Directorate, green tribunals or economic offences units in states. During his presidency, Trump was notorious for wanting to use federal agencies, especially the Department of Justice, against his opponents. He was restrained only by the strength of those institutions and the integrity of his own appointees who stood up to him, even though he dismissed several of them for insubordination. The Supreme Court has signalled that it will not tolerate such excesses should Trump be elected President again and that the Constitution is supreme. Conservatives, by nature, are against government interference in people’s lives. The conservative judges in the present Supreme Court are instinctively against big government. Trump’s instincts, on the other hand, are those of a dictator. He favours the heavy hand of the state as many of his actions as President have showed. The court’s warnings last week may mean that conservative judges believe Trump would win in November and they wished to act in advance to protect constitutional values.

Equally significant was a June 27 Supreme Court decision, allowing abortion to be performed in Idaho on pregnant women facing medical emergencies. This decision is a blow to the state’s Republicans who had passed a law banning abortion in Idaho. This is the same Supreme Court that had overturned the landmark Roe vs Wade ruling on a woman’s right to abortion.

It is sobering that such judicial activism will mean that while conservatism is the court’s guiding principle, the US will not become like a mullah state even if Trump and his brand of Republicans get control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.

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