Suggestions for Reforming Presidential Debates

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Back during the campaign of 2016 Donald Trump told an audience in New Hampshire that Hillary Clinton's performance had improved so much during their second debate that he suspected she might be on drugs.   It was ill-mannered and it was nonsense, but that's the type of stuff that a Trump crowd wanted to hear.   It also drew attention away from Trump's own poor debate performance and got people to focus on watching Hillary for any little missteps that might be drug-related.

Now four years and one presidential campaign later, Donald Trump, a man who often appears to be higher than Ben Franklin's kite, is back pointing his little fingers at the other candidate - this time Joe Biden - and again suggesting that his opponent seems to be using some nefarious drug to improve his clarity and debate performance.   On multiple occasions over the past few weeks Trump has talked about what he considers to have been Biden's poor debate performances during the large Democratic debates of early primary season, but then toward the end when he had a one-on-one with Berine Sanders Trump thought Biden suddenly and strangely showed a great improvement.

When pressed by friendly interviewers on Fox, Trump said "some people" believe the improvement could have been drug-related, and when asked if Biden should undergo a drug test before the upcoming debates, Trump replied in the affirmative - and then surprisingly volunteered that he would be willing to also take a drug test before the debates.

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, Donald Trump may have just come up with a good idea, which would certainly be a rarity for him.  If the people who hand us our burgers and fries at drive-up windows have to take random drug screenings, why shouldn't the people who run our government, the people who routinely make life and death decisions that impact millions of Americans?  And what would be wrong with knowing that the candidates who expound grand ideas in national debates were speaking from their hearts and unclouded minds rather that from a drug-fueled hallucinatory state?

There is also a suggestion floating around that the debate organizers should employ real-time fact-checkers to highlight lies almost as quickly as they are uttered - and that too is a grand idea - and probably one that Donald Trump would not support.

If we are going to have debates, and at this late date it certainly looks as though we will, wouldn't it be reassuring to know that they are based on the sober efforts of honest talkers!

Drug-testing and fact-checking would make for more honest debate presentations, and they would go a long way toward better informing Americans of their choices for President.  And after the presidential debates are reformed, then we could turn our attention to fixing Congress!