Ever since the election-changing Presidential Debates between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, American voters have come to expect debates between candidates.

More recently, however–and particularly this year–campaign debates have gone into a state of decline: It’s becoming harder and harder to get political opponents to appear together live to discuss issues. [There’s also an accompanying decline in the level of discourse at debates that manage to make it to prime-time, but we’ll discuss that later.]

Here’s an example: In St. Louis, Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District, incumbent Republican Ann Wagner is opposed by Democratic challenger Arthur Lieber. Lieber assumed that the the local chapter of the League of Women Voters would arrange a debate, because of the importance of a Congressional race. He assumed wrong. Contacting the League, he learned that only when a candidate requests a debate does the League spring into action. In this case, Lieber’s request triggered an attempt by the League to schedule a debate with Wagner–but her campaign said that she couldn’t participate, because she would be in Washington DC on the proposed dates. [A disingenuous answer, of course, because Congress has exactly zero days in session between now and the Nov. 4 election.] The League–and Lieber–are still waiting for a response to some alternate dates.

And that’s how it’s going everywhere: Candidates are ducking and covering, reneging on debate promises, cancelling scheduled debates, and using every excuse in the book to avoid face-to-face debates, or even lower-key public forums. It’s happening on the right and on the left, in red states and blue states, in Congressional races, governors’ races and mayoral contests.

It’s an epidemic of what some have called “political truancy.” And it’s robbing voters of something they deserve: a forum where candidates must face the public live, demonstrate their command of the issues, and allow themselves to be challenged on their ideas, unprotected by scripted advertisements and sanitized press releases.

Debate ducking

In Ohio, for the first time in 36 years, there will be no formal debate between the candidates for governor, incumbent John Kasich and challenger Ed FitzGerald, says the Columbus Dispatch. “The candidates blamed each other for a breakdown in negotiations. The last time  Ohioans experienced a gubernatorial campaign without a debate came in 1978, when Gov. James Rhodes wouldn’t debate Democratic challenger Richard F. Celeste.”

Similarly,  Colorado’s CBS 4 television outlet reports, “For the first time in CBS 4 history [30 years], an incumbent U.S. senator has declined to debate his opponent live on air. In fact, Sen. Mark Udall isn’t doing a debate on any of the four major network television stations in Denver.” One CBS 4 staffer commented:

Live debates are the one opportunity voters have to see candidates go toe-to-toe without a media filter, see the clarity of their vision and courage of their conviction; how they think on their feet and respond under pressure. We’ve been trying to schedule this debate for more than two months.

In Michigan, Republican Terri Lynn Land and Democrat Gary Peters are vying for the open seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat. Land, who has been running a low-visibility campaign dubbed “stealth” and “invisible” by some news reports, notoriously flopped during a primary debate, reportedly saying, “I can’t do this,” and later acknowledging that she was not comfortable with public appearances. She offers a classic case of debate avoidance. US News recently reported that:

[Land’s] refusal to debate might be the strategic decision that marks the beginning of the end of her long-shot hopes as the fall campaign veers into focus. Her political truancy is beginning to draw wider attention.

On Monday, the local NBC affiliate in Land’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was forced to cancel its scheduled debate because Land’s campaign team never agreed to terms. In order to highlight her absence, Peters stole a page out of Clint Eastwood’s 2012 Republican National Convention playbook, propping up an empty chair and debating it in front of a gathering of his own supporters.

Michigan’s candidates for governor exhibit the same reluctance to debate. Incumbent Republican Governor Rick Snyder has, so far, declined all invitations to debate his Democratic challenger, Mark Schauer. Snyder is opting, instead for a series of town hall-style meetings with voters. Schauer’s camp calls this tactic an evasion. “A carefully scripted town hall with a partisan Republican audience is not the same as a statewide televised debate,” said a Schauer spokesperson recently.

The incredible, shrinking debate schedule

Even when candidates agree, in principle, to debate their opponents, they’re agreeing to fewer debates, balking over the rules, the venue, the time, the moderator, etc., and some even cancel previously arranged sessions, with little time for rescheduling. In Hawaii, for example, the democratic candidate for governor dropped out of a scheduled debate over the host organization’s intention to record the debate and post it, unedited, on its website. In Texas, the candidates running for governor–Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis–have scheduled, cancelled and then re-scheduled debates several times as they wrangled over the format of the meetings.

On Aug. 30, 2014, Montana’s Flathead Beacon reported this scenario:

With little more than two months to go before the general election, the only U.S. Senate candidate debate that had been scheduled in Bozeman by Friday was in question. …[Congressman Steve] Daines can’t attend on Oct. 4 and more coordination is needed before details would be confirmed. Other debates are in the works in eastern Montana and towns including Missoula, Kalispell and Helena. [Daines’ opponent] Ryan Zinke has declined to participate in debates in Great Falls and Billings.

Debates over debates are common in high-stakes political campaigns, says Michael Bitzer, professor of history and political science at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina. The 2014 race for a U.S. Senate seat there features an intensely watched race between incumbent U.S. Senator Kay Hagan and her challenger, North Carolina Speaker of the House Thom Tillis. Hagan has agreed to three debates. Tillis wants more:

In the Louisiana race for U.S. Senate between Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu and Republican challengers Bill Cassidy, and Rob Maness, one debate has been scheduled [Oct. 14]. But while Landrieu and Maness have agreed to multiple dates, Cassidy has yet to commit to more than the Oct. 14 event. Both campaigns appear to be trying to jigger the schedule and the locations for maximum political advantage. The jockeying for political advantage is a bit dizzying, and it probably typifies the kind of calculations being made in other contests: . Here’s a glimpse of what may be going on, according to the Times-Picayune:

Campaign frontrunners generally want to avoid debates because they pose more a risk than an opportunity for leading candidates…Cassidy could be steering clear of debates if he thinks he is currently ahead of Landrieu in the election.

Of course, Landrieu isn’t necessarily pushing debates because she thinks she has fallen behind Cassidy and needs the exposure. The Democratic Senator may just believe her debate skills are superior to the Republicans…

The Republican congressman is likely reluctant to commit to more debates because the candidate perceives he has more to lose than his opponents, according to experts. It’s an unusual situation. Typically, incumbents like Landrieu turn down debates and challengers like Cassidy push for more of them.

Why is it so hard to get candidates to stand up, face-to-face in front of an audience of the people they hope to represent? Maybe it’s all political–not wanting to say something embarrassingly uninformed, not wanting to give an opponent the opportunity to look good at your expense, or simply not wanting to let people see who you really are without a script. Or maybe the problem is the format of debates themselves–a forum in which debate skills–the ability to outshout your opponent, overtalk him or her, or recite an unbroken litany of memorized facts–are valued more than thoughtful discourse. For most candidates, it’s simply easier and safer to share your image and a few pithy soundbites via the much safer method known as advertising.

Whatever the reason, the diminution of this aspect of political campaigns is, bottom line, a loss for voters and for democracy.

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In theory, Americans love the underdog. In practice—especially in 21st century media coverage of political campaigns—underdog candidates might as well be wearing Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility.

Here’s a particularly egregious example: In the August 2010 primary election in Missouri, Democratic candidate Arthur Lieber won the right to appear on the November ballot as the Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, versus then-incumbent Republican Todd Akin. The next morning, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Akin was running unopposed in November.

That’s about as bad as it gets, but it’s not the only way that mainstream media—and political parties, too—demonstrate bias against candidates who are running against the odds.

In 2012, in the same Congressional district, Democrat Glenn Koenen defied conventional political wisdom, thinking that the then-open, newly redrawn district was winnable—with a little luck, a strong Democratic message, and some media attention. He was wrong, but not for lack of trying.

Without the requisite five-figure media budget, he did all the other right things: speaking engagements, candidate forums, press releases, interviews, etc. But as soon as Republican political insider Ann Wagner joined the race, the state Democratic party gave up, calling the race un-winnable. Newspapers and electronic media barely acknowledged Koenen’s existence, while slavishly covering Wagner’s every move. The Post-Dispatch invited Wagner in for a sit-down with the editorial board. Koenen got a 15-minute phone interview with a lower-level reporter. Television and radio outlets assigned reporters to cover the race, but none of them covered Koenen. The final insult came during the week before the November election, when, on its editorial page, the Post-Dispatch ticked off a list of Wagner’s negative points, as opposed to Koenen’s positives—and then endorsed Wagner.

Of course, this is not just a Missouri problem—it just happens that these are the stories I know best. [I live in Missouri’s 2nd District, and, by the way, Arthur Lieber just happens to be my spouse.] Both of these candidates joined the fray for good-citizen reasons: to make sure that there was a Democrat in the race—when no one else came forward, and when the state Democratic party made no effort to find or support anyone—and to try to make the point that political campaigns need to focus more on issues and less on money. Both were serious—as in serious about issues—candidates that deserved a hearing. Undaunted by previous media inattention, Lieber is doing it again in 2014.

Why does the mainstream media ignore the underdogs? Koenen says, “It’s all about conventional wisdom: The powers that be decide early on who is going to win, and they don’t want their narrative disturbed.”

Money—or, rather, the lack of money—is also a major contributing factor. In a recent interview, Koenen asserted that mainstream, corporate media are closely aligned with America’s economic elite. Corporate media regard their own bottom-line as paramount, he said, and that translates into a similar view of political campaigns: more money equals more success. The more corporate the campaign, the more mainstream media understand it and pay attention to it.

“The media are complicit in the corporatist approach to elections,” says Mikel Weisser, a progressive Democrat running this year for U.S. Congress in Arizona’s 4th District. “For them, it’s only about advancing the corporate agenda. They’re only interested in you if you have money. If you don’t, they ignore you or discount what you say.”

Weisser calls the media response to his campaign “dogged indifference,” explaining that the reporter from the Arizona Republic assigned to his campaign doesn’t respond to his emails or phone calls, and “acts as though there is no Democrat in the race.” Weisser ironically notes that the most media attention he’s received was from the Washington Post, which called out his campaign website as one of the most poorly designed in the country.

The current generation of news reporters also contributes to the problem, adds Koenen.

“Today’s young reporters come from middle- and upper-income families who can afford to send their kids to college,” he says. “They haven’t experienced and don’t buy into the struggles of people who don’t have as much money. They’re more concerned about people above them on the economic ladder. They’re aspirational. Concern for the underdog is no longer in their bones the way it used to be for reporters who had to work their own way up. Their reporting reflects that viewpoint.”

Applied to political reporting, that disconnect with economic underdogs makes reporters and their bosses see low-budget campaigns as losers.

And then there’s the matter of energy. “Unfortunately, some reporters take the path of least resistance,” says Lieber. “It’s just easier to report on the more visible, high-dollar campaigns of people with a lot of built-in name recognition.The real losers are the voters, because they don’t get the opportunity to find out that they have other choices.”

Unfortunately, it’s not going to get easier very soon, especially in light of recent Supreme Court rulings that have opened the floodgates of corporate political donations, and have reinforced the notion that the candidate with the most money deserves to win.

So, you’ve got to applaud candidates like Koenen, Lieber and Weisser for hanging in there against the odds. “We have to stay in, to make sure that our ideas get a hearing,” says Koenen. “For the system to work, ideas have to be valued as much as money. I was naive about the media when I ran. We have to keep pushing the media to do the right thing. Someone has to fight the fight.”

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