A Debate Is Much More Than a Fact-Checking Exercise
When Donald Trump and Joe Biden take the debate stage in Cleveland tonight, many in the audience will want the moderator, Chris Wallace, to fact-check the candidates aggressively. Political partisans are like basketball fans: They want to see fouls called on the opponent, not on the home team. Yet Wallace and the moderators of subsequent debates will have to find balance, just as NBA referees do. Letting players get away with the most flagrant violations—say, treating dribbling as optional as they get their steps in on the way to the hoop—would ruin the game, but refs don’t call every foul, because doing so would essentially stop play.
Debates at their best offer glimpses into each candidate’s temperament, character, and style of leadership. Whether a candidate tells a lot of whoppers during a debate certainly matters. Hence the minor uproar on Twitter when Frank Fahrenkopf,
