In what may be the only presidential debate before November’s election, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris squared off in Philadelphia on September 10. Topics discussed ranged from the economy to border security, abortion rights to the bizarre but debunked claims about Haitian immigrants consuming cats and dogs, the Taliban, and Ukraine. Since then, many polls and pundits have declared Harris the “winner” of the debate.

What does that actually mean, though? The US presidential debates are one of the major four-yearly “shows,” like the World Cup soccer, the UEFA Euro Cup, and the Olympics, in my opinion. The public continues to pay close attention to presidential debates despite technological advancements, the emergence of social media, and streaming platforms. In fact, two of the three most watched presidential debates in American history took place in 2016 (between Trump and Hillary Clinton and with 84.4 million viewers) and 2020 (between Trump and Joe Biden with 73.1 million viewers). Debating is in our DNA. Nealy three millenia-old, Homer’s Iliad begins with Agamemnon and Achilles squabbling over inherited authority versus talent. While Plato had opposed rhetoric to dialectic, his pragmatic student Aristotle compared the two.

Dialectic is primarily philosophical; rhetoric is political; dialectic comprises question-andanswer exchanges and the rhetoric of a predetermined speech. Debates have a profound history in American democracy. There was no moderator present during the seven inperson for the US Senate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858! Each discussion was opened by one of the candidates in turn for an hour, followed by a oneand-a-half-hour rebuttal from the other contender, then a half-hour response from the first candidate to close it out. Howard K. Smith moderated the firstever televised presidential debate between John F Kennedy and Richard M Nixon in Chicago in 1960. The two candidates, however, never interrupted one another, launched personal jabs, or questioned one another’s mental health or allegiance to the country.

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They never called the other person a clown, a liar, or even a socialist;........

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