Until the bizarre and head-snapping 2024 presidential election, political debates have not truly mattered for a generation or so. When two normal candidates from two functional parties face off, debates really shouldn’t be that important. The presidency is not about one-liners or rehearsed closing statements. Candidates’ records, public statements and character revealed over a timeline surely should count for more than even the most lively staged event. And indeed, no debate had had much of an impact since Gerald Ford’s blunder on Poland in his debate against Jimmy Carter in 1976. Then came 2024.

For President Joe Biden, a debate triggered an irreparable crisis of confidence among Democrats, who came to the conclusion that regardless of how well he was doing the job of president, he could not effectively campaign and win a second term. Had there been a real primary (as there was in 2020, when Biden convinced people he was just the person to beat the incumbent president), the moment of reckoning might have come sooner.

Not coincidentally, former president Donald Trump also had avoided all primary debates, preventing even the most minimal vetting. Now, it’s not clear whether the current MAGA Republican Party primary electorate would have recoiled when he unleashed his torrent of lies, conspiracies, racism and self-deluded comments — it sure didn’t hurt him in 2016 — but it might have worked to prepare the general-election audience. When finally (finally!) a mass audience saw Trump unfiltered and unaided by media straining to normalize........

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