ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that wider candidate availability through forums other than debates. General election presidential debates command audiences of tens of millions of people, more than large enough to make mistakes costly and victories meaningful. The compressed formats, broad audiences, and high stakes of debates pressure candidates to phrase their positions as poignantly as possible and journalists to try to get beyond the prepared material. The divergence between editorial opinion and coverage speaks to fundamental problems in covering and commenting on debates. Most commentators would agree that debates need to be engaging even if they would disagree on what constitutes engagement. Assuming that the campaigns are relevant to legitimacy and that legitimacy is remade in accordance with the press of circumstance, not only debates, but the debate about debates must be sufficiently reflexive to be able to mould norms of public discourse as well as respond to them.
