Back in June, I penned an open letter to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the CNN moderators of the first presidential debate, urging them to approach their task differently. Too often, I argued, candidates default to snippets of campaign stump speeches and run out the clock on their answers — and the voters often learn nothing real or new about the candidates. Instead, as I learned firsthand as a questioner at last year’s mayoral “Ultimate Job Interview” series hosted by The Citizen, moderators should approach debates like the employment interview they are.
The goal should be to test each candidate’s knowledge, character and practical readiness for the job. Just asking about national/international issues or horse race calculations might no longer be enough.
I’d like to renew the challenge. ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis have the opportunity to help us better understand how a candidate thinks and understands complex issues, rather than allowing candidates to regurgitate well-worn, focus group-tested talking points, slogans and grievances. Moreover, in June, the CNN moderators decided not to fact-check the candidates — allowing one of them, Donald Trump, to say things that would never go unchallenged on their regular programs. (Like the absurd notion that Democrats support abortion after birth.)
So, in addition to fact-checking glaring inaccuracies, what kind of questions should be asked? Well, in our mayoral election last year, I asked candidates very specific questions that revealed how much they knew about the office they sought to hold. Of the businessman who had never worked in government, I asked, “Have you read the Home Rule Charter?” — our city’s constitution. He hadn’t. He couldn’t tell the audience what the Sinking Fund is — it’s how you pay your debt service. And he said his most important hires would be chief of staff and managing director, whom he would lead, and they in turn would run the government. Being mayor, he suggested, was mostly “cheerleading.”
Of the progressive legislator who had once said that, when she walked into a room, “systems of oppression fall,” I had to wonder just what that meant. After all, I’d never heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Teresa make such a boastful statement.
Some were critical of my questioning. “How many times did you read the Home Rule Charter when you were mayor?” one journalist asked. Oh, maybe 30, I said. You want to get shit done? You’d better read, if not memorize, the rulebook of the game you’re playing.
So let me renew my call for the type of questions that could help all of us understand Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s respective levels of readiness. Here are some suggestions, the answers of which I suspect will be more enlightening than eliciting the same old memorized talking points.
From our U.S. Citizenship Test, I suggest asking these questions of both:
(Answer key at end.)
- What are the first three words of the Constitution establishing the idea of self-government? How do they inform decisions you’d make as President and leader of the free world?
- How many rights are declared in the First Amendment, what are they, and what does the Amendment with which the Framers chose to open our founding document mean to you?
- What are the rights declared in the Declaration of Independence?
- Name two of the three authors of the Federalist Papers.
- What does the phrase “Checks and Balances” mean?
Here are some others, off the top of my head:
- Who is Frederick Douglass?
- What’s the Hatch Act?
- What’s the War Powers Act and when was it adopted?
- What president first recognized the state of Israel?
- Name Ronald Reagan’s economic policy, and are you an adherent of it?
Finally, what are the principles that will be the basis of these candidates’ decision-making? Here, some open-ended questions to reveal what I call political character:
- Give an example from the history of presidential leadership that led to a compromise that benefited the American people.
- Provide one specific example where you’ve used political skill to solve a problem, i.e., where you’ve brought warring factions together or somehow managed to bridge a divide in service of the common good.
- Please provide one example of you committing an act of political courage — saying no to a contributor, standing up to an interest group, taking a public position that could cost you an election, etc.
- In the context of Muslim bans and children being separated from their families at the border, what does the phrase “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” mean to you? Does it conflict with your policies?
- What has the effect been on African Americans today of governmental, institutionalized legalized and legislated racism — from slavery to redlining to separate but equal to the banning of interracial marriage to civil rights and voting rights? From 1619 to 1865 to 1954 to 1964 to 1968 and beyond, Blacks and people of color have literally been second-class citizens as a matter of law. Do you agree, or not, and, if so, what work remains to address the inequalities that stem from that history? What specific steps have you taken or will you take to address these issues?
Please take all this for what it is: One citizen’s suggestion to deviate from questioning as usual. And a plea to be willing to fact-check what each candidate says in real time. The stakes are too high for any other approach.
Answer key: 1: We The People; 2: 5: Speech, Press, Assembly, Religion, Petition the government; 3: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness; 4: Hamilton, Madison, Jay. 5: The separation of power, ensured through the establishment of three different branches: the executive, judicial and legislative; 6: 19th Century African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman who is no longer alive, Mr. Trump; 7: 1939 law limiting the political activity of executive branch employees; 8: 1973 law requiring a congressional declaration of war when a president sends the armed forces into action abroad; 9: Harry Truman; 10: Supply-side or trickle-down economics.
Michael A. Nutter was the 98th Mayor of Philadelphia, serving from 2008-2016.
Correction: The Federalist Papers had three authors.
