The Challenge for CNN’s Debate Moderators: Keeping Themselves Out of It

Whenever presidential debate moderators have sought guidance from Bob Schieffer over the years, he’s offered this advice: “Don’t forget, this is not about you; this is about the candidates.”

Schieffer, a CBS veteran who moderated debates in 2004, 2008, and 2012, knows that television journalists have healthy (and sometimes unhealthy) egos. But savvy moderators, he said, don’t want to be the story at the conclusion of the debate. Ideally, a viewer might quickly forget who facilitated the forum. “You’re just trying to give people the best picture you can of who these candidates are,” Schieffer said.

Trying is the key word—especially when it comes to Thursday night’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. After the two men feuded in front of more than 73 million viewers in September 2020, CNN anchor Jake Tapper said, “The American people lost tonight, ’cause that was horrific,” while his colleague Dana Bash bluntly summed up the proceedings: “That was a shit show.”

This time around, Tapper and Bash will be the moderators, and the pressure is palpable. The anchors are off their usual shows this week because they are in behind-the-scenes debate prep sessions. Everyone, it seems, has an idea about what they should ask and how they should ask it. PBS NewsHour senior correspondent and former anchor Judy Woodruff, who spent 12 years at CNN, said, “People have been writing me over the last few days, wondering if I know anyone at CNN these days, because they’re wanting to get ideas for questions to CNN.”

Woodruff, another veteran debate moderator, said her goal was always unambiguous: “to keep the focus on the candidates.” That’s clearly what CNN wants as well. In an interview with The New York Times, CNN chairman Mark Thompson said Trump and Biden, not the questioners, “are the stars of the show.”

Of course, surrogates for the candidates may want the moderators to become the story as a way to exert pressure on them, or “work the refs,” as they say. Trump’s camp has already attacked Tapper and Bash, and so have the former president’s media allies on Fox News (which failed to land a debate of its own).

CNN has defended its moderators following the broadsides from Trumpworld: “There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion, and we look forward to the debate.”

Biden allies have gripes too, specifically about CNN political director David Chalian’s comment to the Times that Tapper and Bash would focus on “facilitating the debate between these candidates, not being a participant in that debate.” Biden campaign aides want Trump’s frequently fraudulent claims to be fact-checked by the moderators, not just by journalists afterward.

This is the first time in nearly four decades that an individual TV network will run a general election debate in the US, as Biden’s and Trump’s campaigns cut out the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. Trump’s behavior is the biggest X factor.

“I am so excited about this debate because it is going to be like none other,” Carole Simpson, who moderated in 1992, said on CNN over the weekend. However, she added, “How would I prepare to moderate such a debate? You really almost can’t,” attributing the uncertainty to Trump’s unpredictability.

“In 1992, when I moderated that debate, it was very easy because everybody was good, everybody behaved,” Simpson recalled of the three-way contest between Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ross Perot. “They listened to the commission’s rulings and they kept by the rules. This time, who knows?”

In a change from the commission-run debates, “microphones will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” per CNN.

Schieffer said he appreciates that change, as well as the elimination of a studio audience. “I’m just glad they’re debating at all,” he said, alluding to the widespread skepticism around whether Trump and Biden would actually agree to a rematch.

Jim Lehrer, who helmed 12 presidential debates and was known as the “dean of moderators,” passed away in 2020. So this week I found myself revisiting past interviews with Lehrer, looking for his lessons about what is—simultaneously—the best and worst job in television.

During the 2016 campaign season, Lehrer told me a moderator must accept that he or she will be criticized no matter what. “The number one function of the moderator,” he said, “is to make sure that the flow is among the candidates. The moderator should be out of the picture as much as possible…. When it’s all over, it’s about the two candidates. They are the players. The moderator is the facilitator, not one of the players.”

Of this week’s moderators, Schieffer said, “I think Jake and Dana are both as good as it gets in television journalism.” Woodruff also expressed confidence in both CNN anchors, and imagined what they might be feeling this week: “It is a huge responsibility on your shoulders.”

“My goal,” she added, “was always to put myself in the shoes of the people who are watching or listening or following, to make sure that we’re asking the questions that the public needs to know about.”

Ann Compton, who moderated presidential debates in 1988 and 1992, said the task is also incredibly intense from a technical standpoint: “The complexities of timing the responses and enforcing the rules are on top of the mental load of keeping track of what the candidates say, and what needs to be challenged or clarified.” Producers in the control room help with that, but it ultimately all falls on the moderators.

In Compton’s ideal debate, there would be no journalists onstage at all.

“I still dream of the day that two candidates enter the stage from opposite sides. Each takes a seat at a round table. No moderator. No format. No timer on questions,” she said. “It is what a president does in a meeting with a formidable adversary. It is what a commander in chief must do at moments of crisis. Go ahead, show us how you would act as president of the United States.”

Maybe next election cycle.