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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Academics discuss upcoming presidential debates

Though the most recent Republican Party presidential debate was only 13 days ago, the eight highest-polling conservative candidates are gearing up for another round.

The Fox Business and Wall Street Journal Republican debate will take place at 9 p.m. Tuesday.

The candidates in this debate have an average poll that gives them at least 2.5 percent of the vote in the four most recent national polls on Nov. 4. The candidates by descending order in polls are: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich and Rand Paul.

In the secondary debate, which will be aired earlier in the evening, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum will debate.

“I do not expect much from the Republican debate,” said Sumit Ganguly, the director of IU’s Center on American and Global Security, in an email. “The prior debates have been most unenlightening and vacuous.”

Ganguly said Kasich, who is trailing in the polls, is one of the only Republican candidates who tried to steer previous debates toward serious policy positions.

Mark Fraley, a politics professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, agreed the Republican debates have not been helpful.

“For these debates I think I would personally like to see some level of accountability for Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Carly 
Fiorina,” said Fraley, who is also the chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party.

Edward Carmines, the director of IU’s Center on American Politics, said this debate could help weed out some of the trailing 
candidates.

“I think at this point, the really crucial issue for Republicans is whether or not there will be a change in momentum for the various candidates,” said Carmines, a professor in the Department of Political Science.

The three Democratic candidates — Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley — will also debate this week. The CBS, KCCI and Des Moines Register Democratic debate will take place at 9 p.m. Saturday.

“In the smaller, Democratic debate, it will be useful to see how Clinton and Sanders seek to sharpen their policy differences,” Ganguly said.

It’s hard to know what topics will be discussed in either debate, but Carmines said there could be a number of debate topics relating to students.

Financing of higher education, student grants and changing policies about repaying student loans are among them.

“We don’t know many of the candidates’ full positions on these issues, and that’s what needs to be proven,” Carmines said.

Though some academics said they feel the debates are important for informed voters to watch, others said they find the debates almost pointless.

“I think it’s critical that students especially have an interest in public policy,” Fraley said. “This involves them. The candidates are talking about issues that either pertain to them now or broader issues that are going to affect them as soon as they get out of college and are looking for a job.”

John Louis Lucaites, a professor in the department of English, said he doesn’t even consider the events to be debates.

“They are more like free commercial advertisements for the candidates,” Lucaites said in an email. “There is no real statement of a position and then back-and-forth engagement with the problems and possibilities of each candidate’s policies or other 
issues.”

He said if anything can be gleaned from watching the debate, it’s an idea of how the candidates operate 
under pressure.

Edward Linenthal, a professor in the department of history and an adjunct professor in the department of American studies, said he has stopped watching the debates altogether.

“There’s very little substance,” he said. “People just play to the extremes of their party.”

Instead, Linenthal said he makes his voting decisions based on other policy pronouncements and the clues the candidates give about things like potential cabinet decisions or Supreme Court nominations.

Overall, many educated Americans seem to be longing for issue-based discussions in which the candidates are kept accountable for their answers.

“Be respectful, yet relentless,” was Fraley’s advice to the moderators.

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