Presidential Debates and Deliberative Democracy

Consider democracy in America through the lens of the presidential debates. It is not a pretty picture. From a high point in the nineteenth century (for example, the lengthy Lincoln-Douglas Senate campaign debates of 1858) a declining trajectory can be traced to the present day, with a marked acceleration in the Age of Television. To our polity\u27s discredit, the presidential debate has long since ceased to be a dialogue that might shed light on the candidates\u27 true powers of deliberation. The key to reversing this long decline, I believe, lies in an unlikely place: in the structural features of the legal trial