Elections

Presidential Debates Are Misinformation: How Presidential Candidates Lie To Win Elections

Academic - First Place Daniel Santoyo

Nominated by Professor Joanna Jen

In an ideal world, presidential debates would showcase a candidate's leadership capabilities, intelligence, positions on policy, and worthiness of being the next president of the United States (Daniels). On the contrary, presidential debates in the United States fail to present relevant information to voters and, rather, are concerned with flaunting theatrics and spreading misleading soundbites. In the age of social media, disingenuous presidential debates empower the speedy propagation of political falsehoods, made by or about presidential candidates, which would feasibly confuse ordinary voters and disrupt democratic elections. Polarized echo chambers and outdated laws further complicate the delicate voting process, in part, because there exists no national, non-partisan consensus to comprehensively counter or correct political falsehoods. Thus, the current nature of presidential debates, in the United States, is a menacing form of misinformation in politics that is safeguarded by Supreme Court rulings and fueled by technology, requiring mitigation through a form of national, non-partisan political fact checking.

Presidential debates themselves are misinformation because they focus primarily on false narratives and entertainment, threatening the legitimacy of elections and the stability of democracy in the United States. On the debate stage, presidential candidates are essentially given free rein to mislead the public with little to no fact checking or accountability taken by the moderator (Hu). This behavior was exacerbated in the 2020 presidential debates, as Trump was able to falsely proclaim that Biden’s “socialist” agenda would kill private healthcare insurance, while Biden misleadingly emphasized that Trump “single-handedly” destroyed the economy (Hu). This type of unprofessionalism — seen when Trump repeatedly broke debate conduct and attacked Biden’s family, or when Biden called Trump a clown — transforms meaningful political dialogue into substanceless verbal sparring sessions between candidates (Hu). Debates of this nature fail to adequately inform voters and compromise the validity of presidential elections(Daniels).

Disgraceful debate conduct, analogous to Trump's repeated verbal attacks towards Biden’s son to imply Biden should be disqualified, suggests that presidential candidates use misinformation to win votes and distract voters from their flaws as presidential nominees (Hu). Millions of Americans watch the presidential debates; notwithstanding, political figures still knowingly feed Americans misleading information, of which, voters may not be able to instantaneously recognize or factcheck themselves (Hu). The burden on democracy is incalculable when voters are deceived into believing misinformation. Voters might lose confidence in the democratic process, or in public officials, which would intensify voters’ distrust in the government (Hu; Rainie and Perrin). Therefore, presidential debates, as they currently operate, feed the demise of democracy in the United States because “unchecked misinformation and empty words” pollute the votes of unsuspecting Americans (Hu).

The laws and judicial precedents currently regulating falsehoods, made by or about presidential candidates, are inadequate and ineffective in the age of social media. Specifically, two Supreme Court rulings define how libels should be addressed. First, New York Times v. Sullivan stipulates plaintiffs must prove that the libelous speech in question is false and demonstrate that the speaker acted with reckless intent (Sunstein 408). Second, the United States v. Alvarez specifies that false speech is protected under the First Amendment unless that speech causes provable harm and cannot be combated with counterspeech (Sunstein 391). However, false accusations concerning presidential candidates — such as a claim that a candidate does not support the Second Amendment when they actually do — are not considered “libelous” 207

under the current libel law standards of the supreme court (Sunstein 416). For this reason, it is legally unclear as to how to deal with damaging presidential misinformation (Sunstein 416). Sullivan would nullify the argument that such claims are libelous, and Alverez would simply promote counter-speech, failing to ease the circulation of presidential falsehoods online (Sunstein 393). Research suggests that false statements are not rejected predominantly on the basis of truth, which further compounds the containment of presidential misinformation (Sunstein 393). To this point, some false speech must be protected because the government's judgment is prone to fallibility and the health of democracy is dependent on the First Amendment (Sunstein 398). But this condition implies that a political leader would be able to spread falsehoods — let’s assume, about the results of an important election. Accordingly, such false claims might enter online echo chambers, where supporters may overlook undemocratic methods to stop a stolen election, potentially enabling a radical uprising against the government. This sequence of events would be made possible, partially, by the conflicting relationship of Sullivan and Alvarez, which fails to contain damaging political misinformation that destabilizes democratic processes (Sunstein 416). Consequently, the alleviation of adverse presidential falsehoods must strike a balance that does not overly punish false speech — causing unnecessary censoring or discouraging free public expression — but is also strict enough to put an end to the deception of voters.

Given the polarized climate of politics in the United States, a national, nonpartisan political fact-checking agency would help mitigate the spread and the influence of misinformation on and off the presidential debate stage. Affective polarization — the phenomena where people with opposing political ideologies hold negative views and otherize one another — is growing in the United States and compounding the problem of misinformation in politics (Edsall). As animosity grows among voters of different political ideologies, individuals will want to find like-minded thinkers to reinforce their side, nourishing the growth of online political echo chambers (Acemoğlu et al.). This is problematic because Americans mainly source their political information from T.V. and social media, where the political “facts” vary from network to network (Lowi et al. 281). But because there is no nationally recognized, nonpartisan guidance to steer the public clear of political misinformation, the marketplace of ideas becomes the breeding grounds for misinformative echo chambers. Effectively addressing this type of political misinformation in court would be costly and inefficient, but what if there existed a national, non-partisan political fact-checking agency that would be the final arbiter of political facts (Sunstein 413)? The National Political Fact-checking Agency (NPFA) would serve as the national “gold standard” for credible political information, distinguishing political truth from political falsity. Adjacent to the Supreme Court, the NPFA would interpret political information but would not have the authority to enforce its judgment nor censor any contradictory speech. These limitations would preserve the freedoms allotted to citizens under the First Amendment, but also confront political disinformation with an undisputed, unbiased explanation. This way, political leaders would be able to cite nationally credible information on the presidential debate stage to combat any misleading political notions and protect their reputations. Voters would be more accurately informed and the influence of demagogues would be reduced, creating more objective discussions among voters. Finally, this would invite a more authentic form of presidential debates, potentially generating more genuinely informed votes being cast.

In the contemporary United States, there is a misunderstanding in society which involves the public thinking that what is expected of the president translates to what the president can do (Neustadt 27). This “gap between the public expectation . . . and the president’s actual powers” is further widened by the use of misinformation on the presidential debate stage (Neustadt 27). Furthermore, the theatrics that go on in presidential debates are distracting and shift voters’ focus from policy to “who had the better jab at the other.” Presidential candidates are entitled to the First Amendment, in fact, dependent on the First Amendment and the privileges of “public forms” to reach voters and get their message across (Timur and Sunstein 106). However, should the First Amendment also give presidential candidates the ability to consciously lie to voters to win elections?

Acemoğlu, Daron, et al. “Misinformation on Social Media.” Vox, 30 June 2021, voxeu.org/article/misinformation-social-media.

Daniels, Nicole, and Michael Gonchar. “Are Presidential Debates Helpful to Voters? or Should They Be Scrapped?” The New York Times, 7 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/learning/are-presidential-debates-helpful-to-voters-or-sho uldthey-be-scrapped.html.

Edsall, Thomas. “How Much Does How Much We Hate Each Other Matter?” The New York Times, 29 Sept. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/opinion/political-polarization-partisanship.html.

Hu, Dylan. “No More Presidential Debates.” Harvard Political Review, 13 Nov. 2020, harvardpolitics.com/no-more-presidential-debates/.

Lowi, Theodore J., et al. American Government: A Brief Introduction. W.W. Norton and Company, 2021.

Neustadt, Richard E. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. Wiley, 1980.

Rainie, Lee, and Andrew Perrin. “Key Findings about Americans' Declining Trust in Government and Each Other.” Pew Research Center, 30 May 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/22/key-findings-about-americans-declining-trus t-in-government-and-each-other/.

Sunstein, Cass R. “Falsehoods and The First Amendment.” Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, vol. 33, no. 2, 2020, pp. 388–425., doi:https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v33/33HarvJLTech387.pdf.

Timur Kuran & Cass R. Sunstein, “Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation” Stanford Law Review, Vol. 51, No. 4, 1999.