Chris Wallace from Fox News, Steve Scully from C-SPAN, and Kristen Welker from NBC News will run the three presidential debates between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, while Susan Page from USA Today takes the helm in the vice-presidential debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris.
Favoritism/bias:
All the moderators are pros. This is an area not worth spending much energy on, even though it's the most common complaint, with 41% of those surveyed in the report saying that they are extremely or very concerned about it. Everybody at home loves shouting bias, and they're just wrong. Hearing, "the referees were paid off ... they want our team to lose," is as old as competitions have been around. I've watched every debate for a quarter of a century, and bias in moderators should be the least of our worries.
It's the opposite that I fear might be the case in the upcoming debates. Moderators could be so worried about being perceived as biased that they oversteer and go in the other direction, toward "fairness." I know that sounds like a good thing, but hear me out, because the notion of "fairness" in debates can actually turn into another, very different, form of bias. It's called the fallacy of false equivalence—also called false balance or bothsidesism. And I believe that's the area this year's moderators must fight against.
If they think, "Well, I've given Trump a hard question about a topic where he clearly seems to be wrong, therefore I must find something about Biden that is marginally questionable and grill him on that issue with equal fervor..." then that's when the moderators will actually be demonstrating an unintentional bias of false equivalence. And the debate format lends itself to making this mistake. Moderators present questions for each candidate back and forth with equal time. While on its face that sounds fair, the problem arises if candidates are given especially sharp or critical questions, but their transgressions (or policies) are not equally flawed. It appears to the audience that "they both do it, so it's a wash," when in fact one candidate is much worse than the other.
Not controlling the candidates:
This usually happens when candidates either interrupt their opponent or speak over their allotted time. History demonstrates that unless the moderators take control immediately, both Trump and Biden will interrupt each other so much that the debates will become a race to the bottom.
As for going overtime, having a bell (an airhorn would actually be awesome) that goes off, and keeps ringing until the candidate shuts up is the best solution. Otherwise, it's up to the moderators to verbally cut them off, and they will often let one candidate get away with more rule-breaking, not because the moderators are biased but because they don't know how to handle aggressive debaters for 90 minutes. And Trump will inevitably attempt to manipulate the moderators. It's actually a strength of his. A "nice" moderator will get bullied. Here, patience is not a virtue.
Overstepping bounds:
