Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

One Question to Make Debates Worth Watching

Better still: Get rid of the time limits and let candidates really argue.

October 12, 2015 at 8:30 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

Lincoln and Douglas didn't need all this stuff.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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There’s a question that won’t be asked in Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential “debate” -- it’s never asked -- but we’d all be better served should the moderator offer it up. If and when the stage gets small enough, the same challenge could be tossed to the Republican candidates. The question I have in mind is, in a sense, the only one that matters -- a question that helps us figure out whether each aspirant wants to be leader of a party or president of a country.

I’ll get to that pivotal question in a moment. First, let me deal with the other thing that’s probably irking you: the reason I put the word “debate” in quotation marks.