None of us know whether Donald Trump’s boycott of tonight’s Republican presidential debate will help or hurt his chances next week in Iowa. While we’re all entitled to our opinions, like all prognostications of this sort, they are all equally worthless. But what is interesting is the question of whether Trump is setting a precedent for future presidential frontrunners to ditch debates that could only serve to help competitors chip away at their leads. As much as the political world will be fascinated to see whether the decision to boycott the Fox News debate is just one more example of Trump’s political genius or the first real mistake he’s made, frontrunners in the future will be looking to what happens in Iowa when they decide whether to succumb to a similar temptation.
Trump’s decision is hardly without precedent. It is routine for candidates for governor, the Senate, or the House of Representatives to avoid debates if they believe they have a safe lead. Incumbents that wish to avoid giving challengers the attention and the credibility that a debate affords are usually reluctant to engage in debates.
The dynamic here isn’t hard to understand. When you are far ahead in the polls, as Trump is in national polls and some of the surveys of Iowa and New Hampshire, there is really no upside to a debate. When a race is close, debates bring both risks and rewards. They afford an opportunity to score points and gain a clear advantage while also presenting the possibility of a gaffe that will sink a candidate. When you’re behind, a good debate performance, or a bad one for the person you’re trailing, presents the sole opportunity for the sort of Hail Mary pass that might change the outcome.
So it is routine for those with leads to avoid debates or keep them to a bare minimum and negotiating terms that will reduce their significance. That’s why Hillary Clinton and her allies at the Democratic National Committee sought to minimize the number of debates she would have to engage in with her challengers this year and scheduled them on weekends when television audiences would be small. It is only now that she understands she’s in a real contest with Bernie Sanders that Clinton is calling for more debates.
Still, on the presidential level, we are used to debates in a way that we are not for lesser offices. But what some forget is that this is relatively recent development in American political history. The debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960 was the first of its kind. It would not be repeated until 1976, because in the intervening three cycles, the frontrunners (Lyndon Johnson and Nixon) thought they had nothing to gain from one. Since 1976, they have become an institution in the general election and the party debates have become so numerous that, as in 2012 when the total on the GOP side rose to 22, they began to resemble a reality show.
But the pattern in primary debates in recent decades has been similar to the ones in the general election. Until now, no candidate, no matter how far ahead they were, has dared to boycott a debate on any pretext. Trump isn’t the first with a grudge against a moderator. But in the past, those that felt they were being set up by the media figures asking the questions were generally smart enough to turn the tables on their tormentors as Newt Gingrich did in 2012 when he turned a personal question into an opportunity to attack the media. But Trump apparently believes his fan base in Iowa will, as they have for the last six months, applaud anything he does and cheer any demonization of a media opponent like Fox News’ Megyn Kelly rather than take umbrage at his arrogant refusal to continue to play by the same rules as the other candidates.
So the stakes here are about more than whether Trump will pay a price for deciding that he can quit the debate game while he’s ahead. If he loses no ground in the coming days and wins Iowa, in future election years candidates with leads heading into the first caucuses and primaries will be tempted to follow his example. But anyone that thinks they can play by Trump rules without being Trump will be making a mistake. If we have learned anything in this crazy campaign, it is that the normal rules and the force of political gravity don’t apply to Trump. But they do apply to everyone else. Gaffes may not bother Trump, but they have helped sink Ben Carson. As with everything else about the real-estate-mogul-turned-reality-star-turned-presidential-frontrunner, Trump’s decisions are unique to him. He may not suffer by snubbing Iowa’s last chance to see him up against the competition. But no future presidential hopeful should think that would have any meaning for their own choices.
It is a fact that political science may be fun for those of us who care about politics, but it is not a science. Each election is a unique event, and any effort to understand it better by setting it up as a system by which other votes may be judged is a waste of time. Win or lose for Trump, no precedent will be set by the final debate. The only thing the fallout from his feud with Fox will be about is the outcome of the 2016 race and nothing else.