The boiling point toward which our country is heading was exemplified by the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. Political violence is a perennial threat to democratic systems, which must be unequivocally condemned. It is an accelerant of the prerequisite terror for totalitarian rule.
President Joe Biden and national leaders have acknowledged that the shooting was a horrific warning for every American, regardless of political party, to bring down the temperature.
The political temperature, however, cannot be lowered simply by wishing it so. It can only be lowered through the pressure valve of open communication. The public arena for political discourse in the U.S. must be expanded in the wake of this tragic shooting.
In the internet age, we are no longer constrained to occasional short-form, advertisement-interspersed media segments. We now have digital platforms that can consistently host long-form, uninterrupted debates between political leaders. We therefore should have consistent long-form political debates, the absence of which allows for mutual demonization of “the other side” to fester.
Our polarized country is starved for direct and open dialogue. Debates are the best forum. More than 51 million people watched CNN’s presidential debate on TV, in addition to more than 30 million views of CNN’s digital streams.
The outcome of the debate was a complete paradigm shift in the race. The majority of Democratic voters suddenly realized that their candidate is not up to the task. That is not even an insight into policy merits, but it is another important type of insight that can be gleaned from debates.
We also should not have to wait until the official presidential debates to face off our leaders and ideas. The country also should not be caught in a position where it has a deficit of nationally known figures from which to choose. Regular debates would allow political figures to rise to prominence through their intellectual acumen and policy competence.
In terms of substantive debates on policy and politics, the American public has an evident appetite. The online debate this year between commentators Ben Shapiro and Steven “Destiny” Bonnell on Lex Fridman’s podcast was viewed 10 million times on YouTube alone. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also participated in a digitally streamed debate, but she had to travel to join the Oxford Union, across the Atlantic Ocean, where long-form political debates regularly occur. She faced off against, among others, an English folk musician.
Discourse and protests are the only acceptable outlets for political confrontation. But discourse between political leaders at the national level is mostly limited to television interview slots, a couple of roundtable shows, and some op-eds. It is mostly short-form content, designed for the Television Age, and it very rarely includes direct exchange.
We have entered a new technological era primed for long-form political debate, which allows not only an outlet for civil confrontation, but also an opportunity for understanding. We can only understand disagreement if we can hear those with whom we disagree directly respond to counterarguments. Moreover, we can only understand our own positions when we hear counterarguments to those with which we agree.
Long-form political debate is a part of American historical tradition. We used to have full high-profile debates in the Senate in the early 19th century. The American public would eagerly read the transcripts in the newspapers.
However, political violence is nothing new to U.S. history. Four presidents have been assassinated, and more attempts were made. Trump is the fourth presidential candidate ever to be shot, and the first in 52 years.
The first attempted presidential assassination was against Andrew Jackson in 1835. It was made in the midst of an intense political conflict, a sort of antebellum cold civil war known as the Bank War. President Jackson was an anti-establishment and thoroughly informal populist. He was also portrayed as a tyrant (“King Andrew I”) by political opponents and the media. Sounds familiar.
Both pistols misfired, the odds of which an expert analysis concluded to be 125,000 to 1. The odds of a sniper bullet just grazing the side of Trump’s head without even causing debilitating injury are probably similar.
The assassination attempt on Jackson did not immediately spill over into a violent uprising. But it was a harbinger of the coming Civil War, which would consume the country within 26 years.
Reactionary violence rapidly devolves into chaos, then authoritarianism. Before Germany’s interwar democratic system collapsed, paramilitary corps attacked political opponents in the streets.
The United States is the greatest republic that has ever existed, which rose to global leadership after defeating the Nazis and their allies. Its history has been defined by deliberation and reform. Discourse, especially debate, is essential for those pillars of democracy. Now as much as ever.
Jeremy Etelson was a Democratic staffer in Maryland. He received a J.D. from George Washington University in 2024 and an M.Phil. in political theory and intellectual history from the University of Cambridge in 2019.