But what will the print media do? Let's hope they don't do what they did four years ago.
Interviews with focus groups just after the first 2000 debate showed Al Gore with a slight edge. Post-debate analysis should have widened that edge. After all, during the debate, Bush told one whopper after another -- about his budget plans, about his prescription drug proposal and more. The fact-checking in the next day's papers should have been devastating.
But as Adam Clymer pointed out recently on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, front-page coverage of the 2000 debates emphasized not what the candidates said but their "body language." After the debate, the lead stories said a lot about Gore's sighs, but nothing about Bush's lies. And even the fact-checking pieces "buried inside the newspaper" were, as Clymer delicately puts it, "constrained by an effort to balance one candidate's big mistakes against the other's minor errors."
The result of this emphasis on the candidates' acting skills rather than their substance was that after a few days, Bush's clear defeat in the debate had been spun into a victory.
This time, the first debate will be about foreign policy, an area where Bush ought to be vulnerable. After all, his grandiose promises to rid the world of evildoers have all come to naught.
During the debate, Bush will try to cover for this dismal record with swagger and with attacks on his opponent. Will the press play Karl Rove's game by, as Clymer puts it, confusing political coverage with drama criticism, or will it do its job and check the candidates' facts?
There have been some encouraging signs lately. There was a disturbing interlude in which many news organizations seemed to accept false claims that Iraq had calmed down after the transfer of sovereignty. But now, as the violence escalates, they seem willing to ask hard questions about Bush's fantasy version of the situation in Iraq. For example, a recent Reuters analysis pointed out that independent sources contradict his assertions about everything "from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections."
There will be a temptation to revert to drama criticism -- to emphasize how the candidates looked and acted, and push analysis of what they said, and whether it was true, to the inside pages. With so much at stake, the public deserves better.
Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times, where a longer version of this comment first appeared.
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