2008 Presidential Debate - a Background.

Background: Presidential debates are held late in the election cycle, after the political parties have nominated their candidates.

The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates will sponsor four debates for the 2008 U.S. presidential general election, which will take place at various locations around the United States in September and October 2008.

Each of those debates will be divided into 8 ten-minute issue segments; the moderator will introduce each segment with an issue on which each candidate will comment, after which the moderator will facilitate further discussion of the issue, including direct exchange between the candidates, for the balance of that segment.

The second presidential debate will include any issues raised by members of that audience, and the vice presidential debate will include domestic and foreign policy.

The Commission on Presidential Debates will issue only a limited number of tickets to the university, and these will be distributed to Ole Miss students in September.

The 2008 Debate:
Barack Obama and John McCain faced off Tuesday night in a high-stakes presidential debate.

The debate comes amid stepped-up attacks from both sides.

History of Presidential Debates:
The famed series of seven debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Senator Stephen Douglas for U.S. Senate were true, face-to-face debates, with no moderator; the candidates took it in turns to open each debate with a one-hour speech, then the other candidate had an hour and a half to rebut, and finally the first candidate closed the debate with a half-hour response.

No general election debates at all were held for the elections of 1964, 1968 and 1972, although intra-party debates were held during the primaries between Democrats Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and between Democrats George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey in 1972.

The Commission on Presidential Debates was established in 1987 to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners.

The Republican and Democratic nominees, as well as any third-party and independent candidates who average 15 percent support in polls, are invited to take part in the debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The formats of the debates have varied, with questions sometimes posed from one or more journalist moderators and in other cases members of the audience.