Do we need debates?

Five months from now, voting in the presidential election will be underway in many states. In some states, voting will begin in late September.

Even if the aging influence of the Commission on Presidential Debates somehow holds up, voting in many states will be underway before President

Donald Trump faces off against former vice president Joe Biden for the first time according to the commission’s calendar.

But Trump would be crazy to accept the commission’s schedule or its role in setting formats and moderators.

Though it is run by a bipartisan group, the Manhattan-Beltway media elites who are enmeshed in this outdated process are deeply anti-Trump, the opposite of neutrals. Debates are fine, but Trump should name one moderator, Biden another, and those two individuals agree on a third, then allow all networks to carry the feed.

It would be odd for Trump to agree to debate Biden under the authority of a commission deeply biased toward Beltway groupthink, no matter how confident he is that the former vice president lacks the energy to go two hours against him. But why walk into three ambushes?

Trump is right to regard the media as

Biden’s running mate. The good news is that debates may not be needed at all. TrumpBiden is a simple choice, already stark in five profound dimensions.

First, the choice pits a return to appeasement not just of the People’s Republic of China but Iran as well against Team Trump’s clarity and resolve toward both adversaries.

Second, continued defense buildup, or a return to Obama-era starvation of the Pentagon?

Next, a path to economic recovery marked by reliance on markets and deregulation, or the embrace of massive federal government control of every decision, a sort of wartime rationing of acceptable social and economic interactions?

A choice between judges and justices of the sort Trump has nominated, or back to Barack Obama activists in robes?

And, finally and crucially, an accounting and, if justified, prosecution of those who twisted the law after the people spoke in November 2016 in an attempt to undo their vote.

Manhattan-Beltway media elites are profoundly unrepresentative of the country and are as a consequence losing audience. A few islands of credibility remain.

But Trump shouldn’t trust to chance that the debates would be run by the fair-minded. The stakes are too high.