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A Twitter farewell to Rep. Gabby GiffordsWhy are there so many presidential debates? 
SCOTT AUDETTE/REUTERS - Republican presidential candidates former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) (L), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and U.S Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) (R) listen as , former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (2nd from L) speaks during the Republican presidential candidates debate in Tampa, Fla. on Tuesday.
Text SizePrintE-mailReprints By Karen Tumulty, In the lore of the U.S. political system, debates are among the most hallowed of rituals. From Lincoln-Douglas on, they have been the moments when voters are supposed to have an opportunity to get to know their candidates, contrast their ideas, evaluate their mettle.
But this campaign season, it might be fair to ask: Are Americans getting too much of a good thing?
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?Amid a period of major upheaval in the GOP primary race comes the Republican presidential debate in Tampa — the 17th showdown to date, and the first since former House speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga.) come-from-behind win Saturday in South Carolina.Gallery
January:?The GOP presidential race moves to Florida following Newt Gingrich’s win in the South Carolina primary.By the end of the week, there will have been 19 debates among the GOP contenders for president. No other events have played so great a role in turning the party’s normally orderly process of picking a standard-bearer into a roller coaster ride.
“There’s no question that the debates have devolved into one part soap opera, one part reality TV, one part C-SPAN,” said Republican strategist Todd Harris.
Debates were the undoing of two once-promising candidates, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. They made front-runners, however briefly, of two otherwise unlikely ones, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive Herman Cain.
And without them, former House speaker Newt Gingrich would not have been able to resurrect his dying campaign, not once but twice.
The long season of debates has undoubtedly made the candidates familiar figures to many Americans, offering the willing viewer plenty of opportunity to absorb competing economic plans and various other positions.
One could argue that it has altered the balance of power a bit, shifting it away from the party establishment to an electorate apparently eager to engage: Ratings show the debates are drawing huge audiences.
But some worry that Republicans are putting too much emphasis on how well the candidates perform on a debating stage, something that might not matter all that much this fall.
“The general election is not going to be 17 debates. It is going to be three,” said Karl Rove, who was President George W. Bush’s top political adviser.
Gingrich has boasted that he would coerce President Obama into doing a series of unmoderated forums in the style made famous by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas during their 1858 Illinois Senate race (which, incidentally, Douglas won).
Political veterans, however, are skeptical that Obama would agree to anything like that.
In 2000, Rove said, Bush attempted to get Vice President Al Gore to add a fourth, and he proposed that it be on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“We were kidding ourselves,” Rove said. “Al Gore’s campaign stiff-armed us, and the national media yawned.”
Rove is concerned that the amount of time that candidates are spending in debates and on preparing for them has taken away from other priorities, such as deepening their messages, broadening their appeal and building their organizations.
Worse, said former representative Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), a vice president at the Aspen Institute, “people aren’t thinking about the qualities it takes to be president. They’re thinking about who can give Obama a bloody nose.”
Because debates have been so crucial, other aspects of campaigning have become less so.
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