TORONTO -- The debate between U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence and his Democratic challenger, California Sen. Kamala Harris, will be the most important one in American history, according to the first woman and first Black woman to ever moderate a presidential debate.
Veteran broadcaster Carole Simpson, who moderated the presidential debate between George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot in 1992, said she thinks the vice-presidential debate between Pence and Harris on Wednesday evening will be unlike any other.
“It's the top of the ticket that people vote on, but this debate is going to be the most important in American history because we have two older candidates in their seventies and the possibility that Mike Pence or Kamala Harris might become president is very real,” she said during an interview with CTV News Channel on Wednesday.
For that reason, Simpson said she expects more American voters to tune in to the event, which will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, to judge whether the vice-presidential candidates will be able to step up to the job of president should they be required to do so.
“Everybody’s going to say, ‘Well, are these people capable of handling this?’ So they’ll be listening, I think, a lot more carefully than ever before,” she said.
Simpson said she’s also looking forward to watching the debate because the conversation will be steered by a female moderator – Susan Page, the Washington Bureau Chief for USA Today.
“Why it’s important is because women have a different point of view,” she explained.
Simpson said men tend to be more concerned about topics such as national security and the military, while women ask more questions about family life.
“Those are not female questions. Everybody’s part of a family,” she explained. “They’ll ask about the poor, and the hungry, and the sick. And that just tends to be our nature, we are nurturers by nature. So we ask those kinds of questions that need answering, as well as the big national defence questions.”
The long-time journalist reflected on her own experience posing the right questions to the 1992 presidential candidates in what she described as the most “nerve-wracking” moment of her career.
“Because I was the first woman and because I was the first minority, I had all these women calling me: ‘Now, you can’t let us down. You’ve got to be really good. You’ve got to ask this question, that question.’ And I was getting the same thing from the Black community in America,” she recalled.
Simpson said there was a lot of outside pressure in addition to the internal pressure she put on herself to be a good moderator.
Harris, too, is likely facing some of those same kind of pressures as the first woman of colour – she is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants – on a major party ticket. However, Simpson said she believes the California senator will be more than prepared to face off against the sitting vice-president.
“She, I don't think, has that much to prove. I think already people believe that she’s smart, that she's qualified. She was attorney general of the biggest state in America, California. She was a prosecutor, a lawyer. She has a lot going for herself,” Simpson said. “I think she’s going to do very well tonight.”
