No incumbent running for president today could refuse the standard three televised debates with his challenger and hope to get away with it.
The press would be on his case incessantly, and voters would rightly wonder about a pol so reluctant to debate his views before the public.
Then there’s New York and New Jersey.
In the two biggest races of these states — for governor here and for US senator in Jersey — incumbents with multimillion-dollar war chests and huge leads want to be re-elected with a bare minimum of real debate.
And they’re about to get away with it.
Look at Cory Booker, the former mayor of Newark who left behind higher crime and a mountain of scandal.
He is running against Republican Jeff Bell, a man most of New Jersey hasn’t even heard of.
Yet instead of a series of televised debates that would give voters a sense of the choice before them — i.e., the sharp differences between the two on key issues — Booker has limited debate to a single contest. He’s done so with virtually no press outcry.
Ditto for Gov. Cuomo.
If he has an agenda for his second term, he hasn’t shared it with New Yorkers. In the Democratic primary, he refused to debate, and in the general he’s agreed to one televised debate whose effect will be diluted by the presence of several minor-party candidates.
This is rich. Our establishment obsesses about campaign-financing schemes and speech limits that are supposedly the magic solution for making races a fair fight.
Yet on the one thing that could be a game-changer — the chance for an underdog to persuade voters he has a more compelling case for election, and to do so over a series of tough debates — those who shout loudest about fairness and a system stacked in favor of money are silent.
A Democratic or Republican candidate for president who tried to do what Gov. Cuomo and Sen. Booker are now doing — hide from serious, one-on-one televised debates — would be ridiculed.
In New York and New Jersey, by contrast, it’s likely to get you re-elected without even the bother of a fight.