Although presidential debates have been studied extensively, few truly basic, generic questions have been raised. The following study does so by asking (a) What textual features distinguish debates from other types of campaign messages? (b) How have such factors as time, format, party, and incumbency affected political debates? and (c) How did the 1996 debates relate to such trends? In answering these questions the authors present findings from the Campaign Mapping Project, a research endeavor funded by the Ford and Carnegie Foundations and devoted to examining campaign behavior from 1948 to the present. The study suggests that debates add sobriety to campaigns, ground political discourse, make candidates introspective, and restrain political overstatements. Moreover, the generic regularities of presidential debates provide an equal footing to incumbents and challengers, Democrats and Republicans, as well as former and recent presidential campaigners. In essence, debate encourages all politicians to speak a common language.
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