Debates still weren’t quite part of the presidential campaign tradition when Carter sought re-election in 1980. Besides the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960, only the 1976 campaign between Carter and Gerald Ford had featured head-to-head encounters between the candidates. But Carter had publicly credited his ’76 victory to those debates and very early on in his re-election campaign pledged to participate again. So did Ronald Reagan, who emerged as the Republican nominee.
The trouble for Carter was that a third major candidate, Illinois Congressman John B. Anderson, entered the race as an independent, after his bid for the Republican nomination failed. A liberal Republican who was out of step with the Reagan wing of the G.O.P., Anderson was seen as far more likely to draw votes from Carter (even though polls would ultimately refute this notion). By early September, Carter and Reagan were running even in the polls, with Anderson drawing around 15 percent. That was enough for the League of Women Voters, which was then the chief facilitator of presidential debates, to invite Anderson to its first debate, on September 21. Carter, who derisively called Anderson “an invention of the media,” refused to participate.
That posture played right into Reagan’s hands. One of Carter’s main liabilities was the perception of weakness, and now he seemed to be confirming it.
“I’ve said from the very first that if Anderson is a viable candidate, he should be a part of the debate,” Reagan said. “I can’t for the life of me understand why Mr. Carter is so afraid of him.”
By a 3-2 margin, polls showed that voters thought Carter was wrong to skip the debate, which went off without him. The television audience was small, but the mere fact that Carter didn’t show up was all that mattered. One pre-debate poll had shown Carter leading Reagan by four points. After the debate, the same survey had Reagan up five.