EDITORIAL: Biden, Trump surprise everyone with plan to square off

May 17—The 2024 presidential campaign just keeps getting stranger.

The latest stunner is that Democratic President Joe Biden and former GOP President Donald Trump cast aside the official helpers and reached a personal agreement for two debates to be held June 27 and Sept. 10.

It's sure to be an event from which millions of people will want to avert their eyes.

According to recent tradition, presidential debates have been organized through the Commission on Presidential Debates. But Biden and Trump have made their own deal with one caveat — the final terms have yet to be negotiated.

Despite that, the two candidates are already boasting professional-wrestling-style about how they'll thrash the other.

"I am ready and willing to debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times," Trump said. "I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds."

To which Biden responded "Dirty Harry"-style.

"Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020, and since then he hasn't shown up for a debate," Biden said. "Now he is acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice."

Look for more such edifying exchanges if and when these two political palookas get into the ring together.

For all the hoopla surrounding candidate debates, they generally don't amount to much in terms of substance. Indeed, candidates' debating skills don't say much about their overall judgment and temperament, hugely important qualities in a chief executive.

But they've taken on an air of game-changing importance since the 1960 debates between then-Sen. John Kennedy, D-Mass., and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon.

Back then, there were real exchanges on substantive matters of foreign and domestic policies. Debates have since devolved, mostly due to frequency and the 24-hour cable-news cycle, into verbal scrums where optics, one-liners and insults set the tone.

In that vein, it's hard to know whether to celebrate or bemoan the bombshell debate story.

Next up in the local news cycle will be endless speculation about the whys behind this decision.

Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois previously were discouraging Biden from sharing a debate stage with Trump.

Given Biden's obvious age-related problems, it's easy to see why.

But perhaps Democrats have concluded that putting Biden, even in his depleted form, on stage next to Trump will remind the public of Trump's character problem.

Who knows?

All that seems clear now — even if it isn't all that clear — is that there's a rumble in the jungle on tap in U.S. politics.