host: again, alan schroeder is our guest. professor at northeastern university and author of a book. "presidential debates -- risky business on the campaign trail. " todd from ohio, a third-party supporter. you are on with our guest. go ahead. caller: there are three things i wish that could be put more emphasis on in these debates. the first when he can address directly is we need to reduce the sensationalism that comes along with these campaigns, especially the presidency, but not exclusively the presidency. i wish that was a topic for debate. i would like to know what you think about that. one, although the department of education surely needs to be reduced, the ones being -- the one thing the federal government should the apartment is implementing well structured civics in every curriculum from the third grade through 12th grade so that this would add to getting rid of the sensationalism because they have a better appreciation of how government works by the time they make it to the 12th grade and become voters. the final

here to discuss the debates, alan schroeder author of "presidential debates. morning to you. >> good morning. >> it seems as if trump is in the seat of i guess an advantage here because he sets the tone. either trump who set everybody back on their heels in the primary shows up or a trump who is trying to refute the claim that he's temperamentally unfit to be president shows up and clinton has to respond. that's really a powerful starting point. >> yeah. not a bad starting point at all to be the one who gets to set the ground rules. but on the other hand it also puts a lot of pressure and responsibility on him because he has to choose the right one of those alternatives that you just laid out and again makes the wrong choice then that could backfire big time as well. >> which do you expect? >> well, you know, i think it's really hard in a 90-minute television debate to suppress your natural instincts on camera so he may start off as being a little more prepared, more restrained but i think we'll see because it always happens in debates we'll see who the real p

i want to bring in alan schroeder from northeastern university and author of "presidential debates, 50 of high risk television." welcome. >> thank you, carol. >> so you say 50 years of high risk television. what do you mean by that? >> well, just the fact that this is live tv, no script, the candidates are away from their usual choreographed settings and as you just showed in those clips, it's really easy to make a mistake and when you make a mistake, you are making it in front of tens of millions of people. so i think we have to admire their courage in being willing to do this. >> you know, you are absolutely right about that. sometimes we forget the candidates are real live breathing human beings. >> yeah. i wouldn't want to be either one of them right now. >> i wouldn't, either. i'm with you. let's talk about mistakes because you could have the greatest debate in the history of man but if you make one small mistake, does that mean you lose? >> well, it means you lose the debate. it may not mean you lose the election. but the problem with the mistakes is there are all kinds of differ

host: again, alan schroeder is our guest.rofessor at northeastern university and author of a book. ohio, a third-party supporter. you are on with our guest. go ahead. caller: there are three things i wish that could be put more emphasis on in these debates. the first when he can address directly is we need to reduce the sensationalism that comes along with these campaigns, especially the presidency, but not exclusively the presidency. i wish that was a topic for debate. know what youo think about that. one, although the department of education surely needs to be reduced, the ones being -- the one thing the federal government should the apartment is implementing well structured civics in every curriculum from the third grade through 12th grade so that this would add to getting rid of us is a holism because they will have a better appreciation of how government works by the type make it to the 12th grade. , most smalling is businesses fold within the first five years. most of those small businesses have employees of less than 1

host: again, alan schroeder is our guest. professor at northeastern university and author of a book. ohio, a third-party supporter. you are on with our guest. go ahead. caller: there are three things i wish that could be put more emphasis on in these debates. the first when he can address directly is we need to reduce the sensationalism that comes along with these campaigns, especially the presidency, but not exclusively the presidency. i wish that was a topic for debate. know what youo think about that. one, although the department of education surely needs to be reduced, the ones being -- the one thing the federal government >> preview coverage tonight at 7:po eastern. the debate tonight live on c-span at the:00. we take you to the house. beginning their legislative week. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the prayer will be offered by our chaplain, father conroy. chaplain conroy: let us pray. merciful god we give you thanks for giving us another day. you alone can trace the deepest fault lines in history

on tomorrow "washington journal," alan schroeder joins us, the author of "presidential debates: a riskyusiness on the campaign trail," and to a talk about the history of presidential debates and carolyn lukensmeyere will be talking about tone and rhetoric in monday night's presidential debate. that is operative today's washington journal." join us back tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. have a great sunday. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] >> here on c-span, "newsmakers" is next with jim jordan ohio. that is followed by donald trump campaigning this weekend and virginia. fargo the ceo of wells testifies before congress about unauthorized accounts that were created by company employees without the consent of customers. customers. our cast this week's congressman jim jordan. the ohio republican chairs the house freedom caucus. his committees include government oversight and reform and the judiciary committee. rachel covers congress for polit