Would you rather watch "Survivor" or a debate between Al Gore and George Bush? If you're like most Americans, based on recent ratings, you probably picked the reality show set on an island, not in a debate hall.

For years, the number of viewers watching the debates -- and citizens casting ballots -- has been on the decline leading some to ask whether the presidential debates are still relevant. The 1992 debates drew a whopping 97 million viewers, but the 1996 debates only attracted 46 million, a drop of more than half.

In 1987, the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates was founded to make the debates a permanent fixture in American politics. There were no presidential debates in the three presidential campaigns between 1960 and 1976, largely because front-runners saw them as an unnecessary risk.

On One Hand...

Presidential debates are critical to democracy. The format allows the public to get to know the candidates' stances on the issues, watch them articulate their policies, and see how they respond under pressure. When voters go to the polls on Election Day, what they have learned from the debates helps them make informed decisions. And the spontaneous intellectual sparring can be electric: the 1960 debates between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy helped fuel one of the most exciting contests in history. Only the debates consistently force the candidates into unplanned remarks, helping raise public awareness of who the candidates really are, and interest in the election.

On the Other Hand...

The presidential debates are outdated and irrelevant to most voters. They're more a vanity show, analyzed to death by the media before they even start. Candidates recite memorized dreck in response to questions they anticipate, punctuating their remarks with attempts to get in as many memorable cutting lines as possible in attacking one another's policies. Who really remembers much about the 1988 debates past Lloyd Bentsen's "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" to Dan Quayle? The truth is, most people would prefer not to watch them at all but the Commission on Presidential Debates force-feeds them to the public.

• More than 76,000 people attended seven Abraham Lincoln-Stephen Douglas debates during their 1858 Senate race. Each debate lasted three hours.

• The first nationally-broadcast presidential debate was held in 1948 between Republican candidates Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen. The debate was focused on a single issue: outlawing the Communist Party in the United States.

• Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy debated four times during the 1960 election, including the first televised debate.

• There were no presidential debates between 1960 and 1976.

Commission on Presidential Debates, Washington Post