The first presidential debate was panned widely as an embarrassing debacle a day after President Donald Trump and Joe Biden traded insults and vitriol for 98 minutes, leading the Commission on Presidential Debates to consider changing the format and forcing a broader question about whether such events are still useful in the modern political era. "My reaction was, this doesn't need to happen again," said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, who argued that Tuesday night was the latest example of why such events have outlived their value as a me...