Opinion | Tonight’s debate might be a mess. At least someone will lose!

Bina Venkataraman wants to know how the candidates would keep Americans safe from climate-change disasters. Leana Wen injects some Ozempic into the race with a thought-provoking question on whether Medicare should cover obesity medications, considering that it could reduce downstream medical costs but “upend the entire health-care system” along the way.

And Molly Roberts and Josh Tyrangiel double-team on tech, with Molly asking about social media’s harm to children and Josh mulling a digital privacy law. The latter writes of the thorny issue: “If a platform distributes harmful information about a person, out of negligence or malice, should we penalize it? How would we enforce those penalties? Good luck, guys.”

A dozen-plus other questions await in the compilation, but it will take luck on all our parts to get to more than a smattering of them.

Longtime political analyst Jeff Greenfield writes that if the debate isn’t going to be substantive, it might as well be entertaining. By ditching traditional questions, we might even get a better glimpse of the candidates’ character and cognitive ability. His suggested questionnaire is certainly unorthodox.

• Name the members of your first Cabinet.
• Complete this sentence: “Looking back at my life, the one thing I wish I had never done is …”
• Starting at 100, count backward by sevens.

By contrast, former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey writes in his own op-ed that one question matters more than any other in this debate (and race): What are you going to do about the debt?

“Debt — the national debt — is not the elephant in the room,” he writes. “It is the herd of elephants in the room, accompanied by braying donkeys. A growing disgrace for years, it is now a national nightmare, an ever-increasing blight on the country’s economic and social future.”

Kerrey cites plenty of statistics about how our debt path is unsustainable. Should you need more convincing, revisit last year’s Editorial Board series on the problem and all the creative ways the nation might tackle it.

Karen Tumulty holds out hope that this evening will be productive. To begin with, there will be no whooping studio audience, a change she has long advocated. She’s also intrigued by (if skeptical of) CNN’s plan to unmute candidates’ microphones only during the strict time periods during which they’re allowed to speak.

Of course, if things do go off the rails, we can hold on to George Will’s consolation: One of these candidates will lose.

In a column on the remarkable Biden achievement of producing “Trump nostalgia,” George writes that “the one soothing certainty is that when the boil of this year’s election is lanced, politics will be cleaned of one deeply disapproved candidate.”

Not to burst George’s bubble (or his boil), but — should he be so sure? Say Biden wins; Trump will have lost, but he’s not likely to say he lost, and our politics certainly won’t be rid of him. Indeed, the board exposes in an editorial the many ways Trump’s backers are probing for weakness in the country’s electoral system.

Chaser: For commentary on the debate delivered in real time, follow along with a dozen of our columnists here beginning at 8:45 p.m. ET. And if you want updates right to your phone inbox, sign up to receive texts from Karen, who will be there at the debate.

Extra commentary on Trump/Biden

• From Catherine Rampell: Americans should be skeptical of Trump’s green card proposal, which only sounds great if you ignore his entire record.
• From Marc Thiessen: Trump’s isolationism is mostly a myth, and his supporters want the United States to stay a world leader.
• From political history professor Jeff Bloodworth: Rural voters don’t trust Biden. Do progressives even care?
• From Jen Rubin: Trump’s unqualified VP faves might mean a redux of the Sarah Palin disaster for the Republican Party.

Perry Bacon thinks we’re seeing the limits of centrism. All over the world, he writes, “the downsides of this approach are increasingly eclipsing its upsides.”

Quick, not-for-nothing upside: Centrism gets people elected. But does it allow them to govern well? And does it even keep them elected?

Perry doesn’t think so, citing especially the “détente with the wealthy” and total subjugation to polling as limiting factors that make centrists “only fair-weather friends to causes.” After enough of that, it’s no wonder voters turn to right-wingers with a wrong-but-strong narrative.

Chaser: In Britain, the Labour Party is in the get-elected phase of this cycle, but Edith Pritchett delightfully cartoons it as already immobilized by polling worries.

• Thirty years ago, Paula Jones and O.J. Simpson changed America’s culture, writes Vanity Fair editor David Friend, and we’ve been living in the freak show ever since.
• That clock ticking on our border policy impasse could turn into a terrorism time bomb, David Ignatius warns.
• As Indian author Siddhartha Deb asks, why is Arundhati Roy being prosecuted for a 14-year-old speech? (Hint: Blame Narendra Modi’s embarrassing election.)

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

Does watching this debate count?

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!