Here’s hoping Steve Deace’s column for RealClearPolitics last week is correct — that the GOP really will pick its 2016 presidential nominee through debates. There’s been an unfortunate trend lately of skipping debates — and tough questions.

“Voters don’t have the time to read every article here at RealClearPolitics, listen to every radio show I broadcast, or watch every cable news show every night,” Deace contends. “However, when there is a singular event — like a debate — we can carve out the time for that. And then social media allows us to make those events go viral for days and weeks on end — thus amplifying their impact. This is why I believe it’s not money, organization, or any other traditional metric that’s going to determine the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. It’s going to be the debates. Just like it was the last time.”

Deace points to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s disastrous run for president last time around.

“In 2012 the only candidate who had the base, money, and organization to compete with Romney nationally was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, but he was done in by the debates,” Deace notes. “Not only did Romney best him head-to-head, but Perry told a Tea Party debate crowd in Florida that if they didn’t want to pay for the college tuition of illegals ‘they don’t have a heart.’ Once that clip went public Perry needed to prepare his concession speech.”

What Deace doesn’t go into is the fact that Perry’s fall was entirely predictable. Anyone who watched Rick Perry in 2010 knew he wasn’t ready for the big time.

It began in the Republican primary; former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison challenged Perry for the governor’s seat, and Perry’s strategy was to spend millions on campaign ads, and not a moment in debates or editorial board meetings with newspapers. The result was he sailed through the primary without ever having had to answer a tough question.

And in the 2010 general election, he again refused to debate his Democratic opponent, former Houston Mayor Bill White. Perry won, but his refusal wasn’t merely a disservice to Texas voters, it was a strategy that backfired when he showed up for presidential debates totally unprepared.

“Actually, these debates are set up for nothing more than to tear down the candidates,” Perry claimed in an interview with Bill O’Reilly. “It’s pretty hard to be able to sit and lay out your ideas and your concepts with a one minute response.”

Actually, a leader should be able to “sit and lay out” their ideas in a formatted, time-limited forum. Life has time limits.

More importantly, a debate is a chance for voters to see how a candidate reacts to pressure (and that includes time pressure).

And as Deace adds, “It might be the only chance voters get to see all of the contestants together on a stage, no longer shielded by their consultants, where they can compare them directly to one another.”

It’s not just the GOP that should hold primary debates, of course. The Democratic Party should, as well.