In my experience, presidential debates don’t matter. By normal standards, the Democrats tend to win these debates, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Did Al Gore wipe the floor with George W. Bush? Yes, almost as decisively as John Kerry did four years later. Neither of them saw any benefit in the polls. Al Gore actually lost ground. But, you might ask, maybe we shouldn’t use objective standards of debate. Maybe debates matter even if they aren’t judged according to who knew their stuff and who communicated more effectively. Even if it’s just a matter of who came off as more likable, that still matters, right?
I suppose it could. But there is very little evidence that it ever has. Gerald Ford’s blunder about Poland didn’t stop Jimmy Carter’s dramatic slide. Lloyd Bentsen’s triumph over Dan Quayle didn’t make him the next vice-president. Sarah Palin’s bizarre winking performance didn’t cause McCain’s numbers to collapse. Unless a candidate freezes up like Rick Perry did this past spring, I don’t see the debates changing anything.
That said, Romney needs to be more personable and he needs to convince people to trust him. And the debates are his last chance to do those things.
Not sure if any previous candidates had the baggage of running a campaign based on a totally false characterization of his opponents, and then face that opponent on the stage. Romney has to be balancing all the lies he has told to appease his lunatic base and also try to appeal to the non insane electorate, all while being a remarkably stiff and unlikeable person. Debating against a man who does not suffer fools lightly.
What matters is how the debates are reported by the media. Kerry did wipe out Bush, and the immediate polls indicated that. Hiowever, the media pushed all the Bush talking points right after the debates and ignored Kerry’s and before you knew it the polls indicated taht Bush won the debates.
That is the main danger this time around. Of course, Romney’s treatment of the media may result in a little less cozening of him post debate.
Mitt has already lost two of the debates. His behavior this week in response to the attacks in Libya cut him off completely from any hope of a successful debate on foreign policy in the last debate. His gaffe today about the definition of middle class will haunt him in the first. You’re right, Booman, that debates rarely alter the playing field. They’re now especially unlikely to do that this year.
Gore lost the visuals in the first debate. From his horrible make-up that at best was distracting and at worst made him look clownish to his expressed exasperation with Bush’s ignorance that the moderators treated with respect if not with outright fawning.
Regardless of the nonsense that may spew out of Mitt’s mouth, he enters the debates with visual deficits: eyes that express nothing but a cold steeliness and a mouth that smirks or grins creepily instead an open, friendly smile.
That’s exactly how I remember the first Gore/Bush debate. The exaggerated sighs that you could hear clearly over the microphone made Gore come across as rude and petulant, substance of the responses notwithstanding. He spent the other two debates trying to recover and never really got on offense the whole time.
Without that horrible make-up, his animation in that first debate wouldn’t have been as easy to reduce to or characterize as inappropriate “sighs.”
He was okay — not great but okay — by the third debate (not that many were still watching by that point), but it was his “kid gloves” routine in the second that was the worst.
Shrum later recounted that Gore was late arriving at the first debate site, so the makeup job was rushed.
As for debate 2, Gore acted like a neophyte young pol who’d taken fierce media criticism too much to heart and was determined not to repeat the mistakes they had highlighted and overblown. He came across as passive and much too apologetic while letting W completely off the hook. A very insecure performance. Not much post-debate spinning by the W camp was needed after this one.
Gore committed the blunders that you list, but they weren’t all that noticeable until the Media pounded them all into the ground, and praised Bush so effusively for not falling off the stage–which, at one point, it looked like he literally was about to do.
I remember watching the first debate and thinking Gore absolutely mopped the floor with W, but then the MSM commentary started and didn’t let up until well after the second debate was over.
That’s how Gore lost points from the debates. If there had just been a camera and no talking heads, the outcome would have been at least closer to neutral.
Had I listened to the first debate on the radio, I would totally agree with you. However, I viewed it on TV in the company of a co-worker (we skipped the conference cocktail party) who was a huge Gore fan. His make-up was so disconcerting that it was difficult for both of us to focus on what he said. If measured, the difference between the audio and the audio/visual wouldn’t have been slight as it was in 1960 but significant as Gore truly whipped GWB on content in that debate.
As the Daily Howler documented in great detail, in polls that night and the next day Gore was seen as the big winner by the majority. But within a few days of the media goring Gore the public perception started to shift.
Eventually even Gore supporters came to believe that he lost that debate and began to find reasons for the loss. Kind of like how most Gore supporters came to believe he really did claim to have invented the internet (hint: the quote did not use the word “invent”, “invented”, etc.). Or how even most Democrats came to believe that Obama raised taxes.
You can really pick up some money on bar bets if you ask people about topics like that. Such as, which party controlled the governorship in California for for 23 of 28 years from 1982 to 1990? Because “everyone knows” that Dems are to blame for California’s financial troubles I’ll bet 95% of people will guess the answer is the Dems, but it was the GOP. Or: who signed the largest federal tax increase, in percentage of GDP, in history? 100% of Republicans will get that wrong – it was Reagan, of course, but that’s not the narrative most people “know”.
Re 1960, I am unaware of any valid survey done as to the radio audience. Thus it appears to be a myth the tv vs radio difference.
Google is your friend — unless …
Or you could file a complaint with the Museum of Broadcast Journalism for not meeting whatever “factual” standard you’re using.
Mere assertion of fact does not make it fact. Show me the survey.
More important than the debates themselves are how the press portrays them. Almost all people who watch debates have already decided – even if they themselves aren’t ready to admit it to themselves. The low info voter just hears the theme afterwards.
One very important development in recent years has been the insta-polling. We’ve seen several instances where the TV pundit panel gave the debate to the GOP only to have the insta-poll give it solidly to the Dem.
Even so we still have Al Gore’s sighing being the story of the first debate – not Bush’s lying. We still have Kerry’s alleged slight of Cheney’s gay daughter being the story of the third debate, not Bush’s emphatic denial that he ever said he didn’t care about OBL even though that was a direct quote on tape. The press will run with what they want to run with.
I think this fact was behind the strategy of Obama / Biden in 2008. Obama was a simple fact machine – and as such gave nothing for for people to ridicule. Remember the SNL skits on the debates, all the lines given to Obama fell totally flat. Biden of course gave some opportunity for parody, mostly his “I LOVE John McCain like a BFF but he’d be the worst president ever” lines, but in contrast to Palin that didn’t matter.
Often candidates try to dominate the post-debate coverage with a planned surprise moment or zinger. The problem with planned zingers is that they often backfire. Everyone wants another “there you go again” moment, but more often you get something like McCain trying to bring up Joe the Plummer and Obama using that as a lead-in to describe his plan details, to McCain’s obvious surprise. Or an unintended anti-zinger, like McCain’s “THAT ONE”.
I figure Obama’s team knows they have this, although counter to Boo I think this election will buck the trend and the margin will be less than Obama’s first win. Because of that Obama will be the same calm, level-headed guy but be fully armed with memorized stats and facts to counter anything Romney brings up. Biden, OTOH, will probably make Ryan look like a naive little boy just getting familiar with politics, not unlike Bentson-Quayle, and it won’t affect the election one iota.
I’m not sure debates don’t matter. Of course, it’s all down to how you define “debate”, because American television viewers watch presidential debates the way dogs watch humans: they respond not to arguments or facts, not even emotionally constructed arguments, but to physiognomical cues in the appearance and reactions of the participants.
Do you not remember the CW that Nixon lost the election because he lost the debates, on TV at least? And he lost the debates because his trademark sweaty five o’clock shadow and dour expression was no match for JFK’s clean-cut, boyish good looks. Or so ’tis said.
http://suite101.com/article/five-oclock-shadow-a44543
http://suite101.com/article/the-presidential-debate-debate-a70501
Once again, didn’t read the link. Sorry.
Back on the point of the press defining the tone of the post-debate coverage, the most blatant pro-GOP decision was the one to ignore Bush’s obvious ear bud in the first debate with Kerry.
And please, don’t give me that conspiracy theory accusation. When someone on stage swats at an imaginary fly near his ear several times and suddenly interrupts his speech and says “Let Me Finish” out loud when no one else is talking it’s pretty obvious that he’s got someone talking to him on private audio. The fact that the GOP press debate contract banned photos from the rear of the candidates and that one rear photo – in violation of the agreement – did show the outlines of a remote audio setup on his back were just icing on the cake.
Yeah, Gore might have one in our eyes, but I remember the political press focusing so much on Gore’s sighing and overbearing performance:
“And yet some viewers found themselves rooting for him [Bush] to hang in there. The other guy was better prepared and better spoken but profoundly annoying as well, starting with the orange finger paint over his Florida tan, a mixture that made him look as if he should be skinned and turned into a Coach bag. He talked too much and smiled too much and sighed too much, and was so in control of his material that he turned his proposals into a bludgeon; more than a few Americans ran screaming from the room at the thought of four years of him.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,56983,00.html#ixzz26TYu0AQ9
The debates DO matter. However, the narrative leading up to the debates control the end result. In the case of 43 (Dubya) the media had already crucified Gore as the “inventor” of the Internet, a self-serving dose of double axe clearing when he “in reality” lived in the Fairmont Hotel and other things. The Bushies and their media machine won the debates before they happened. Sheriff Andy vs Boss Hogg
Remember Reagan v Carter? Prior to the debates, Reagan was everybody’s grandfather. You knew he exagerated, but the “truthiness” of what said was apparent. Carter, on the other hand, was your hectoring Aunt who insisted on lecturing you about sweaters and tire pressure. Undoubtedly right, but really, who cares? GrandPa McCoy vs Aunt Esther.
In this year, hopefully, while Obama is your older brother who can be a pain in the ass, but is your primary source of good advice (that you actually take), Romney tries to fool you to his advantage. Wally Cleaver vs Eddie Haskell
The evidence strongly suggests that Kerry’s performance in the 2004 debates helped him a great deal.
Here is a chart of the RCP poll average from 2004:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2004/president/us/general_election_bush_vs_kerry-939.html
The first debate was held on September 30, the third on October 14. I’m open to other suggestions about what might have caused the race to so abruptly and significantly narrow in early October, but there’s a pretty obvious explanation.
I assume you’ve seen Romney’s GMA video where he said he expects Obama to lie in the debates while George Steph looked on and siad absolutely nothing.
Here’s Romney’s exact quote:
“I think the challenge that I’ll have in the debate is that the president tends to, how shall I say it, to say things that aren’t true,” Romney said. “I’ve looked at prior debates. And in that kind of case, it’s difficult to say, `Well, am I going to spend my time correcting things that aren’t quite accurate? Or am I going to spend my time talking about the things I want to talk about?”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/exclusive-romney-on-debates-obama-will-say-things-that-
arent-true/
Wow seriously, dude must have 2 ton balls.
It’s kinda sad but in the age of television, it doesn’t matter how much the debaters know about the subjects at hand. It seems that the “winner” or “loser” is the one who made the most entertaining television. A funny one-liner, an enormous brain-fart, awkward stage presence… These are the things that the DC drama critics and the folks at the water coolers across America will be talking about. Maybe we should just call it what it really is: improvisational theater.
The blogs and the newspapers will parse every phrase in the transcript and may come up with different perspectives, but the made-for-TV soundbites will be all that anyone remembers of the debates.
Yes and no. If viewers formed their own opinions and didn’t listen to the pundits and spinmiesters, the joint press conferences would be useful enough. For example, Palin seemed to fool the Beltway pundits better than she did the public. However, the public wouldn’t have done as well if the pundits had wielded vicious attacks on Biden.
Correct – the punditry is very-well-off financially and strongly leans GOP on economic issues while basically ignoring the GOP positions on social issues. That, plus the fact that for 25 years the corporate media has been rewarding and promoting pro-corporate reporters and pundits and every pundit flinches at the thought of getting all that right wing hate mail.
Taken together, they treat GOP people as serious who are clearly crazy – even long after the public has figured that out.
However, Dems who step out of line, even if entirely rational, will get trashed by the punditry long before the public takes the same position. Consider how quickly they dumped Howard Dean with that audio-modified “Dean scream” video.
That fake Dean scream promulgated by the MSM still infuriates me. Meanwhile they spent the better part of a decade kissing the butt of a nasty doofus from Texas and he still lost in 2000 which the MSM also did a great job covering up.
That may well be what he needs, but it would be easier for me to join the Klan than for Willard to become more personable and convince people to trust him…
At one point, Gore (advised by which loser?) crowded W while he was answering (or filibustering) a question. The media made sure to replay that one over an over as evidence that Gore was overbearing.
Which loser? Bob Shrum ran his campaign if I recall correctly. But who knows if that move was his idea. It was about as appropriate as the Mormon offering a $10,000 bet to the Evangelical during a debate in the Republican primaries this year, though.
Apparently the loser who thought it would be a good idea for Gore to physically invade W’s space, that it might rattle him, was one Paul Begala, in preps before the first debate. Shrum, according to his account, advised against it, fearing it could become a dangerous side show, which is about what happened (debate #3). But Gore liked the idea and couldn’t be dissuaded.
Ditto re the sighing: Gore had been doing it increasingly in debate prep and Shrum, again to his credit, advised him against reacting to what W was saying. But Al obviously disagreed.
This is the account given in Shrum’s memoir No Excuses, which I find credible.
http://presidentialdebateblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/zogby-presidential-debate-prediction.html