I know the next “big thing” on the political calendar is the Republican convention later this month, but I keep looking past it and thinking about the debates. The first match-up, assuming Bush agrees to the schedule, will be in Miami eight weeks from tomorrow.
The Commission on Presidential Debates deserves credit for being clever. This year, instead of negotiating with the campaigns for times and places, it simply chose locations and created a schedule on its own and asked the campaigns to agree. Wisely, the Commission chose swing states for each event — Miami, St. Louis, and Tempe for the presidential debates, Cleveland for the vice presidential debate — making it harder for the campaigns to say no.
At this point, Kerry has (somewhat enthusiastically) embraced the Commission’s proposal. The Bush gang, meanwhile, is playing coy.
Steve Schmidt, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, would not say when a decision might be reached on the schedule.
“We look forward to a vigorous debate with the Kerry campaign on the issues. We welcome the opportunity to discuss the terms at the appropriate time,” Schmidt said.
I hope that singular “debate” was not meant literally.
In any event, the Boston Globe’s Steven Stark had a column yesterday on this in which he suggested this year’s exchanges could have more meaning than of the debates from recent cycles.
This year, more than any year since 1960, the election will come down to one thing: which candidate impresses the American people the most in that reality television series otherwise known as the fall televised debates.
I think this has some merit; I’m just not sure if it’s good or bad.
Stark argues that the debates have been largely inconsequential since JFK faced Nixon 44 years ago. On this, I think he’s mistaken. Indeed, it’s not an entirely fair sample — after the 1960 campaign, presidential candidates didn’t debate again until 1976.
That said, there have been several instances in which debates have had a significant impact. Reagan and Clinton, for example, used the debates to demonstrate their ability to appear “presidential” against incumbents the public was ready to vote against. Ford’s suggestion that the Soviet Union had limited authority in Poland in ’76 caused considerable embarrassment in a very close campaign. Dukakis’ infamous death-penalty answer in ’88 clearly did considerable harm to his prospects.
And, much to my chagrin, W. Bush managed to somehow convince viewers four years ago that he was competent enough to be president, all evidence to the contrary not withstanding.
Which brings me to this year. Who’s likely to benefit most from these debates? There’s no obvious answer.
I know many (too many) Dems who are anxiously looking forward to them, assuming that Kerry will embarrass Bush and get a boost in the polls. Forget it. Everyone thought the same thing four years ago and look where it got us.
Indeed, many hoped Bush would have one of those Ford-in-’76 screw-ups that would show how unprepared he was. The truth is Bush did have such a moment — he falsely accused Russia’s former prime minister of embezzling IMF funds. Bush had no proof to bolster the charge, and he was later threatened with a slander suit over the false accusation, but political reporters showed little interest in the gaffe and the public was hardly alerted to the mistake at all.
James Fallows had a must-read item on Bush’s and Kerry’s relative debating skills in last month’s issue of The Atlantic in which he notes that neither of these candidates has ever really lost a debate.
Neither George Bush nor John Kerry has suffered more than an occasional lapse or setback in a debate. Neither has “lost” a contest in the only way that matters: a serious post-debate decline in the polls or an electoral defeat. Bush’s achievement is the more surprising, because he has entered every debate at a presumed disadvantage and has had to be a giant-slayer. Ann Richards was the most celebrated orator in Texas, having succeeded U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan in that role. Garry Mauro, whom Bush trounced in his re-election campaign in 1998, was an experienced and knowledgeable Texas official. In 2000 Bush’s main opponent in the presidential primaries, John McCain, was beloved by the press for his mordant “straight talk.” And in the general election Bush had to face Al Gore, who until then had manhandled a long series of debate opponents. Bush beat every one of them — in the election and, to judge by post-debate poll results, in the debates as well.
I think Kerry will probably be more effective than Gore. Not only will he learn from his predecessor’s mistakes, but Kerry has more practice. Four years ago, Bradley wasn’t much of a primary foe and Gore hadn’t endured many of these events. Kerry, meanwhile, has had to appear in what seems like hundreds of pre-Iowa debates against some pretty good rivals.
Similarly, Gore went into the debates after eight years as VP, where he didn’t have to engage in many rhetorical fights. Kerry, on the other hand, has been in the Senate for the last couple of decades, an institution that effectively serves as a very exclusive debating society, where he has honed his skills.
With Kerry’s strengths in mind, I think there are two things to watch for in the coming months. The first is the near-desperate attempt to lower expectations. If the media keeps insisting that Bush will come across as a drooling child against Kerry’s exceptional abilities, there’s no way Kerry can compete — if Bush speaks in almost-complete sentences, he’s the winner.
The other is to see how Kerry tries to take advantage of Bush’s central vulnerability in this setting, which Fallows described well.
On February 15, four days before the vote, Bush and McCain appeared together on Larry King Live (along with Alan Keyes, the motormouth former ambassador, who was still in the race). […]
McCain held a tight smile. “Let me tell you what really went over the line,” he said shortly afterward, when asked by King for a reply. At a recent Bush rally Bush had stood alongside someone McCain called “a spokesman for a fringe veterans’ group,” who had denounced McCain for “abandoning” Vietnam veterans.
With feigned politeness, McCain told Bush, “I don’t know if you can understand this, George, but that really hurts. It really hurts.” No mention of McCain’s service as a military pilot, nor of his imprisonment and torture in the “Hanoi Hilton”; everyone knew what McCain meant. McCain turned to King. “And so five United States senators — Vietnam veterans, heroes, some of them really incredible heroes — wrote George a letter and said, ‘Apologize.’ You should be ashamed.”
Bush sputtered, “Let me speak to that …”
McCain faced him again, calm but contemptuous: “You should be ashamed.”
It went on for minutes. Bush protested McCain’s underhanded tricks — why, one of McCain’s supporters, the former senator Warren Rudman, had said that the Christian Coalition included “bigots.” Of McCain’s military heroism Bush lamely said, “I’m proud of your record, just like you are,” and conceded — in an “okay, are you happy now?” tone — that McCain had “served his country well” and had not abandoned veterans. But he was still unhappy himself: “You can disagree with me on issues, John, but do not question — do not question my trustworthiness, and do not compare me to Bill Clinton.” It was Bush’s worst onstage moment in the 2000 campaign. He managed to sound both self-righteous and rattled by McCain’s direct challenge to his tactics and implied slight to his courage.
What do you want to bet Kerry’s well aware of this moment?