I’m still working on a good name for this week’s presidential debate. The “Meeting in Miami”? A little dry. “Fun in the Sun?” It may not be fun — and it’s at night. The Note is going with “The Clash in Coral Gables,” but do enough people outside Florida know where Coral Gables is? I’ll have to get back to you on this.
In any event, while the candidates get ready for Thursday’s big event, the drive to manage expectations has been underway for a while. To be sure, the Bush campaign has been going out of its way to use comic-like hyperbole — going so far as to say Kerry is literally “better than Cicero,” the ancient Roman orator — but it doesn’t appear to be working. From the latest Time magazine poll:
Who do voters expect to “win” the debates? They pick Bush over Kerry, 44% to 32%.
This is certainly good news for Kerry, who may impress voters who aren’t expecting much. It also points to an altogether different problem for Bush — people actually expect more from the president than the Texas governor.
I can’t find similar data from four years ago, but I have a strong hunch that voters thought Al Gore would beat Bush in the 2000 debates. Even Bush supporters probably didn’t believe their guy would be impressive in this setting. And yet, by a fairly wide margin, voters now seem to believe that Bush will “win” the debates over Kerry. This poses a dilemma that will be hard for Karl Rove to spin out of.
Four years ago, if Bush spoke in complete sentences, he exceeded expectations for his ability to be articulate. If Bush could pronounce the name of a world leader, it was seen as a sign of international affairs expertise. Bush benefited, to borrow a phrase, from the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Americans may still not believe Bush has a towering intellect, but they do expect him to be a knowledgeable and impressive leader of the free world. No matter how much Bush aides play up Kerry’s alleged debating skills, there’s no way to change the fact that voters will demand more from Bush this year than last time around.
And that could spell trouble for the incumbent.
Likewise, the GOP effort to destroy Kerry’s reputation may have had an impact in pre-debate positioning. At this point, many voters who haven’t seen Kerry debate (among his Dem presidential rivals, on the Senate floor, against William Weld, etc.), may buy into the smear/hype — Kerry is “dull,” “wishy-washy,” and “unsure of himself.” The GOP-driven conventional wisdom is that Kerry’s tendency towards nuance makes him “hesitant” and “overly cautious.”
Those of us who know and admire Kerry know none of these characteristics are even remotely true. But if voters go into the debate expecting that persona, they’re likely to be very pleasantly surprised. Ironically, Republican attacks may have inadvertently been lowering expectations in such a way as to help Kerry in the debates.
The outcome may very well dictate the outcome of the race. Again, from the Time poll:
About 1 in 3 registered voters (35%) surveyed now plan to watch all of the debates, while another 49% plan to watch at least some. Among voters supporting Bush or Kerry now, 24% say that they might change their minds as a result of the debates.
[…]
‘Movable’ Voters Say Debates Could Be Deciding Factor: Among movable voters, that is, the 19% of voters who are undecided or might change their minds, the debates could be a deciding factor. Almost 7 in 10 (69%) of movable voters say that they could make up their minds based upon the debate outcome.
Given this, if voters are expecting Bush to be impressive and Kerry to be bland, Dems couldn’t ask for a better pre-debate dynamic.
The only problem I foresee? Slate’s Chris Suellentrop noticed last week that Kerry isn’t with the game plan.
I counted six times this week that Kerry raised his debate expectations by disparaging President Bush’s intelligence or knowledge, seven if you count a comment made by Sen. Joe Biden during a Friday rally here. During his Monday night appearance on David Letterman, Kerry said that during the debates, “George Bush is gonna sit on Dick Cheney’s lap,” an apparent reference to the widespread Democratic belief that the vice president is the ventriloquist/puppeteer and Bush is the dummy. (At least, I hope that was the reference.)
On Tuesday’s Live With Regis & Kelly, Kerry said of the just-concluded debate negotiations, “The big hang-up was George Bush wanted a lifeline where he could call,” an allusion to Regis Philbin’s Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? game show.
These may be clever quips, but they’re the wrong message. We want to lower expectations for our side, not their side.