Simply Politics & News

[Paule]

Debates have an unwarranted impact on elections

Now the candidates have moved to the debating the debates stage of the campaign. They realize that debates have an inordinate importance, and will fiercely argue about the smallest of details.

The first televised debate was in 1960 between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Kennedy looked tanned and rested, while Nixon was ill and appeared fatigued. The Republican turned down an offer of stage makeup. That may have determined the future of the Nation.

Many who listened on radio thought Nixon had the better of the match. But those who watched on TV, as most people had, believed Kennedy had won decisively.

It didn’t matter that sometimes Kennedy’s words made little sense:

"Well, I would say in the latter, that the – and that’s what I found somewhat unsatisfactory about the figures, Mr. Nixon, that you used in your previous speech. When you talk about the Truman administration, you – Mr. Truman came to office in 1944, and at the end of the war, and the difficulties that were facing the United States during that period of transition, 1946, when price controls were lifted, so it’s rather difficult to use an overall figure of those seven and one-half years and comparing them to the last eight years. I prefer to take the overall percentage of the last 20 years of the Democrats and eight of the Republicans, to show an overall period of growth. . . .So that I don’t think that we have moved . . . .with sufficient vigor."

No, it made little difference. John Kennedy looked like he knew what he was talking about, and that was sufficient. Historian Daniel J. Boorstin likened the 1960 debates to the quiz shows that were popular at the time: "These four programs, pompously and self-righteously advertised by the broadcast networks, were remarkably successful in reducing great national issues to trivial dimensions. With appropriate vulgarity, they might have been called the $400,000 Question (Prize: a $100,000-a-year job for four years)."

Far behind in the polls, President Ford challenged Jimmy Carter to debate in the 1976 campaign. In one debate, Ford claimed: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe . . ."

That patently inaccurate statement would haunt him as he lost an extremely tight contest. President Carter later said, "If it hadn’t been for the debates, I would have lost."

Mr. Carter avoided serious mistakes with his opponent, Ronald Reagan, in 1980. Governor Reagan did manage to use his "There you go again" line to advantage. And even the president’s partisans must have scratched their heads when he talked about nuclear weapons and ended with, "I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was . . ."

Four years later Democrats hoped for a major Reagan gaffe in his two encounters with Walter Mondale, but it didn’t happen. President Reagan edged out the Minnesotan 49 states to one.

In 1988 Michael Dukakis demonstrated how crucial image was in presidential debates. His staff successfully negotiated having a riser for the short-in-stature Dukakis to stand on behind his podium. To make sure he didn’t have to take an obvious high step to get on the riser, Dukakis demanded it be tapered.

A turning point in the Dukakis campaign occurred with this question from CNN’s Bernard Shaw: "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"

Showing absolutely no emotion, Mr. Dukakis answered: "No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime." The seemingly passionless response proved to be a major error.

Candidates in 1992’s debates steered clear of any big blunders. Two memorable instances included one in which President Bush was caught looking at his watch as though he were late for a date. (As we now all know, if there were a candidate with that problem, it wasn’t George Bush).

In the other incident, a thirty-something man inquired: "And I ask the three of you, how can we, as symbolically the children of the future president, expect the two of you, the three of you, to meet our needs . . ."

We have indeed been reduced to a people needing to be coddled, protected, taken care of, patronized and patted on the butt. A reason is we pay so little attention to what’s going on. In a country in which a third of us can’t even identify even one of the three branches of the Federal government, it’s no wonder presidential debates take on an importance far beyond their genuine worth.

So we sit there, watching the debates, waiting to see who can promise us the most. Ninety minutes of highly scripted theatrics appealing to greed and stupidity, not necessarily in that order. Then the talking heads are trotted out to tell us if any of the candidates made a big mistake.

It’s superficial, shallow and foolish. It’s what we’ve become.