PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
1 / THE PREDEBATE DEBATE
A few weeks after losing the election in 1960, Richard Nixon went sailing off the coast of Florida with a group of associates that included a trusted adviser named Leonard Hall. As David Halberstam recounted in an essay in 1976 on the Kennedy– Nixon debates, “There were just a few old friends around and they all went out on a boat. Fi nally, Hall asked the question he had always wanted to ask—Why did you decide to debate? For a long time Nixon simply looked up at the sky, his eyes closed, his face drawn and tense. And Hall waited, but there was never an answer.”1
In retrospect, the participation of Richard Nixon in the debates in 1960 qualifies as one of the great political miscalculations in campaign history. Even at the time, the vice president seemed to be acting against his instincts. Early in the race, Nixon assured his handlers that debates with Kennedy were out of the question. “In 1946 a damn fool incumbent named Jerry Voorhis debated a young lawyer and it cost him the election,” he reminded staffers, citing his own experience. 2 Nixon obviously understood what later front-runners and incumbents would come to regard as gospel: debates favor the challenger.
In the summer of 1960 John F. Kennedy, by far the lesser-known contender, immediately accepted the invitation of the broadcast networks for a series of televised debates. A few days later, over the objections of President Eisenhower and Republican advisers, Richard Nixon followed suit. Press secretary Herbert G. Klein recalled that his “mouth dropped open” when Nixon announced at a news conference in Chicago that he would debate JFK; senior campaign aides had not been notified. “I could attribute his reversal only to the fact that he did not want his manhood
sullied by appearing as if he were afraid to win such an encounter,” Klein wrote. 3 According to Nixon’s biographer Earl Mazo, “The vice president could fi nd no way of rejecting the television network offers.” 4
By the end of the Kennedy– Nixon series, provocative new lessons about tele vi sion and politics had come into focus; on the future of presidential debates, however, opinion split down the middle. The more optimistic observers saw debates as inevitable. Walter Lippmann predicted that “from now on it will be impossible for any candidate . . . to avoid this kind of confrontation with his opponent.” Others, like Eisenhower’s press secretary James Hagerty, reached a dif fer ent conclusion: “You can bet your bottom dollar that no incumbent president will ever engage in any such debate or joint appearance in the future.”5
As it happened, the pessimists came closer to the mark than the optimists, and another sixteen years would pass before candidates for the White House again agreed to debate. It is interest ing to note that before his assassination, President Kennedy had verbally committed to a second round of appearances in 1964. Furthermore, according to Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, Kennedy and Goldwater had seriously discussed a plan to barnstorm the country together in a series of matches. “We even talked about using the same airplane and doing it the old-fashioned way— get out on the stump and debate,” Goldwater reported.6
But the election of 1964 rolled around with an unanticipated Democratic nominee. Lyndon Johnson, nobody’s idea of a glittering television personality, gave campaign debates a wide berth as the incumbent president. In 1968 and 1972, once-burned Richard Nixon likewise refused to meet his opponents for a joint appearance. “The 1960 Great Debates had taught him a bitter lesson,” wrote the authors of a Twentieth Century Fund study of presidential debates. “He would take no more chances with programs that might show him in an unfavorable light, literally or figuratively.”7
Both Nixon and Johnson hid behind a legal technicality that blocked the television networks from airing candidate forums: Section 315 of the Communications Act, which granted all participants in a race, even those on the fringe, “equal opportunities” to television time. Broadcasters had been lobbying against this restriction since the 1950s. Their
original hope in sponsoring the Kennedy– Nixon debates was to rid themselves of Section 315, but Congress agreed only to a temporary suspension for the campaign of 1960.
In 1975, in the so- called Aspen ruling, the Federal Communications Commission fi nally exempted debates from the equal access requirement. Incumbent president Gerald Ford, badly trailing Jimmy Car ter in the polls, departed from his acceptance speech during the Republican convention in 1976 and challenged his opponent to a face-to-face television debate. Using one live media event to advance another, Ford declared, “The American people have the right to know where both of us stand.” 8 Car ter quickly signaled his acceptance, and in each election since, presidential debates have occurred in one form or another.
Gerald Ford resurrected the institution of presidential debates not out of a sense of civic duty but for political advantage. “The Ford campaign needed something dramatic,” said Republican adviser Michael Duval. “We needed something that would cause the country to reserve its judgment. The debates seemed to be the answer.”9 As this remark indicates, the decision to meet one’s opponent comes down to self-interest. General election debates hinge on the assumption that the presidential nominees will see fit to take part, but in fact only tradition and political pressure require them to do so. As veteran CBS news producer Lane Venardos put it, “The candidates have all the high cards, including the ultimate high card—whether to participate.”10
From Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, the ambivalence of politicians toward engaging in live debates is not difficult to comprehend. Even for battle- scarred presidential nominees accustomed to the relentless scrutiny of cameras, the perils can be enormous. “In no other mode of presentation,” wrote communications scholar Walter Fisher, “does the candidate risk or reveal so much of his character.”11 Debaters understand that the lens will magnify their every word, gesture, and facial expression, not just for the duration of the broadcast but for the ages.
Ford and Car ter managed to revive the debate tradition because as competitors, they were fairly evenly matched. In subsequent elections, a dif ferent dynamic took hold: the campaign in the lead— the one with the most to lose— sought either to shirk debates or to participate on the most favorable of terms. Only in recent cycles, with the electorate closely
divided, have both sides approached their participation in debates on a more or less equal footing.
DEBATES IN DOUBT
In 1980, disagreement over the inclusion of independent John Anderson gave President Jimmy Car ter and challenger Ronald Reagan a pretext for cutting short that year’s debate series. Only two matches would take place: an inconsequential meeting in late September between Reagan and Anderson that Car ter boycotted, and a climactic debate with Carter and Reagan one week before the election.
Car ter’s refusal to join Reagan and Anderson in a three-way debate irked the sponsoring League of Women Voters, which retaliated by announcing its intention to place an empty chair onstage at the Baltimore Convention Center as a reminder of the candidate’s absence. Editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant sketched this as a baby’s high chair, while Johnny Carson wondered in his Tonight Show monologue, “Suppose the chair wins?”12 Under pressure from Democrats and the White House, the league eventually withdrew its threat, and no extraneous furniture materialized on the Reagan-Anderson set.
At least in the short term, Car ter sustained little damage by skipping the debate. “Despite some predictions to the contrary,” said the Christian Science Monitor, “no widespread, high-intensity wave of criticism against the president has emerged.”13 Instead, the media found a new narrative thread: the will-they- or-won’t-they possibility of a two-way Car ter–Reagan encounter. Publicly both candidates maintained a posture of favorability, but in private neither side could muster much enthusiasm for a debate.
Although Car ter dismissed Reagan as his intellectual inferior, other Democrats were understandably apprehensive about the former California governor’s performing prowess. Car ter at fi rst sought a schedule of multiple debates, hoping that “over a more extended period of time, [Reagan] and I would have to get down to specific issues, where my knowledge of foreign and domestic affairs would give me an edge.”14 Like Nixon before him, Car ter mistakenly assumed that substance would prevail over image.
By the time the two campaigns agreed to debate, only a single appearance could be scheduled before Election Day. “If we’re going to debate him,” said Car ter’s pollster Patrick Caddell, a staunch opponent of any face-to-face meeting with Reagan, “it’s damn impor tant that we get rules that increase the possibility that he’ll say something dumb or screw up.” Caddell drafted a strategy memorandum a week before the debate that warned of the dangers ahead, cautioning that “the risks far outweigh the possible advantages.”15
Reagan’s handlers had reasons of their own to fear a debate. The Republican candidate had made a number of ill-advised statements during speeches and press conferences. According to Reagan’s aide Michael Deaver, “It was particularly the international subjects that we felt we would have a problem with.”16 Among the strongest dissenters was pollster Richard Wirthlin, whose data indicated that Reagan could be elected without debating. “One of the keys to winning a campaign is that you deal with those things you can control,” Wirthlin said, “and, quite frankly, a debate is a game of roulette. There’s no telling which way that marble will bounce.”17
What turned the tide for Reagan was the white-tie Alfred E. Smith political banquet in New York City, attended by both presidential candidates in mid- October. Concerned that Car ter would use his platform to issue an impromptu debate challenge, Reagan’s people armed their man with a 400-word acceptance speech. When Car ter failed to mention the subject, Reagan instead delivered a program of self- deprecating jokes that sharply contrasted with the humorless tone of the incumbent. In the view of columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “genial Ron” bested “uptight Jimmy” in this, their only joint appearance of the campaign other than the debate.18 The next morning the die was cast. After listening to his aides weigh the pros and cons, Reagan said, “Well, every thing considered, I feel I should debate. If I’m going to fill the shoes of Car ter, I should be willing to meet him face-to-face.”19
In the end, after one of the most successful debate per for mances in history, Reagan knew he had made the right call. Just as Richard Nixon got scorched by the heat of JFK’s stardom, so did Car ter fi nd himself singed by the superior media presence of the former Hollywood actor. Asked afterward if he had been ner vous sharing the stage with the president of the United States, Reagan gave a response that put the matter in
perspective: “Not at all. I’ve been on the same stage with John Wayne.”20 Beneath the humor lay a simple truth: in television debates, star power carries the day.
If presidential debates can be said to have a savior, the honor goes to Ronald Reagan. By agreeing to appear with Walter Mondale in 1984, then-president Reagan shored up campaign debates as a permanent institution. The popu lar incumbent stood so far ahead in the polls that he most likely could have survived the fallout from not participating that year, a course many advisers recommended. William F. Buckley Jr. wrote that if he were Reagan, he would not debate: “I’d say, ‘Let’s get it straight: Debates between presidential contenders should be restricted to debates between men who have not served as president. Men who have served should be judged by what they have done.’ ”21
Why, then, did Reagan debate? According to Deaver, “I think he believed in debates. I think he just decided, in fact I can hear him saying, you have to debate, people expect it now, it’s become part of our system.”22 Furthermore, Reagan had reason to be confident. As the “Great Communicator,” he approached the event with five decades of experience at the microphone and an undefeated track record as a political debater.
At the first 1984 debate in Louisville, Ronald Reagan would turn in the worst per for mance of his long career, appearing disengaged, disjointed, and discombobulated against Walter Mondale, an opponent whom voters and the press had largely written off. Not since Richard Nixon had a presidential debater stepped off the stage so battered. That such misfortune could befall a speaker of Reagan’s stature proves the riskiness of debate participation. If a star performer like Ronald Reagan can stumble, what tribulations await a candidate of lesser powers?
THE DEBATE INSTITUTION TAKES SHAPE
By 1988 debates had more than ever become a public expectation. That year negotiators for incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush played hardball at the bargaining table, giving the Democratic campaign of Michael Dukakis a take-it- or-leave-it offer: two presidential debates and one vice presidential match in the standard press conference format.
Bush, no fan of presidential debates, emerged unscathed; even a maladroit performance by running mate Dan Quayle did not adversely affect Republican prospects.
Four years later, in 1992, when foot- dragging by Bush’s campaign cast doubt on the debates, the price of nonparticipation had gone up. The case of George Bush presents an object lesson for any candidate seeking to shirk what the press and the public now consider a presidential aspirant’s obligation to debate. In September 1992 the chief executive of the land found himself being chased around Amer ica by chickens— more accurately, humans in chicken costumes, offering themselves as metaphors for Bush’s reluctance to debate Bill Clinton.
The phenomenon began with a single freelance protester in East Lansing, Michigan, a city that had been selected to host the season’s fi rst debate. When stalling by Bush’s campaign caused the event to be canceled, Clinton showed up anyway, as did the prototype “Chicken George.” Television stations in Lansing jumped on the story, airing video of the costumed demonstrator on their evening newscasts. Inspired by this example, Clinton’s “counter- events” forces set up an operation called “Get on TV,” and soon a veritable flock of imitators around the country started turning up at Bush’s rallies and on television.
When President Bush took to addressing the chickens personally, Clinton’s people knew they had scored a hit. One of the more bizarre vignettes of the presidential campaign in 1992 featured George Bush squabbling with a giant fowl during a whistle-stop tour of the Midwest. The protester’s sign—“Chicken George Won’t Debate”— caught the president’s eye and precipitated this classic example of Bush-speak: “You talking about the draft-record chicken or you talking about the chicken in the Arkansas River? Which one are you talking about? Which one? Get out of here. Maybe it’s the draft? Is that what’s bothering you?”23 Inevitably the exchange made the newscasts: the leader of the most power ful country on earth having it out with an anonymous citizen in a poultry outfit.
However goofy, the “Chicken George” episode in 1992 shows the pressures facing presidential candidates as they ponder the pros and cons of debate participation. George Bush discovered that even the appearance of hesitation was enough to give the opposition a toehold. The news media, unable to resist any story that combines confl ict with visuals,
eagerly played its role in the drama, promoting the perception that the president did not want to debate. Eventually Bush’s high command concluded that they had no choice but to commit.
In a backhanded way, the Republican delays may have served a positive purpose. By waiting until late in the game to fi x a schedule, negotiators were forced to bunch up the debates on the few available dates that remained, creating a tournament-like sequence of four telecasts within nine days. The unforeseen result was to build audience interest from one program to the next, a trend further enhanced by the introduction of experimental formats.
The series in 1992 brought another impor tant innovation: the fi rst and, to date, only three-person debates. When Ross Perot reentered the presidential race in early October, representatives for Clinton and Bush were applying the fi nishing touches to their two-man debate agreement. With approval from the sponsoring Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the campaigns quickly expanded the cast of characters to include the picturesque Texan and his running mate, Admiral James B. Stockdale. Although the Reform Party candidates were given no say in the negotiations, the invitation delighted Perot. “Basically, they resurrected him by letting him in the debates,” said Perot’s adviser Dan Routman.24
In 1996 Bob Dole’s campaign strug gled to avoid another round of three-person debates, touching off a brief controversy over whether Perot merited an invitation. Applying the debate commission’s criteria for inclusion— “evidence of national organ ization, signs of national newsworthiness and competitiveness, and indicators of national public enthusiasm or concern”—an advisory committee deemed Ross Perot ineligible. With Perot excluded, negotiators for Bill Clinton and Bob Dole quickly resolved their differences. In view of Clinton’s formidable skills as a television performer, for the fi rst time, debates were not viewed as inherently risky for the incumbent.
PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES AS AN EXPECTATION
In a hastily arranged news conference the Sunday before Labor Day in 2000, after several weeks of stalling, George W. Bush announced that he was willing to participate in three debates with Vice President Al
Gore. But the announcement carried with it a dramatic challenge to precedent: only one of the events would be produced by the CPD, despite its history as sponsor of every presidential and vice presidential match since 1988. According to Bush’s plan, the two remaining debates would take place on NBC’s Meet the Press and CNN’s Larry King Live, and would run for sixty minutes instead of the usual ninety.
Almost before the words had left Bush’s mouth, the proposal began to fizzle, illustrating the degree to which candidates endanger themselves when they tamper with the institution of presidential debates. Gore, having previously agreed to the debate commission’s plan, immediately rejected the Republicans’ offer. “What’s wrong with the commission debates?” he asked. “Is it that so many people are watching?”25 Rival networks declared that they would not carry NBC and CNN’s programs, and editorial pages around the country denounced Bush’s attempt to subvert the established procedure for debating. “Gore looked magnanimous,” wrote Republican strategist Karl Rove. “Bush came off looking weak and manipulative.”26 In the view of Bush’s aide Stuart Stevens, “We might just as well have gone to church and refuse to stand up when everyone else did.”27
Bush’s counteroffer reinforced the perception that the governor of Texas, like his father before him, was debate-averse. Press accounts revisited Bush’s history as a gubernatorial debater, particularly his race in 1998, in which he insisted on scheduling that year’s one debate on a Friday night in October, when many Texans were attending high school football games, and in El Paso, a city remote from the state’s media spotlight. Other stories speculated about the effect of Bush’s proposal on viewership. Bill Car ter in the New York Times wrote, “If the presidential debates were held on the networks and days chosen by George W. Bush, they would almost surely be seen by the fewest number of people ever to have watched them.”28
Less than two weeks after Bush’s Labor Day weekend announcement, the Republicans abandoned their quest to dictate terms. In the face of mounting criticism, Bush’s campaign accepted the original proposal that the CPD had announced months earlier, including dates, times, and locations. In the opinion of debate commissioner Paul Kirk, George W. Bush “didn’t want to fall into the trap that his father fell into with the ‘chicken man’ in 1992. As a fi rst impression, as a non-incumbent, to be
looking like he wasn’t enthusiastic about debating, I think the political pressures were probably too much.”29
As in the two previous cycles, debate sponsors in 2000 faced the issue of whether to include third-party candidates—in this case, the principal players were Ralph Nader of the Green Party and Patrick Buchanan of the Reform Party. To avoid the problems of previous years, the CPD laid out its standard for inclusion well in advance of the fall election season: in order to qualify, potential participants would need to demonstrate national poll standings of at least 15 percent, based on an average of several media surveys. Despite complaints from critics and a lawsuit from Ralph Nader, the debates in 2000 proceeded with only the major party nominees. In every election since, the 15 percent test has meant two-person presidential debates.
In 2004 incumbent George W. Bush carefully avoided the protracted “debate over debates” that had dogged his campaign four years earlier. Even so, Democrats sought to bolster the lingering perception that Bush was a reluctant debater. Shortly after clinching the Democratic nomination in 2004, Senator John Kerry traveled to Quincy, Illinois, a stop on the Lincoln– Douglas circuit of 1858, and challenged his rival to a series of monthly debates throughout the general election campaign. Late in the summer Kerry upped the ante by proposing weekly meetings. Predictably, Bush declined both offers, though in an August interview on CNN he took pains to assure voters that “there will be debates. I don’t think you have to worry about that.”30
After floating the possibility of participating in only two joint appearances instead of the debate commission’s proposed three, Bush’s campaign eventually accepted the original slate of three presidential debates and one vice presidential match. Could Bush have gotten away with fewer debates? Historical precedent for such a timetable did exist. Incumbents Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996 both agreed to only two debates, and paid no apparent price. Yet these presidents enjoyed a substantial lead over their challengers. Given George W. Bush’s shakier support, not to mention his record of ambivalence toward debates, it was politically necessary for him to avoid the sense that he was ducking his opponent.
As it happened, after weak showings in the first two debates, the third encounter with John Kerry ended up handing Bush a much-needed op-
portunity to set things right. Negotiator James Baker, in persuading Bush to accept three debates, had told him, “I remember times when I was darn glad my candidate had another debate to make up for a poor performance in an earlier one.” In this case Baker’s words proved prophetic. However, Baker admitted that the decision might just as easily have backfi red: “You never know in advance how these things will turn out. I thought our bargain was a good one, and it certainly worked out well this time, but it could have bitten us in the tail.”31
CHALLENGES, THREATS, AND ALTERNATIVES
On September 24, 2008, against the backdrop of a rapidly deteriorating economic situation, Republican presidential candidate John McCain unexpectedly announced that he was suspending his campaign in order to return to Washington and confront the crisis. As part of his plan, McCain recommended postponement of the fi rst presidential debate, scheduled for two days later in Oxford, Mississippi.
The purpose of McCain’s action was unclear: in what way would suspending his campaign and delaying the debate restore calm to a shaky American economy? Both the debate commission and the University of Mississippi, which was hosting the event, expressed their desire for the debate to proceed. But it was the response from Obama’s campaign that mattered, and the candidate and his staff wasted no time staking out a pro- debate position. “This is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess,” Barack Obama said at an impromptu news conference in Florida. In a not-so-subtle dig at his opponent, he added that it would be “part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.” (On Saturday Night Live, Seth Myers would joke that Obama’s debate attendance marked “the fi rst time in history that a black man was more eager to go to Mississippi than a white one.”)32
McCain’s debate negotiator Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters that the Republican nominee would not debate “unless there is an agreement that would provide a solution” to the financial crisis. Graham further suggested that absent a bailout deal, McCain’s campaign would
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ALAN SCHROEDER is a professor in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University and has worked as a journalist, television producer, and diplomat. He is the author of Writing and Producing Television News: From Newsroom to Air (2009) and Celebrity-in-Chief: How Show Business Took Over the White House (2004).
Alan Schroeder’s big-picture history recounts the phenomenon of American televised presidential debates and its evolution over the past half century. From pundits to political operatives, from debate moderators to the viewing public, Presidential Debates reveals how the various stakeholders make and experience this powerful event. For this third edition, Schroeder analyzes the presidential debates of 2008 and 2012 and the crucial role that social media and contemporary news outlets had in shaping their design and reception. He also expands his coverage of previous campaigns, including the landmark meetings in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Schroeder details an insider’s view of the key phases of the debate: anticipation, in which the campaigns negotiate rules, formulate strategy, and steer press coverage; execution, in which the candidates, moderators, panelists, and television professionals create and project the event; and reaction, in which the commentators, spin doctors, and viewers evaluate the performance and move story lines in new directions. New chapters focus on real-time debate responses and the extent to which postdebate news coverage influences voters’ decision making and candidates’ behavior.
“Schroeder’s savvy analysis and candid, behind-the-scenes tales of candidates’ tension and campaigns’ brinksmanship show why presidential debates have become television’s most consequential events.”—TED JOHNSON, senior editor, Variety
“Schroeder reaches beyond the political junkie and occasional academic with Presidential Debates. Packed with illustrative stories and enough intrigue to be an ‘insider’s’ view, this book not only can be read as a history of presidential debates, but, more importantly, brings alive the dynamic and evolutionary nature of political debates.”
—ALLAN LOUDEN, Wake Forest University
Photo
Will Bryan