Dual in Denver -- 2012 Debate Special Section -- The Denver Post

Wednesday

6 section s

october 3, 2012

By Karen E. Crummy; Illustration by Jeff Neumann The Denver Post

resident Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney face off at the first presidential debate Wednesday — an important moment for both candidates, but especially critical for Romney. ¶ Presidential debates tend to reinforce, rather than sway, voter opinions. But in some instances, they can affect the dynamics of a race, boost voter enthusiasm and provide a candidate an opening for a comeback. ¶ That is exactly what Romney needs.

After failing to gain traction from the GOP convention, he hurled himself into a turbulent month marked by campaign blunders and contradictory messages, leaving his campaign in constant “reboot” mode. Now, as he moves into the final weeks of the campaign, his path to the White House is narrowing as he faces anemic poll numbers in key swing states, such as Florida and Ohio — a state no Republican has ever lost and won the presidency. ¶Despite Obama’s mediocre job-approval numbers and his vulnerability on the economy — consistently cited by voters as the most important election issue — Romney’s economic message hasn’t resonated with a majority of voters, including those in the middle class. Recent polls show the former head of Bain Capital has lost his edge on whom voters trust to handle the economy. Add on a gender gap, high unfavorability ratings and voters’ perception that he isn’t like them — and Romney has some ground to make up. ¶ “(The debate is) Romney’s last best chance to turn things around,” said Republican strategist Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to President George W. Bush.

“He’ll have to exceed expectations by a lot. He needs to have a moment that gets people to view him differently. And he needs to articulate some ideas that people think are credible on the economy. He needs to appeal across the board.”

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DEBATE » 2S

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‘‘ MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM PAST DEBATES

DEBATE «FROM 1S

With early voting already underway in some states such as Iowa and Ohio, and other critical swing states kicking off voting over the next two weeks, the first presidential debate is widely viewed as both candidates’ best chance at reaching the public.

In Colorado, where early-voting ballots this year go out Oct. 15, nearly 80 percent of voters cast ballots by Election Day in 2008, said Michael McDonald, an election expert at George Mason University. McDonald predicts this year 35 percent of the presidential votes nationwide will be cast before Election Day. The event’s hype has led Obama’s advisers to downplay expectations, noting that the president’s busy schedule has not allowed for enough debate practice. Romney’s campaign and surrogates, however, are covering all their bases, simultaneously playing up Romney’s abilities while tamping down expectations.

With estimates that more than 50 million people will watch the debate in an attempt to get answers to their questions about the economy, health care and the role of government, it is unlikely that either candidate won’t be ready for prime time. But what they do with that time is critical.

“Obama’s task is like being on a football team with a lead. Put in the defensive backs and don’t make any mistakes,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California and former adviser to Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain during his 2000 presidential primary run. “Romney has to throw the ball, but it’s not time yet for a Hail Mary.

He has to consistently move the ball down the field.”

As the incumbent president, Obama needs to play defense without looking defensive, said Schnur. And Obama should remind people why they like him, note the promises he kept and attempt to gingerly place the blame at the feet of the U.S. Congress for those campaign vows he broke, said Bostonbased Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh.

While he needs to play it a bit safe — he’s only narrowly ahead of Romney in national polls — he also needs to go on the attack, painting Romney’s positions as nearly identical to those of President George W. Bush, which “contributed to the mess today,” she said. And expect to hear more than one reference to Romney’s comments suggesting that 47 percent of Americans were dependent on government and viewed themselves as victims.

“Whenever he can, the president will say, ‘I represent all of America,’ forcing Gov. Romney back on his heels,” she said.

Obama, however, also needs to remain engaged, give short answers and avoid lecturing as though he were teaching a constitutional law class.

“The president is not a terrific debater. The format of short answers does not lend itself well to his skills,” said David Birdsell, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College in New York, who has written a book on presidential debates. “He has a tendency to appear supercilious, and use a tone that is con-

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“Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.”

In a 1988 vice presidential debate, when George H.W. Bush’s running mate, Dan Quayle, compared his qualifications to those of the late president, Quayle’s opponent, Lloyd Bentsen, the vice presidential running mate to Michael Dukakis, offered his memorable comeback: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.”

Score 1-5

THE DEBATE

1 = Showed up and remained on stage.

2 = Didn’t offend anyone, at least in the U.S. 3 = Maintained status quo and was somewhat factually correct.

4 = Solidified the “I think I’m going to vote for you” vote.

5 = So good it may move the polls.

SCORECARD xyz{|

SELF-CONTROL

|{zyx

Did he sigh? Roll his eyes? Smirk? Shrug?

Look at his watch? Is he so controlled that he appears to lack human emotion?

xyz{|

SPECIFICS

|{zyx

Did President Barack Obama reveal any details about his agenda for the next four years? Did Mitt Romney add some meat to his economic plan? As the Magic 8-Ball would say: “Don’t count on it.” But remember: You can always score them with negative numbers.

xyz{|

OFFENSE

|{zyx

Did Romney hit Obama hard enough on the flailing economy? Universal health care? Did he unleash the R-word (redistribution)? Did Obama counterpunch with demands Romney explain how he will create 12 million jobs and what tax loopholes he’s willing to close? Did he rap Romney for the “47 percent” comment?

xyz{|

DEFENSE

|{zyx

Did Obama defend his record without appearing defensive? Did he blame President George W. Bush for the economy and unemployment while still looking presidential? Did Romney defend his leadership at Bain Capital without appearing defensive? Did he artfully deflect the Bush issue by showing his policies are different?

xyz{|

LINES

|{zyx

Did either candidate get in a spontaneous zinger or memorable line written by his staff over the past six weeks?

TOTAL Scorecard by Karen Crummy, The Denver Post; Photo by Getty Images

descending — especially when he starts a sentence with ‘Um, look.’ The president needs to avoid looking smug, out of touch and arrogant.”

During a 2008 Democratic primary debate against opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama somewhat callously referred to her as “likable enough.” And appearing tired and irritated during a recent “60 Minutes” interview, the president referred to the instability in the Middle East as “bumps in the road.”

Romney’s hurdle is that he needs to outperform the president and give voters a reason to both reject Obama and embrace him, strategists and political observers say. That means Romney must accomplish a number of things in 90 minutes: Be relatable and likable; offer specific policy details he has not disclosed in the past; aggressively, but respectfully, hit the president on his record; and try to squeeze in a memorable line or funny zinger.

While there are very few undecided voters left, there are always those who are weakly committed — crucial in a tight race such as this, said Mitchell McKinney, a political communications specialist at the University of Missouri.

“We call them persuadables. They still aren’t completely comfortable with their choice,” he said. “It’s a chance for Romney to get his message across and re-reintroduce himself.”

That message should avoid “Republican ideological code words” on the economy such as “free market, self-reliance and downsize government” because they often turn off moderate voters, said Bruce Buchanan, a presidential politics expert at the University of Texas. And Romney should add some meat to his economic plan, which includes cutting taxes for the wealthy and the middle class; slashing regulations that negatively impact businesses; expanding trade; balancing the budget; and promoting domestic ener-

gy independence.

“He certainly doesn’t need to spew off 57 specific proposals, but he needs to paint a compelling vision of a better future and give voters confidence that his plan is better than Barack Obama’s,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

Romney has some advantages. He has been preparing for the debates since June, and challengers tend to gain immediate stature by appearing on stage next to the incumbent. And while he hasn’t participated in a one-on-one debate, he holds the record for debate attendance among general-election candidates since he ran in both 2008 and 2012, McKinney said. During his matchups against Newt Gingrich, Romney proved he could be aggressive, even accusing the former House Speaker of “influence peddling.”

“He’s a very good technical debater.

He doesn’t make substantial errors,” said Brett O’Donnell, GOP communi-

cations strategist and debate adviser to Romney during the primary. “His weakness is that when he gets defensive, he tends to looks bad.”

During a GOP primary debate, Romney went off-script and offered a $10,000 wager to Texas Gov. Rick Perry. That reinforced some opinions that Romney was out of touch.

While there is much at stake, and viewers can expect a good video bite to emerge in the aftermath and perhaps information to help them make an educated decision on who to vote for, most political observers agree that this debate will not miraculously change the race overnight.

“Super Bowl moments don’t happen in debates,” Schnur said. “If you are looking for a single, magical, transformative moment, you might be let down.”

Karen E. Crummy: 303-954-1594, kcrummy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/karencrummy

dp Online. Live coverage. Twitter. In print. The Denver Post has the presidential debate covered.

TONIGHT: ON THE SCENE A network of bloggers from a mix of political and apolitical backgrounds will post from debate watch parties. Read micro-blogging and social media coverage from Denver Post journalists reporting from the debate site.

REAL-TIME REACTIONS A panel of undecided voters will watch live and offer opinions from The Denver Post’s newsroom.

TWITTER Readers are invited to follow Denver Post Twitter coverage at @DenverPostLive, @DenverPolitics and @DenverPost as well as by using the hashtag #debate.

ANALYSIS Complete coverage, commentary and photos from the debate will appear in Thursday’s paper.

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“There you go again.”

When President Jimmy Carter made a detailed but rather droning point on health care in their 1980 debate, Ronald Reagan suggested that Carter had mischaracterized his Medicare aims with a shake of his head and this statement.

It was a verbal shiv to Carter’s ribs, and about as deflating. Reagan would use the phrase in future debates, including one with Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential race.

Parry thrust

President Ronald Reagan gives a thumbs up at the Kansas Municipal Auditorium Music Hall at the end of his debate with Walter Mondale on Oct. 22, 1984.

&

Ron Edmonds, Associated Press file

A look at the relatively brief, but very memorable, history of U.S. presidential debates.

By William Porter The Denver Post

W

hile the United States presidency has existed since the days of knickers and powdered wigs, the exercise in public theater known as the presidential debate is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back just a half century.

The institution has predecessors, including intraparty debates between Republican presidential candidates Harold Stassen and Thomas Dewey in 1948, and Democrats Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson in 1956.

But the first general presidential debate didn’t happen until 1960, when John Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off on television. It was the year a promising young boxer named Cassius Clay won an Olympic gold medal and “The Flintstones” debuted.

For many Americans, that first debate is within living memory. But while the Barack Obama-Mitt Romney showdown at the University of Denver is rooted in the KennedyNixon debate, the rise of social media and the 24-hour news cycle has changed things. Today, gaffes and gotcha moments, such as Gerald Ford’s infamous 1976 assertion that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination, go viral.

The history of presidential debates might be brief, but it is packed with memorable moments: zingers and flubs, triumphs and flops, and tons of backroom dish. Former president George H.W. Bush dubbed the experience “tension city.”

“There’s almost a NASCAR mentality,” said Dale Herbeck, who chairs the Communications Studies department at Northeastern University in Boston. “A lot of people watch the debates to see who’s going to put their foot in it and have this massive flameout.”

Kennedy-Nixon The Kennedy-Nixon debate on Sept. 26, 1960, was the first of four meetings. It was televised, and the common memory is of a pale, sweating Nixon getting trounced by the tanned, charismatic Kennedy.

It was a bit more complicated than that. Nixon was under the weather, arriving at the Chicago studio the day of the debate after a frenetic state-to-state campaign hop. (President Dwight D. Eisenhower had told his vice president to avoid debating Sen. Kennedy, since it put him on a level playing field with his opponent.) Kennedy, fresh off a California swing, was in town a day earlier, where his staff scouted the studio and recommended he wear a dark

suit to contrast with the painted set.

In fact, many people who heard the broadcast on the radio thought Nixon more than held his own.

“There is one story about a group of Southern governors convening in Arkansas who only had access to a radio,” Herbeck said. “They thought Nixon clearly won. But when they saw the TV tape next day, they thought Kennedy won.”

Scott Jensen, who directs the debate and forensics team at Webster University in Missouri, said Nixon would have fared well in a pre-TV era debate. “He was intelligent, had vision and was articulate,” he said.

“But his visage was made for radio.”

The instant collective wisdom in 1960 was that Nixon was undone by television. Polls showed that more than half the voters based their decision on the debates.

Carter-Reagan Candidates became so leery that the next presidential debate would not occur until 16 years later. Lyndon Johnson, who was far ahead in the polls, declined to debate Barry Goldwater in 1964. Nixon refused to debate Hubert Humphrey in 1968 or George McGovern in 1972.

Carter was boosted in 1976 by Ford’s “no Soviet domination” gaffe, but endured the downside of televised debates in 1980.

Beset by a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis, Carter was finally persuaded by his aides to debate Ronald Reagan. (An earlier debate between Reagan and independent candidate John Anderson had gone off without Carter, who nixed a three-way format.) The defining moment: Carter making a detailed but rather droning point on health care, and then Reagan, with his Hollywood-honed affability, telling the audience that Carter had mischaracterized his Medicare aims with a shake of his head and “There you go again.”

It was a verbal shiv to Carter’s ribs, and about as deflating. Reagan won in a landslide. (Reagan would use the phrase in future debates, including one with Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential race.)

Dukakis-Bush In 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis, who faced George H.W. Bush, was savaged after moderator Bernard Shaw asked him what his reaction would be if his wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered. Dukakis, who was anti-death penalty, was perceived as giving a dithering reply.

“It was actually more nuanced than that, but in such circumstances, audiences wanted to see more

emotion, even if it was him blasting out with a ‘How dare you ask that question!’ ” said Mitchell McKinney, professor of communication at the University of Missouri.

“I think we’ve learned that the ‘aha’ moments have become more important,” Jensen said. “People look for the one thing that’ll be in the paper the next day.”

Or tweeted in the next 15 seconds.

McKinney sees the use of social media during debates as a positive.

“When people use social media, they follow more closely, engage

with fellow citizens and are more engaged in the campaign,” he said.

Others aren’t so sure, worrying that the truncated format exacerbates sound-bite nation. Public appearances become minefields, with kablooie moments caught on film and made viral in seconds. Texas Gov. Rick Perry was derailed in an early GOP debate when he could not name the third of three agencies he had vowed to abolish.

Debate formats have changed enormously since one of the modern debate’s antecedents, the seven 1858

Emotional control, practice keep stress low when stakes are high

By William Porter The Denver Post

Public debates, whether in a closed auditorium or on the airwaves, are high-stakes, high-wire acts for political candidates.

Make your points and land some quotable zingers, and you can turn opinion in your favor. But they are also opportunities for candidates to nose dive like human lawn darts.

For most of us, stepping up to a dais is a highly unnatural act, especially when the person across from you is prepared to be prosecutor, judge and executioner.

George H.W. Bush once described the debates as “tension city,” and this was a man who was blasted out of the sky by anti-aircraft fire in World War II. So how do candidates handle the stress of what amounts to a pressure cooker with a microphone?

Kind of like swimmer Missy Franklin did for the Olympics: Practice, practice, practice.

Will Van Treuren, who advises the debate team at the University of Colorado at Boulder and was part of the two-person team that won the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence in 2010 as a CU junior, said the most important component is preparation.

“It’s really about mastery,” Van Treuren said. “As far as overcoming nervousness, it’s all about practice, just debating so much that it becomes second nature. It’s about taking on the identity of a debater. I was brutally nervous at first.”

Kyle Painter, president of the Chicago Debate Society at the University of Chicago, stressed emotional control, “whether a debater is nervous or champing at the bit.”

“It can be painful to realize you are losing an argument, but it is better to know your opponent is beating you on a certain point than to be so wrapped up in the competition that you refuse to acknowledge it,” he said. “When this happens, you can’t change rhetorical tack even when it’s necessary.”

Finding a quiet place to collect oneself before a debate is also important.

Mitchell McKinney, professor of communication at the University of Missouri, has advised numerous political candidates. Incumbents are often at a psychological disadvantage, he said. The person across from them is on the attack, trying to take their job.

“In a presidential election, incumbents have spent four years being in charge, surrounded by people who say, ‘Yes,’ ” McKinney said.

“They go out on the stage and they don’t have that president seal on their podium.”

That’s when a good adviser can calm a candidate’s nerves.

“You tell them they are there to have a conversation,” McKinney said. “And that for all the talk about how it’s the most important speech of their life, they have encountered these moments before on the campaign trail.

“You stress to them that if they couldn’t handle the pressure, they wouldn’t have gotten this far. ”

meetings between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, who were vying for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois.

The format: One candidate got an hour to speak, his opponent followed with a 90-minute speech, then it was back to the first speaker for a 30-minute rejoinder.

And debate formats changed significantly since 1960, morphing from panels of journalists running the show to single moderators to town-hall formats where candidates field questions from the public.

Bush-Clinton The first town-hall presidential debate came in 1992. Incumbent George H.W. Bush took the stage with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

“The contrast could not have been more stark,” McKinney said. “Bill Clinton was saying, ‘I feel your pain,’ while Bush looked ill at ease and awkward in interaction. The camera caught Bush looking at his watch while the other candidates were speaking.”

The debates were sponsored and run by the League of Women Voters from 1976 to 1984, who quit in protest of candidates and parties trying to dictate how the debates were formatted.

Running the debates was taken over by the Commission on Presidential Debates, headed by former chairs of the Republican and Democratic national committees.

Vice-presidential debates produce memorable moments on occasion. Witness Lloyd Bentsen’s “You’re no Jack Kennedy” takedown of Dan Quayle when the latter compared himself to JFK in 1988.

And anticipation of the 2008 veep debate featuring Sarah Palin found an audience of 70 million viewers, more than any presidential debate except Carter-Reagan in 1980, which drew 80 million.

Obama and Romney’s appearance at DU is the first of three between now and Nov. 6.

For all the potshots, posturing and punditry, Herbeck said he found the debates an invigorating experience.

“What a marvelous celebration of American democracy,” he said.

“Millions will sit down and watch the same thing. We might see and hear different things, but we’re all together. What a moment.

“And the next day at the water cooler, we won’t be talking about the blown call in the Packers-Seahawks game. We’ll be talking about something of substance.”

William Porter: 303-954-1877, wporter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/williamporterdp

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“If there was a moment in a debate that swung an election, e it was that moment”

Debates are ripe for satire as ga≠es make for icconic moments

By Kevin Simpson The Denver Post

Throughout the history of presidential debates, candidates have uttered lines — profound and profoundly ridiculous — and delivered nonverbal zingers or missteps that stamped them indelibly in the public eye.

Everyone’s short list includes some timeless gems: Ronald Reagan’s age-defying retort to Walter Mondale in 1984; Gerald Ford’s baffling gaffe about Soviet domination in Eastern Europe in the 1976 race; Michael Dukakis’ 1988 flat-line dismissal of the death penalty, even if his own wife were raped and murdered.

Some debates turned on visuals and body language: John F. Kennedy mastering the new medium of television even though Richard Nixon may well have bested him on the issues; Al Gore’s miscalculated eye rolls and alpha-male posturing in debates with George W. Bush; Bush the elder glancing at his watch and stumbling through a town hall format that Bill Clinton nailed.

And some of the most memorable “debate” moments come not from the actual debates but the caricature comedy bits that stemmed from them. Picture “Saturday Night Live” actor Dana Carvey as Ross Perot and Bush I. Or Jon Lovitz channeling Dukakis matching wits with a fumbling Bush: “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”

All of them, over time, have gained a certain status — iconic. “ ‘Iconic’ is what large populations walk away with, what they talk about and remember,” said Peter Simonson, associate professor of communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “Sometimes you can pin down that moment in a single line. In other ways, it’s an iconic image.”

Image was moving into uncharted territory in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, as television gave a new power to style, as well as substance.

Robert Watson, author of 34 books on politics and a professor of American Studies at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., notes that while many observers gave Nixon the edge among radio listeners taking in the 1960 debate, Kennedy’s quick grasp of TV’s idiosyncracies gave him the nod among viewers.

Nixon even appeared unsure where to direct his gaze.

“But Kennedy always seemed to be completely comfortable with that setting,” Watson said. “In a way, it was a perfect storm. It wasn’t just one thing, with Nixon looking awkward and Kennedy looking calm. It was makeup, it was hair, his suit, Nixon being ill, sweating, shifty eyed, darting around not knowing what camera to look at.”

TV also revealed body language — some impromptu, some calculated — that characterized the candidates for better and for worse. At times, it combined with certain lines to produce an enduring effect.

Simonson points to the Reagan-Carter debates as a prime example.

“Carter’s presence and language and tone was like a Sunday school teacher in lot of ways, burdened with the troubles of the nation,” he said. “That was visible and palpable. Reagan had a more uplifting presence.

When he says to Carter, ‘There you go again,’ that contrast played out in his body language.”

Perhaps the most memorable use of body language involved Gore in his series of debates against George W. Bush in the 2000 campaign. In what seemed a calculated move, Gore repeatedly sent physical signals designed to demean his opponent.

“He was a good debater, he’d been effective against Ross Perot and Jack Kemp,” said Thomas Cronin, political science professor at Colorado College. “But against Bush, he came across as more wooden, less likable — and sighing when Bush would give an answer, that seemed to be unbecoming. The little things make a difference.”

In terms of scoring the debates, Gore’s strategy of sighs and eye rolls didn’t prove helpful.

“It made Gore look like the economics professor — and nobody likes the economics professor, the snotty know-it-all kid in the first row,” said Watson. “W was the guy in the back row making fart sounds.”

When Gore doubled-down, with his illfated attempt to press a policy point by rising from his seat and invading Bush’s personal space, Bush disarmed him with a grin and a nod — and got a laugh from the audience.

“Reagan or Kennedy would’ve had a line,” said Watson. “Gore had nothing. He just looked awkward. Body language is as important as what you say.”

And how you say it.

When Dukakis was asked, in a 1988 debate with Bush I, whether he’d still oppose the death penalty for someone who had raped and murdered his wife, his response was philosophically consistent with his political beliefs. But the delivery proved so emotionless as to be disconcerting.

“I think everybody in the audience cringed, whether they were for him or against him, that he didn’t show outrage, that he would maybe feel different in a case like that,” said Cronin. “It was just a lack of emotion, lack of being real, maybe.”

Simonson counts three ways in which presidential debate moments become iconic. One is the immediate reaction people have in their living rooms. Another is subsequent news coverage.

“But then a lot of the real power is from the way it gets spoofed, the way it’s picked up in popular culture afterward,” he said. “It continues to gain power long after the debate itself.”

Archival footage from “Saturday Night Live” still has a vibrant life on the Internet, where memorable performances from Carvey’s Bush I — “… stay the course, a thousand points of light …” — to Lovitz’s spot-on portrayal of the diminutive Dukakis take a humorous turn on political history.

Watson, who has gotten to know Dukakis and has brought him in to speak to his classes, once asked him what he thought of the Lovitz bits on “SNL.” “He said he laughed, he thought they were hilarious and really captured the notion of the debate,” Watson said. “He wasn’t offended. He admitted that sunk him, as well as his

own poor performance.”

Call it a case in point for the way comedy bits that zero in on candidates’ foibles resonate with the public.

“We’re tough customers, not only on Comedy Central but American people in general,” said Cronin. “We’re influenced by gaffes more than substance — because substance is complicated. Most of us are not policy wonks.”

It didn’t take a policy wonk to understand that Ford stumbled seriously in his debate with Jimmy Carter.

Asked a question about Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, a key issue in the ’76 race, he replied: “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and never will be under a Ford administration.”

In the midst of the Cold War, Ford had somehow misstated the obvious. Two other factors magnified the blunder. In a close race pitting two underwhelming personalities, it proved the most memorable line of the debate. And it added real-life context to the image, perhaps unfairly cultivated for comic effect by “SNL” comic Chevy Chase, of Ford as a bumbling fool.

“If there was a moment in a debate that swung an election,” said Watson, “it was that moment.”

But probably the most celebrated oral comeback came in 1984, when Reagan took hits from Mondale for being the oldest president in history.

“I will not make age an issue in this campaign,” Reagan said amiably. “I will not exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Everyone laughed — including Mondale.

“By any measure, Mondale won 89 of the 90 minutes of that debate,” said Watson.

“But Reagan crushed it in that one minute.”

The fact that everyone from pundits to academics to Internet surfers still chatter about these moments suggests that, on some level, they were relevant to the campaigns.

“Not to say they won or lost an election, but they’re iconic moments and we’re still talking about them,” Watson said. “It’s the political Super Bowl. These are moments that judge us and our values. They’re crossroads moments in political history.”

Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739, ksimpson@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ksimpsondp

the look.

Richard M. Nixon, left, debates John F. Kennedy, the Dem mocratic presidential nominee, on October 21, 1960. Television viewers responded more favorably to Kennedy.

that poses a problem.

age and wit.

bad timing.

too detached.

misstating the obvious.

In 1984, when Ronald Reagan, right, took hits from Walter Mondale for being the oldest president in history. “I will not make age an issue in this campaign,” Reagan said. “I will not exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

President George H.W. Bush was caught glancing at his watch and stumbling through a debate Bill Clinton nailed.

When Michael Dukakis was asked, in a 1988 debate, wheth her he’d still oppose the death penalty for someone who had raped and murdered his wife, hiss response was philosophically consistent with his political beliefs. But the delivery proved alm most emotionless.

Asked a question about Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, a key issue in the 1976 race, Gerald Ford, right, replied: “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and never will be under a Ford administration.”

In terms of scoring the debates, Al Gore’s strategy of sighs and eye rolls didn’t prove helpful. And his illfated attempt to press a policy point by rising from his seat and invading George W. Bush’s personal space backfired.

Associated Press file photos

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What’s at stake

On debates, polling pollingstrongly stronglysuggests suggests Onthe theday dayof ofthe thefirst firstof ofthree threepresidential presidential debates, Mitt Romney has fewers than President does President Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney has fewerpaths pathsto toan an electoral electoral win win than Barack Obama has.

Barack Obama ELECTORAL VOTES

237

270 electoral votes needed to win

Needs 33 to win

191

Needs 79 to win

185 Strong Obama 110

52

33

Tossup votes

Leaning Romney

(Includes 1 electoral vote for Maine District 2)

(Includes 1 electoral vote for Nebraska District 2)

Maine

Alaska

Wash.

Mont.

Vt.

N.D.

Minn.

Idaho

6

votes

Calif.

The tossup states If the “solid” and “leaning” states break as predicted, there is but one scenario where Mitt Romney can win the election if he loses Florida: He would have to win all other swing states. All of them. If he were to win Florida, he would then need 50 of the remaining 81 electoral votes to win the presidency. Go ahead, do the math. There’s but one conclusion: Mitt Romney needs to move the needle in his favor at Wednesday night’s debate.

9 electoral votes

Iowa

6

Neb. Utah

votes

Ariz.

11

votes

votes

Colo.

9

N.M.

5

10

votes

Wyo. Nev.

Wis.

votes

S.D.

Kan.

Ill.

Mo.

10

Mich.

N.Y.

16

20

votes

Pa. votes

Ohio

Ind.

18

11

votes

W.Va. 13

votes

Ky.

votes

Va.

La.

Mass.

R.I. Conn.

N.J. Del. D.C. Md.

S.C.

Ark.

votes

votes

4

15 N.C. votes

Tenn.

Okla.

votes

N.H.

10

Ore.

Colorado

ELECTORAL VOTES

158 Strong Romney Leaning Obama

Hawaii

Mitt Romney

Miss.

Ala.

Ga.

Texas

Fla.

29

votes

Map: The New York Times and the Denver Post

Florida

29 electoral votes

Iowa

6 electoral votes

President Barack Obama’s victory in Colorado was among his most prized accomplishments in 2008, after the state had voted reliably Republican in eight of the previous nine presidential elections.

A wariness of big government could test Obama in the Rocky Mountain West, but Mitt Romney faces his own challenge in appealing to independents and women, whose support was critical in a pair of Democratic wins in races for Senate and governor in Colorado in 2010.

The most famous battleground state in America could once again earn that title.

Obama carried the state in 2008, but a wave of home foreclosures and a sour economy complicated his path to a repeat win. A growing number of conservative retirees offer Romney hope, but the outcome could hinge on whether he can win over Latino voters, particularly younger Cuban Americans in southern Florida and Puerto Ricans in central Florida.

Polling: On Sept. 16, The Denver Post had this as a statistical tie; since Sept. 15, five of six different polls in the Real Clear Politics poll of polls have Obama with a lead ranging from 3 to 6 points; the sixth, by Rasmussen Reports, had Romney with a 2-point lead on Sept. 17. The poll of polls gives Obama a 3.1-point lead, 48.8 to 45.7. FiveThirtyEight gives Obama a 76 percent chance of winning the state.

2008: Obama +9.0 2004: Bush +4.7

Polling: In Real Clear Politics’ poll of polls, all four have Obama with a lead ranging from 1 to 4 points.

FiveThirtyEight cites five polls, all giving Obama the edge, ranging from a 0.6-point lead to 9.0.

FiveThirtyEight says the state is a “lean” for Obama and rates the president’s chance of winning at 71 percent. A Fox News poll on Sept. 18 gave Obama a 5.0-point lead.

2008: Obama +2.8 2004: Bush +5.0

North Carolina

New Hampshire 4 electoral votes

Nevada

The White House has paid close attention to New Hampshire, sending Vice President Joe Biden to the state repeatedly to make an argument against Romney, who has a vacation home in the state and is seen as a favorite son. The voters have an independent streak but generally oppose what they perceive as government intrusion in their lives. It could be one of Romney’s best opportunities to win a state that Obama carried in 2008.

The economic outlook in Nevada has declined considerably since Obama won the state four years ago and has been slow to rebound. With the nation’s highest rates of home foreclosure and unemployment, Romney has a ready-made laboratory to argue that policies of the Obama administration have not worked. A large Mormon population also could bolster Romney, but Obama is hoping his appeal to Latino and lower-income voters will deliver the state again.

15 electoral votes

Democrats selected Charlotte as the site of their national convention, with party leaders hoping to generate enough enthusiasm among voters to help repeat Obama’s narrow victory in 2008. Mitt Romney had hoped to shore up the state by now, but both sides continue to spend money on television advertising. The state has a long history of voting Republican.

Polling: FiveThirtyEight says Romney has a 64 percent chance of winning here. Real Clear Politics’ poll of polls shows a tie. Six separate polls since Sept.

15 show the president with a lead in four; the two others, conducted Sept. 27-30, show Romney and Obama tied in one, and the president trailing by 4 points in the other. Real Clear Politics has moved the state from “leans Romney” to a tossup.

2008: Obama +0.3 2004: Bush +12.4

Ohio

18 electoral votes

There are few credible paths to the White House for Romney without winning Ohio, a well-established bellwether. The state has accurately picked winning presidential candidates in the past 12 elections. A steadily improving economy could help Obama carry the state again. Large portions of the state remain conservative, but Republicans worry that Democrats may be motivated by a victory last year in which voters struck down a law restricting public workers’ rights to bargain collectively.

Polling: Polling from Sept. 19-29, The Columbus Dispatch had it Obama 51, Romney 42. From Sept.

27-29, Public Policy Polling had it 49-45 for the president. Romney’s opportunity: In the PPP poll, 48 percent approve of Obama, 49 percent disapprove.

2008: Obama +4.6% 2004: Bush +2.1%

Polling: Real Clear Politics has pushed this state to a “leans Obama” with a four-poll average of a 50.0-44.0 advantage for the president while FiveThirtyEight rates the state as “Safe Obama.” A Rasmussen Reports poll on Sept. 18 gave Romney a 3-point lead, but more recent polling by others show spreads ranging from 5.0 to 15.0 for the president. FiveThirtyEight gives the president a 90 percent chance of victory.

2008: Obama +9.6% 2004: Kerry +1.3%

Virginia

13 electoral votes

As one of the nation’s newest battleground states, Virginia will be center stage in Obama’s fight for re-election. The state is deeply conservative, but population shifts in northern Virginia have changed the state’s political demographics. Romney’s argument against the expansion of government is complicated by the number of government workers in Virginia. Both campaigns agree the race will be close.

Polling: A Fox News poll conducted Sept. 16-18 gave Obama a 7-point lead. Real Clear Politics’ poll of polls from Sept. 17-28 has it closer: Obama 48.0, Romney 44.3. All five recent polls cited by FiveThirtyEight give Obama a lead ranging from 2 points to 7.

FiveThirtyEight also gives Obama a 78 percent chance of winning the state.

2008: Obama +6.3% 2004: Bush +8.2%

Sources: State summaries by The New York Times; state polling (as of 1:30 p.m. MDT, Tuesday) compiled by The Denver Post; polling information by The New York Times, FiveThirtyEight, Real Clear Politics, The Denver Post, The Des Moines Register, The Columbus Dispatch, Fox News, Public Policy Polling. Rasmussen Reports, We Ask America

Obama has a sentimental attachment to Iowa for delivering his first victory in his improbable primary race four years ago. But the state presents a far bigger challenge this time. Romney and the full Republican field spent months attacking Obama in the Iowa caucus campaign this year, which has kept the president’s poll ratings lower than other nearby states. In a close general election, these six electoral votes are critical to both sides.

Polling: The highly regarded Des Moines Register poll, published Sunday, gives Obama a 49-45 lead.

Romney’s opening: 10 percent say they could still be persuaded to vote for another candidate.

FiveThirtyEight has pushed this to “likely Obama.”

Real Clear Politics’ poll of polls has Obama with a 3.5-point advantage and rates the state as a tossup.

2008: Obama +9.5 2004: Bush +0.7

6 electoral votes

Polling: Six polls from Sept. 18-25 range from a tie to a 9-point Obama lead. The Real Clear Politics poll of polls average gives the president a 49.7-44.5 advantage. FiveThirtyEight has rated the state as “likely Obama,” giving the president an 84 percent chance of victory here.

2008: Obama +12.5 2004: Bush +2.6

Wisconsin

10 electoral votes

The addition of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to the Republican ticket does not guarantee victory over Obama, but it cements the state’s role as a true battleground. Democrats carried the state in the last six presidential contests – often narrowly – but Republican groups are advertising to try to push the Obama campaign to spend money. Still, Romney is at the top of the ticket and must show that he can make his own case here.

Polling: Four polls in the Real Clear Politics poll of polls show an Obama lead ranging from 3 points (Rasmussen Reports, Sept. 17) to 12 points (We Ask America, Sept. 20-23). The poll of polls average shows a 6.7 lead for the incumbent. FiveThirtyEight rates Wisconsin as “Safe Obama” with the president having a 91 percent chance of winning the state.

2008: Obama +13.9% 2004: Kerry +0.4%

6

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“Who am I? Why am I here?”

James Stockdale, the running mate of Reform Party presidential candidate Ross Perot, opened the 1992 vice presidential debate in Atlanta against Dan Quayle and Al Gore with an attempt at humor that fell a bit short. The remark landed with a thud during the debate, but it was comedy gold for Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey on “Saturday Night Live.”

This painting depicts the Lincoln-Douglas debate between Republican Abraham Lincoln, standing, and Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas during the Illinois senatorial campaign of 1858. As Lincoln prepared for the debates, he said his ambitions for high political office were so clear that if he were to deny them, “I would only make myself look ridiculous.” The Associated Press

Student debaters will watch with jaded eyes Experience in one-on-one competition means candidates will be judged on logic and accuracy

By Claire Martin The Denver Post

S

ome of the most jaded eyes bearing down on Wednesday’s presidential debates belong to citizens who aren’t old enough to vote in November, but who are more than qualified to pass judgment on the presidential debate.

“From what I’ve seen of past presidential debates, it’s like a bad L-D round, with all kinds of fallacies,” remarked Elijah Durso-Sabina, a senior at George Washington High School and a four-year veteran of the school’s elite debate team.

Oh, snap! L-D is shorthand for the LincolnDouglas debate format, named after the series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in their 1858 senate race, and now a one-on-one debate competition that emphasizes logic, ethics and philosophy.

Most people watching the debate at the University of Denver, it’s safe to say, will not be keeping a strict flow chart of the arguments made by Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. But the members of George Washington’s debate and forensics team, like countless debate and forensic teams throughout the U.S., will be mercilessly scribbling down each claim and every citation, watching and listening to see how well the opponents attack and defend themselves.

It will be a breeze for them to keep up with Romney and Obama, especially for the crossexamination format debaters, who are accustomed to tracking opponents whose speeches race at an auctioneer’s rattle.

“It can be hard for a layperson to understand us in a CX round,” conceded Parker Davis, 16, a junior.

“It can be hard for your teammates to under-

stand you,” junior Suzanne Steele retorted.

High school debaters have a language all their own, and they can empathize with Romney and Obama, who must articulate complex public policy in terms that are easy to grasp.

“For them, it’s like us being judged by a layperson,” senior Tory Rowe said, referring to a debate tournament judge unfamiliar with the rapid-fire shorthand that can make a debate round challenging to follow.

“They have to be careful about shorthand,” Steele agreed.

“I was working with the team freshman and said something about the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, and they were like, ‘Huh?’ I said, ‘Obamacare,’ and they said, ‘Oh!’ ” The high school debaters see other parallels with the candidates. Debaters, like presidential candidates, must dress professionally. A

high school debate tournament looks like an adolescent version of recess at a high-stakes trial, with boys in suits and ties, and girls in high heels and suits or sober dresses.

Consequently, debaters inhabit a noticeably insular social sphere, compared with their high school classmates. Debaters are quick to speak up in class and are usually confident about their opinions.

“I’ve heard debate described as a school within a school,” senior Adam Wise said.

“Outside debate, people don’t hate on you, but I think the debate culture is kind of intimidating. Sometimes people zone out while we’re talking. I think the undecided voters are analogous.”

Claire Martin: 303-954-1477, cmartin@denverpost.com or twitter.com/byclairemartin

T EL EVISE D D E BATES

Candidates’ presence as important as their substance

By Joanne Ostrow Denver Post Television Critic

Let the fact-checkers do their thing. Let the pundits judge who won.

For the television audience — and, after all, we are the real target for the debate, particularly the undecideds on the couch — there are more visceral cues we’ll seek before anointing a winner.

Like it or not, this is show business. Acting presidential is equivalent to being presidential. Sounding like a leader in this media audition will help the contender to land the part.

Stagecraft matters. The importance of JFK’s tan and rested appearance versus Nixon’s

pasty look under the lights remains the defining shorthand for how to win an intense round of modern media rivalry. Movement is limited, but some debaters have found ways to walk toward the opponent or demonstrate comfort in their own skins.

President Barack Obama and his challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, have the physical part down. With two candidates looking fit and briefed to within an inch of spontaneity, the challenges this year are subtler.

The keys to victory in the 2012 presidential candidates’ debates are different for each candidate. To score points with the TV audience, Obama has to sell himself as less professorial,

less remote, more Clinton-style warm and exciting. Romney needs to sell himself as more human, less robotic, more W-style accessible.

Viewers want to see them engage, not just relay jabs through a moderator.

For both, the key is to avoid a major gaffe, or even a small gaffe that could be portrayed as major. The goal is to be superprepared without looking superprepared.

Bringing out enough canned “ad libs” and quotable zingers will help, as long as they don’t sound overrehearsed. Presumably, both parties have squadrons of speechwriters putting the finishing touches on a clever turn of phrase that will be cited long after the lights go down.

“There you go again.”

“Where’s the beef?”

The winner will chart a course midway between corny superpatriotism and cynical intellectualism. The challenge is to appear to debate while actually orating. The apparent winner, to those watching from home, will be the one who appears to be engaging his opponent while actually landing polished punches for the cameras, all while sounding like a leader with answers.

And not sweating.

Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp

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6

“I was tied up at the time.”

During a 2007 Republican primary debate, Arizona Sen. John McCain was questioned about his support of a museum paying tribute to the Woodstock music festival in 1969. McCain, a Navy pilot who was shot down on his 23rd bombing mission in October 1967 and spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, replied that he had missed the iconic concert on a farm in Bethel, N.Y.

BUCHTEL Magness Arena details Capacity: 8,000 — although it’s a given that there will be far fewer seats available than the maximum the arena will hold.

U N I V E R S I T Y O F D E N V E R ’s

$3.5 million*

Members of the media: About 3,000 media from around the world are expected to descend on DU. On TV: C-Span will have preliminary coverage at 6:30 p.m., and the 90-minute debate will be live on C-Span, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN starting at 7 p.m.

* Projected

STERN LAW BUILDING

Who’s in charge?

SHWAYDER ART BUILDING

The debate itself: The Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization

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Everything surrounding the debate: DU

“This Bud’s for you”: Although Pete Coors is among DU’s more prominent alumni, media won’t be able to enjoy a Silver Bullet after a long day’s work. The commission’s contract for aprés-debate beverages is with Budweiser, not Coors.

UT

DRISCOLL NORTH AND PENROSE LIBRARY

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Walking on thin ice: As candidates take the stage, they’ll be walking on a floor placed inches above the ice used by the DU Pioneers hockey team.

Viewers: Add in international coverage, and more than 200 million viewers are expected to tune in — more than double the number who watch the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards.

DEBATE BOUNDARY

E AV E N U Y R U B S EAST A

JOHN MOYE HALL

Magness Arena Debate site

Talking heads

Includes $1.65 million that DU must pay the Commission on Presidential Debates for production costs.

RITCHIE CENTER

Tickets: Tickets to the debate will not be available to the public. Some DU students and faculty will attend with tickets awarded through a lottery.

University of Denver Light rail station

2012 DEBATE FEST

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DEBATE FEST BOUNDARY Source: University of Denver Severiano Galván and Thomas McKay, The Denver Post

AG E O F SO CIA L MEDIA

Tweeters poised to opine on the ga≠es and have-nots Twitter gives campaigns an immediate impact that can help and hurt candidates

By Joanne Ostrow Denver Post Television Critic

I

t’s not just that TV and cable-news network analysts are calling the campaigns and debates like a horse race. It’s that everyone on the couch at home is able to offer color commentary.

In the same way that makeup, sweat, TV lights and a 5 o’clock shadow changed political and media history in 1960, social media have the potential to change things now.

Social media function as an added echo chamber, supporting and cementing ideas, bringing up and knocking down theories about who’s winning. All in real time.

In 1960, post-debate conversations took place across the back fence over days or weeks. In 2012, it’s instantly across the ether.

Chances are that the voices you choose to follow on Twitter confirm your own beliefs.

When we watch the political debates, we’re not absorbing issues or checking facts. (For

that, we read or at least watch the more detailed news reports.) When we watch the debates, we’re lying in wait.

A flood of messages The explosion of Twitter is relatively recent: In 2008, a total of 1.6 million tweets were sent on Election Day. Now, that many tweets are dispatched every 6 minutes.

Twitter has more than 140 million active monthly users who tweet about 400 million times a day.

The campaigns have figured out how to use Twitter to influence and undermine. Both sides flood the stream with messages, often creating multiple accounts from aliases (in the same way folks long ago figured out how to pack the newspaper’s letters-to-the-editor page). Reactions are immediate; spin is constant, pouncing on the opponent’s weakness or perceived flubs, claiming a million tiny victories and reinforcing the candidates’ talking points.

Serious political junkies rely on the Twitter

Political Index, which offers “a real-time look at voters’ moods, and scores which presidential candidate is trending up (and who is trending down) day to day.”

By using “sentiment analysis,” the index tracks how people feel about each candidate.

In the pre-Twitter era, during the Bill ClintonGeorge H.W. Bush showdown of 1992, politicalcommunication expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson described the trend toward “adlike” political campaigns and the way they were covered.

Jamieson, head of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, wrote that reporters and analysts forsake their roles as political journalists when they become more like drama critics summing up performances.

Now, Jamieson says, social media further the trend.

“Because the media will track Twitter, this effect will be magnified. Campaigns will be trying to frame any ambiguous sentence as a gaffe,” she said.

“There’s a contest between the campaigns

and the public to control the feed. Instead of working from spin rooms, they try to push their views through Twitter,” she said.

The gift of gaffe, er, gab To those of us on the couch, the definition of a gaffe has relaxed and expanded.

A gaffe can be a blooper such as Rick Perry’s brain freeze on point No. 3 after ticking off Nos. 1 and 2 of three points in this year’s primaries.

But a simply flat performance can be blown up into a gaffe from the social-media gossips on the sidelines.

Hints of nastiness, flashes of temper and perceived unpresidential casualness, in addition to obvious whoppers as defined by the fact-checkers, will be spotted on both sides and counted as gaffes. They will be pounced upon instantly in social-media chatter.

Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp

6

the denver post B denverpost.com B wednesday, october 3, 2012

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“I will put Medicare in an iron-clad lockbox.”

Vice President Al Gore, in his first debate with George W. Bush, repeated the phrase “lock box” often enough that it became “SNL” fodder for much of the campaign season. Another classic “SNL” quote came from Chevy Chase, as President Gerald Ford, when presented with a complicated question on economics in one of the first “SNL” mock-debates: “It was my understanding there would be no math.”

niversity of Denver students Tuesday take the stage during a rehearsal for Wednesday night’s presidential debate at the Ritchie Center. Dia Mohamed, right, portrayed President Barack Obama, while Zach Gonzales played Romney. The moderator was played by Sam Garry. The debate, which begins at 7 p.m., will be divided into six segments of approximately 15 minutes each. The moderator will open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the topic. Craig Walker, The Denver Post

U

Meet the moderators

Seen and heard, but you don’t notice them unless they mess up

By Karen Augé The Denver Post

Quick, without Googling, name the moderators of the Kennedy-Nixon debates.

How about the Lincoln-Douglas sparring matches.

Stumped?

You should be. (But rest assured, answers will be forthcoming.)

Debate moderators are a bit like National Football League referees: You don’t notice them until they mess up.

That’s more or less as it should be, according to veteran moderator Jim Lehrer, who will handle the duties Wednesday at the first presidential debate of the 2012 campaign, on the University of Denver campus.

“The moderator’s job is to facilitate an exchange of views between the candidates about things that matter. Period,” Lehrer wrote in answer to a question about whether a good moderator should try to illuminate issues, or get a candidate to reveal unknown views, or trip up a candidate who is being overly circumspect.

Lehrer’s view may be one reason the Commission on Presidential Debates has selected him 11 times now to moderate debates.

“We want someone who understands the focus should be on the candidates and issues, not the moderator,” said Peter Eyre, senior adviser for the commission.

“That’s difficult and something that is critically important,” Eyre said.

Lehrer, who is known as the dean of debate moderators, called his book about his experiences as a moderator “Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates.”

In it, Lehrer, who compares moderating debates to “walking down the blade of a knife,” describes the anxiety he felt before moderating his first presidential debate, in 1988.

“Dealing with nerves is the key to being able to function effectively as a moderator,” Lehrer wrote. “Possibilities of pleasure and satisfaction, horror and failure await everyone who performs.”

This year, for the first time in two decades, one of the presidential debate moderators will be a woman.

That should make three teenagers from New Jersey happy.

When Emma Axelrod, Elena Tsemberis and Sammi Siegel learned that no woman had moderated a debate since Carole Simpson did

Voice of experience Wednesday’s debate at the University of Denver will be Jim Lehrer’s 12th nationally televised presidential debate.

1988: Moderated one presidential debate.

1992: Moderated two presidential debates.

1996: Selected to be the sole moderator of all three debates, two presidential and one vice presidential.

2000: Again selected as the sole moderator of the three presidential debates, which were conducted in different formats: podium, roundtable and town hall.

2004: Moderator of the first presidential debate in Coral Gables, Fla. 2008: Moderator of the first presidential debate in Oxford, Miss.

Source: pbs.org

it in 1992 — before they were born — they got mad, and they got busy.

The trio launched a petition on Change.org demanding, as Sammi Siegel put it on the website, “to have a woman on the same stage as the men running for president.”

When that petition collected 150,000 signatures, the young ladies delivered it to the people who pick the moderators, the Commission on Presidential Debates.

“Through this campaign, millions of Americans learned that two decades passed without a woman moderating a U.S. presidential debate,” said Axelrod. “We are so proud to have helped educate Americans on this issue and are extremely happy that women and girls watching the debates this year will see a potential role model up on the stage moderating.”

Not everybody was pleased with the commission’s choices for the 2012 moderating team.

As Politico noted in August, the roster of moderators this time around doesn’t quite reflect the voting population. “They’re old, they’re white and they rarely if ever use Twitter,” Dylan Byers wrote in the online political journal.

Grousing about moderator choices is pretty common, Eyre said.

“In every cycle, there are individuals and

groups who think that particular people or issues should be featured and this year was no different. We listen to all sorts of feedback,” the commission’s Eyre said.

There have been a few times when moderators made news.

In 1988, CNN’s Bernard Shaw raised eyebrows when he asked Democrat Michael Dukakis, during a debate against George H.W. Bush, a provocative question about his wife: “If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”

In one of the few debate instances when the answer was less memorable than the question, Dukakis said no.

Then, in 2004, some Democrats howled over the choice of CBS’s Bob Schieffer to handle a debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush, since the latter also happened to have once been co-owner with Schieffer’s brother, Tom, of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Conservative commentators, meanwhile, blew a collective gasket in 2008 when PBS journalist Gwen Ifill was chosen to moderate the lone sparring match between 2008 vice presidential contenders Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. That debate took place mere months before Ifill’s book “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama” was due to hit shelves.

People remember Ross Perot’s charts and graphs, or Lloyd Bentsen telling Dan Quayle he was no Jack Kennedy, or Ronald Reagan saying, “There you go again,” or Al Gore talking about lock boxes.

They don’t so much remember Jim Lehrer, Judy Woodruff or Jim Lehrer, who moderated the debates that produced those candidate moments.

Similarly, they remember a pale, perspiring Nixon and a young, smiling Kennedy but not Howard K. Smith, then of CBS News, who moderated the first, and most memorable, of the four debates between the two. The remaining three were moderated by Frank McGee of NBC News, and Bill Shadel and Quincy Howe, both of ABC News.

As for Lincoln-Douglas moderators — that was a trick question. There weren’t any.

Karen Augé: 303-954-1733, kauge@denverpost.com or twitter.com/karenauge

First presidential debate: Wednesday Domestic policy Jim Lehrer, Executive editor of the PBS NewsHour

Vice presidential debate: Oct. 11 Foreign and domestic topics Martha Raddatz, senior foreign affairs correspondent, ABC News

Second presidential debate: Oct. 16 Foreign and domestic policy Candy Crowley, chief political correspondent and anchor, CNN

Third presidential debate: Oct. 22 Foreign policy Bob Schieffer, chief Washington correspondent, CBS News

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