Will the Debates Between Obama and Romney Work?

With just a few short weeks until the completion of the U.S. presidential elections, attention is being focused on the three debates that will have Obama facing his challenger, Mitt Romney.

On Wednesday in Colorado, Tuesday, October 16 in New York and Monday, October 22 in Florida, Romney will have the last set of opportunities to turn it around for a party that is losing by a minimal difference in the popular vote. But in key states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico, the party seems to be losing by a more significant difference.

The perception, true or premature, that it has conceded ground has placed disproportionate pressure on the Republican in the “face to face” debates he will have with the president. It seems difficult. If he can’t turn things around any other way, it would seem odd to believe that an exchange of words with Obama — a man who has the presidential image simply because he holds this position and isn’t exactly incapable of doing his job — will be able to overturn things in spectacular fashion. Much less when, precisely because of the disadvantage that his own people believe him to have, Romney’s campaign and base have increased the expectations of the debates with Obama.

Their main problem, frankly, says Brett O’Donnell, the Republican debate coach is that, “Romney is not liked by people.”* Partly because of his rigidness, partly because to win the primaries he had to resort to negative campaigning and endured many accusations from his own side, and partly because in the post-housing bubble era, to have credentials as a financier is unprofitable, Romney simply attracts negative attention. To which we can amend, ahead of the debates, that President Obama does sit well with the populace, including a large percentage of Republicans. “The challenge is how to take the offensive without being offensive,” thinks the presidential historian Bruce Buchanan, “something difficult to measure and dependent more on his intuition of that moment rather than any advanced preparation.”** Comparably, Newt Gingrich, former Republican presidential hopeful, says, “He must be very affirmative and corral the president to overturn this. If he does to him what he did to me in two debates in Florida, when he launched a whole wealth of information about my background in my face without insult, but done very forcefully, he may dislodge him.”***

Clearly Romney needs to win debates more so than the president, for whom a draw or a narrow defeat would probably be sufficient. The Republican challenger’s ability to make a final attack in key states depends above all on his finances. As Steve Lombardo, who advised him in 2008, has reminded him, “The outcome of the first debate will be crucial for fundraising in the final stage of the campaign.”

Often more is expected from the presidential debates than they actually give. But there have been some cases in which they decisively reinforced a trend that hinted at or promoted a gradual change in perception. What the press has made of debates has, on many occasions, had an important influence on perceptions of who won. This may have helped move the needle, with some delayed effect. For this reason, and because, in the world of entertainment, the confrontation between two contenders for the scepter of power in front of tens of millions of viewers is the peak of political drama, debates are and will remain a source of fascination in this country.

It is worth remembering, however, that the history of presidential debates has to do not only with the obvious — the audiovisual era — but also with the very nature of political campaigns in the U.S. Originally, during the 18th century and early 19th century, it was improper for a candidate to campaign and ask the public for votes. He was supposed to maintain a sense of reserve, as the historian Samuel Morrison wrote, in order to maintain a tradition according to which he who served the nation agreed to do so at the nation’s request. Candidates would allow the newspapers, which were party organs and not independent publications, and others to campaign for them. The idea of a debate in which each defended his own candidacy over the other irritated that sense of public service that the office of president held.

The nature of campaigns shifted in the 1840s, when candidates started eagerly asking for votes from people in the street. It was not until almost two decades later that the first proper political debate appeared. I refer to that of Lincoln and Douglas for the seat in Illinois, largely at the request of the former, who pursued his rival over many days, appearing at his rallies and challenging him from the audience. Finally, with no moderator and no preset time limit, both conducted several encounters of several hours, mainly about slavery, which made history. So much history that during the recent Republican primary, Gingrich challenged Romney to emulate the Lincoln-Douglas debates, clashing for hours with no moderator and no rules to settle the dispute. The request went unfulfilled.

A decade passed before the institution of the presidential debate began as the tradition that continues today. Before that, there had been just one debate for the Republican primary in the state of Oregon in the 1940s and a meeting between Republicans and Democrats in a televised forum for women in the 1950s. The televised presidential debate was born in 1960 with the famous encounters that pitted John Kennedy against Richard Nixon. Three things made them possible. Firstly, television had become a force of cultural transmission so important that politics could not remain indifferent to it. Secondly, television networks were in conflict with the government, and in order to avoid federal regulation, they needed to show that their contribution to Americans’ lives could be of a civic, rather than just business or entertainment, nature. Finally, Congress had repealed a law previously requiring broadcasters to give equal time to all candidates (there were more than two).

The debates between the young senator from Massachusetts and Vice President Nixon influenced the former’s victory. There were four debates, mostly focused on the global threat of communism. What is remembered from the first debate is that a camera-friendly Kennedy destroyed, in the battle of the image, a Nixon with a “five o’clock shadow,” who was recovering from the flu and had rejected makeup. Those who watched the debate were in favor of Kennedy, while those who listened on the radio were enthusiastic about Nixon. Other debates did not show an advantage so marked for Kennedy, except the last, during which the senator was more aggressive toward the Castro regime.

Such was the impact of those debates that future candidates avoided them in successive years, fearful of Nixon’s televised syndrome. Only in 1976, when Jimmy Carter faced President Ford, did debates start being screened again. The face to face confrontation then became the landmark of any campaign.

Independently of whether they tipped the balance decisively or not, there have been very significant clashes in recent decades. Generally speaking, certain serious errors can be recalled. In the debate against Carter, for example, Gerald Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” which probably helped him dig his political grave. For days the press had a field day, accusing him of a naïveté and ignorance of the world unbecoming of a president.

In the vice presidential debate between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quale in 1988, the latter, who was young and inexperienced and had spent the campaign trying to show that there were precedents for inexperienced leaders who had done great things, made the mistake of saying that he had as many qualifications as John Kennedy in his day. Bentsen’s response (“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy”) was so devastating that, although Bush won the election, his vice president never recovered or become respectable.

And in the presidential debate between Bush the father and Michael Dukakis that year, Dukakis made a severe error when he responded coldly to the question of what he would do if his wife were raped and murdered, listing the arguments against the death penalty and exhibiting almost no emotion.

Humor has also played a gravitating role, allowing candidates an opportunity to diffuse situations that could have affected them negatively or, more importantly, helping them to dispel certain perceptions. It can be said that humor saved Ronald Reagan on occasions when he would have otherwise seemed extreme or less intellectually gifted than his opponent. He used it against Carter in 1980, and especially in 1984, during his reelection campaign when, questioned about his excessive age and the risks entailed in a second term, he snapped at Walter Mondale, who was already a fairly mature man: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political reasons, the youth and inexperience of my opponent.”

Some candidates have masterfully used one of several existing formats that can turn a presidential debate to his favor. For example, in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran against Bush, he chose a neighborhood meeting-style town hall, in which the candidates spoke with the audience. Clinton shone that day, displaying empathy with each person who asked questions (“I feel your pain”), in a way that Bush, who eventually showed impatience by looking at the clock, could never match.

Body language and gestures can be substantial in a debate because of the magnification the camera produces of something that would normally go unnoticed. During the debates between Barack Obama and John McCain in the last presidential election, the latter showed his utter disregard for the young senator, refusing to look at him when he spoke, or when referring to him in his round of speeches. Although this occurred mainly during the first debate, with McCain trying to correct it in subsequent meetings, the shock of the first encounter was never lost: During the next debates, the public noticed the same disdain in certain of the veteran senator’s faces and expressions, even though he perhaps had no such intention.

All these and others are the precedents that Obama and Romney have to consider over the course of their preparation, which will include viewing videos of previous debates. But, ultimately, no two debates and no two people can be the same, because there are no two identical situations. In other words, despite the many precedents that their coaches will try to use to inspire them, when the moment of truth arrives, Obama and Romney will be alone. Absolutely alone.

* Editor’s Note: This quote could not be verified.

** Editor’s Note: This quote could not be verified.

*** Editor’s Note: This quote could not be verified.