The first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney starts tonight at 8. The theme is domestic issues. Questions will focus on the economy, health care, the role of government.
Presidential debates are political theater, political sport. They feature scripted answers to broadly predictable questions. Zingers are memorized, awaiting their moment. Moderators are familiar, comfortable to candidates and audience. (Really familiar: Tonight’s moderator is Jim Lehrer and tonight’s debate is Lehrer’s 11th as moderator.) We will learn nothing about each candidate and his position on the issues that we don’t already know.
But issues and policies are not why we watch the debates: We watch to receive reassurance from our candidate that he can hold his own and to hope the other candidate makes a mistake - says or does something stupid that will irreparably harm his campaign and send it spiraling toward defeat.
Most presidential debates produce at least one line or act the media will chew on for days and late-night comics will exploit for laughs until everything else about a debate disappears from memory. It can occur on script or off. Ronald Reagan’s “There you go again” to Jimmy Carter in 1980 and “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience” in response to a question about his age during his second debate with Walter Mondale in 1984. Michael Dukakis’ emotionless response to a hypothetical question about his wife, rape and the death penalty in 1988. George H.W. Bush checking his watch in 1992. Al Gore’s sighs in 2000. George W. Bush’s plaintive plea in 2004 that being president was “hard work.”
Memorable moments, each one, but how many votes did each one change? (We can’t count Rick Perry’s “oops” moment, which occurred during a primary debate, not a general election debate, and which was just the last in a string of debate blunders by a floundering Perry.) President Gerald Ford’s “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” is probably the biggest gaffe in presidential debate history, but it didn’t doom his candidacy.
It occurred Oct. 6, 1976, during the second of three debates between Ford and Carter. This debate focused on foreign policy so naturally, it being the Cold War and all, each candidate faced several questions about U.S.-Soviet relations. The New York Times’ Max Frankel asked Ford about the 1975 Helsinki Agreement, a détente-era document that recognized Europe’s postwar borders while endorsing human rights and basic freedoms such as speech and travel. Ford’s response about the Soviets in Eastern Europe leaves Frankel doing a double take; he can’t believe what he’s just heard and he asks Ford to clarify. Had Ford at this point said something like, “What I mean, Mr. Frankel, is no matter the current political or military situation, the Soviet Union will never dominate the spirit and hopes of the people of Eastern Europe and someday that spirit will prevail over Soviet tanks and occupation, and the Helsinki Agreement, I think, will play a role in lifting that spirit and encouraging it,” Ford’s response would today be forgotten. But Ford didn’t seem to understand that he had made a mistake, that what he had meant to say was not what he had actually said.
Without Ford’s gaffe, what would we remember about the 1976 debates? We’d remember that they were the first presidential debates since the four Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, and that unlike the Kennedy-Nixon debates, which were televised from closed studios, the Ford-Carter debates were held before live audiences and set the template for the presidential debates that have followed. Beyond that fact, without Ford’s gaffe the most memorable moment would be the audio failure during the first debate that left Ford and Carter standing stiffly and silently at their respective podiums for 27 minutes while technicians worked to fix the problem.
Ford faced an uphill battle in 1976 because of his pardon of Richard Nixon and the general post-Watergate mood affecting the country. The economy was stumbling as badly as Chevy Chase’s caricature of Ford on “Saturday Night Live,” and Ford had been weakened by a right-wing primary fight with Reagan. It was Ford who challenged Carter to the debates because he was behind by double digits in the polls and figured he had nothing to lose. He made the right move; by election day the race was a coin toss. In the end, Carter won 50.1 percent of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 240. Carter won Ohio by only 11,116 votes, Wisconsin by only 35,245 votes and Mississippi by only 14,463 votes. Swing a few thousand votes in Ohio and Wisconsin or Mississippi and Ford wins the election. Did Ford’s gaffe cost him those few thousand votes? Or did it mean anything, since the election closed significantly in the final weeks? Can it be argued that despite his gaffe Ford won the debates?
Similarly, did Gore’s sighs during his first debate with George W. Bush and his foolish attempt to intimidate Bush during the third debate by awkwardly invading Bush’s personal space cost him the 2000 election by turning off just enough voters to make a difference? Perhaps, though the votes Gore lost to Ralph Nader made a far greater difference.
Debates matter. They matter less than we think, or in different ways than we think. They matter somewhere at an election’s margins, which matter when elections are close. They matter in reinforcing perceptions. They matter at slightly stirring or dimming supporters’ enthusiasm. Or like just about everything associated with a presidential campaign debates matter not at all, since most of us have known all along whom we’re voting for. Whatever their effect, we watch. Because surely, someday, that Perry-like “oops” moment will come, and who doesn’t want to be there to witness it?