It’s must-see reality TV if ever there was such a thing. Two
candidates, three debates, one utterly disgraced network. (That’s
CBS, locus of
”
Rathergate,
”
the recent forged-memo scandal, if you’re scoring at home.)
George W. Bush vs. John Kerry, Sept. 30 on prime time. Outwit,
outplay, outmessage.
It’s must-see reality TV if ever there was such a thing. Two candidates, three debates, one utterly disgraced network. (That’s CBS, locus of “Rathergate,” the recent forged-memo scandal, if you’re scoring at home.) George W. Bush vs. John Kerry, Sept. 30 on prime time. Outwit, outplay, outmessage.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats are calling this contest “the most important election of your lifetime” – which just goes to show that political campaigners really have caught on to the PR tactics of reality television producers. Except that reality TV producers tend to use the construction, “the best/most thrilling/ least clothed episode/season/freak show of ‘Survivor’/’Fear Factor’/’The Amazing Race’ EVER,” instead of “in YOUR LIFETIME.” Because, you know, “the most important election ever” sounds pretty childish, while “the best season of ‘Survivor’ in your lifetime” is just plain silly, considering it’s only eight seasons old.
Now of course, these debates matter a great deal more than whatever buffoon wins “The Apprentice.” We’re not so numbed by pop culture to argue with that. Obsessed to the point of seeing everything through its prism, but not numbed. It’s just that in the past few months, A. we’ve seen a heck of a lot of Bush and Kerry already, and B. what we’ve seen hasn’t exactly inspired us to breathlessly TiVo their next public appearance.
Oh, it’s been an exciting race so far, so exciting that in a way, we seem to be losing perspective on what this election’s all about. In a week that saw the beheading of another American contractor in Iraq and some of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in that country, the big story was the aforementioned Rathergate, which involved yet another rehash of the candidates’ Vietnam War-era history. In this case, under the microscope was President Bush’s attendance and performance while a member of the Texas Air National Guard. In past weeks, Senator Kerry’s activities as a Swift Boat captain during the Vietnam War were called into question.
Because, you see, it’s not like we have an actual war happening right now, this second, to talk about.
Yet even when there’s a pause in the mudslinging about stuff that happened three decades ago, we hardly go into the issues of the day. Instead – and this has to do with the upcoming debates, promise – the talking heads start blathering about the “likeability” of the candidates, if they’re “presidential” enough, whether Bush or Kerry is “the sort of guy you want to sit down with and have a beer.”
In short, lots of discussion of the skin-deep, and not much on the substance. (For the record, given his history with alcohol, President Bush is the guy we want to sit down with and have 16 beers, eight shots of tequila, a wild night in Juarez, a car wreck and a fistfight with Dad.)
The debates are the time when we get down to the real business. At least that’s the theory. The country is so evenly divided for this election, so firmly in either the Bush camp or the Kerry camp, that the experts say the whole shebang could come down to an undecided postal worker living just outside Erie, Penn.
That undecided voter will certainly watch these debates – three of them are planned between Bush and Kerry, and another between Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards, Kerry’s running mate. (Suggested script for the Vice Presidential debate – Cheney: JOHN, I AM YOUR FATHER!!! Edwards: NOOOOOOOOO!)
And the undecided – it really is astounding to think there’s ANY of them left – may well make their decisions based on whether Bush or Kerry performs better in the debates. In other words, the next few weeks will probably decide this election … which isn’t particularly enlightening, but does put somewhat of a question mark on Bush’s recent surge in the polls.
With all this in mind, we really should take a look at what each candidate hopes to accomplish in the debates. From an entirely skin-deep, no-substance perspective, of course.
THE HEIGHT FACTOR
Kerry is a towering 6’4″, while Bush is a rather average 5’11”. Somewhat ironically, it was George H.W. Bush’s height advantage, amongst other much more meaningful things, that helped carry him to a landslide victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988. You see, taller people tend to look more in control, dare we say, “more presidential,” when they’re standing next to shorter people.
Unless they’re Manute Bol-tall, because that’s just freaky.
This is not something we should be proud of, but it’s a factor nonetheless. Especially in these head-to-head debates, when the candidates are sharing a stage.
Expect Bush’s handlers to come up with some novel approaches to countering Kerry’s height advantage. They could simply put their guy on a box behind the podium. More likely they will issue a set of demands to debate organizers regarding where the network camera clusters are positioned (straight-on: bad; angles that obfuscate the height difference: good); insist on a question-and-answer format that minimizes cross-talk between the candidates (leading to less shots of both on screen at the same time); put Bush behind a podium that’s shorter than Kerry’s (a more subtle variation of the “put Bush on a box” tactic); and even shoot for a sit-down format for at least one of the debates.
What the Bush team can do without any outside help is to get their man a suit that fits him. Maybe you recall Bush’s disasterous interview with Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” back in February. He seemed tired, lacked focus and generally acquitted himself quite poorly. He was sitting in an oversized chair that made him look smaller than usual, in a suit one-and-a-half sizes too big.
Supporters noted at the time that Bush “doesn’t do one-on-one well” – he’s more of a standing-on-a-pile-of-rubble-with-a-bullhorn kind of guy. But privately (and not-so-privately), Republicans were worried. While Kerry was out fighting for his life in the seemingly endless Democratic primary season, Bush was losing his rhetorical edge, reverting to his pre-9/11 butchery of the language and looking more than usual like Alfred E. Neumann.
Which leads us to …
THE READINESS FACTOR
One of the main reasons for Bush’s surprising political success since the mid-1990’s is that he sneaks up on people. This is not random; it’s a strategy perfected by campaign mastermind Karl Rove, his main handler for the bulk of his political career.
What happens is that the press and the public are carefully led to believe that Bush is a bit of a bumbler, a simple fellow who has big, clear ideas but not much of a gift for communicating them. The expectations are so low going into his debates, that when he scores points he gets much more credit for them than other debaters would.
This is how he managed to knock the erudite Ann Richards off her perch as governer of Texas in 1994, and how he trimmed Al Gore’s sails during their presidential debates in 2000.
The problem with this strategy in 2004 is that Bush is no longer an unknown. He’s the guy who stood on the rubble with the bullhorn. Some might go so far as to say he’s the President.
You have to think that Bush doesn’t get a free – or even substantially discounted – pass at debates anymore. He really shouldn’t get a prize for being able to string a grammatical response together these days. At least, on networks other than Fox News.
The strange thing is that several followers of Bush’s career claim that his debate skills have deteriorated since those long ago clashes with Ann Richards in Texas. While he usually manages to rise to the occasion for a scripted speech (and is often quite brilliant, as with the post-9/11 address to a joint session of Congress), according to some, he was once a fairly effective debater as well.
Despite his off-the-charts popularity with roughly half the electorate, Bush really is in the fight of his political life. He needs to recapture some of his old debating skills if he wants to survive. On Sept. 30, we shall see if he put in the effort to regain that edge after his rock-bottom performance on “Meet the Press,” as so many commentators were suggesting he do.
Kerry, meanwhile, has the advantage of being in some sort of debating shape. Several months of taking on the likes of Al Sharpton and John Edwards in whistle stops across the country will do that for you. And make no mistake, practice is really, really important in debating.
As James Fallows recently wrote in The Atlantic: “Based on all available evidence, [Bill] Clinton is the rare orator who doesn’t need formal practice to excel. Gore, with his overdeliberate speaking style, managed to give practice a bad name. But in public speaking as in most other pursuits, practice usually makes people better, and rustiness makes them worse.”
Kerry is quite obviously a lot closer to Gore-like overdeliberateness as an orator than to Clintonesque pizzazz. But as Fallows goes on to note, Kerry’s debates eight years ago with William Weld, then-governor of Massachussetts competing for Kerry’s Senate seat, show a surprisingly agile speaker – much as Bush’s debates with Richards reveal a better off-the-cuff speaker than we now believe him to be.
The difference is that, according to Fallows, “throughout his public life John Kerry has sounded the same,” whether giving speeches, interviews or debating. The Kerry that took on Weld is almost certain to turn up in the debates this fall. Bush, meanwhile, seems to have devolved as a spontaneous speaker, while strangely improving by leaps and bounds as a deliverer of prepared text.
Will this marked contrast in abilities play out on Sept. 30? For Bush to prevail, he’ll need to somehow get the canned responses he’s good at to sound like reasonable facsimiles of spontaneous responses. For Kerry to prevail, he’ll have to hope Bush can’t pull that off.
THE LIKEABILITY FACTOR
Briefly, the big problem John Kerry has is that, while about half of the people hate him and half hate George W. Bush, the half that hates Kerry genuinely likes Bush, while the half that hates Bush doesn’t really seem to like Kerry one way or the other.
There’s really only so far Kerry can go as a convenient instrument for those who want to take out Bush. At some point, he’s got to get people excited about his candidacy in its own right.
He made some progress at the Democratic National Convention in July. Unfortunately, not enough people watched as his daughters fleshed out their dad’s family life, as the likable Edwards took the stage (he has absolutely disappeared from the national stage of late, a terrible situation for the Democrats), and as Kerry himself basked in the brotherhood of his Swift Boat comrades.
The debates are Kerry’s last shot for America to get to know him. He still has to press the issues hard – and in recent weeks he has finally taken a semi-strong stand on his differences with Bush over the crucial issue of Iraq – but he has to do it in a way that showcases a less doom-and-gloom side that many Dems fear may not be there.
Bush, for his part, doesn’t really have to win anybody over. His partisans love him, and they’re not going anywhere else on election night. Those swing voters who will decide this election probably like him okay, but they’re worried about where the country’s headed under his watch, particularly in Iraq.
Bush probably isn’t going to alienate these swing voters with his performance (which will as usual drive those who’ve made a profession of hating the President batty), so his best bet is to try to throw Kerry off his game, preventing the lanky Senator from connecting on a personal level with the undecideds in the swing states.
THE ISSUES
This is what it all comes down to, despite the media’s (hey, ourselves included!) obsession with the popularity contest.
For Bush, “fuzzy math” one-liners don’t cut it when talking about the economy, anymore. Not when he’s presided over the greatest deficit run-up in U.S. history and the most jobs lost since Herbert Hoover was in the White House.
Jumping all over the place on the rationale for war with Iraq isn’t going to work, either – since 2002 we’ve gone from the imminent threat of (missing) WMDs to the (unproven) al-Qaeda connection to the (yet-to-occur) flowering of democracy in the Middle East. Bush better have his story straight on this, because he’s going to be grilled on it. At the very least, he’s got to avoid glaring inconsistencies in message during a single response to a question. If he can again present himself as the steely-eyed commander-in-chief of 2002, he’s got it sewn up.
For Kerry, the key will be quickly getting past his own recent record (pro-Iraq War) and hammering on the differences between himself and Bush – with the coda on each criticism being his own positive plan for doing things right. And at some point, he’s going to have to come up with a convincing explanation for exactly what the heck he’s being doing in the Senate all these long years.
The Democrats are in the unusual position of having some real ammunition to use on the Republicans regarding the economy, in terms of fiscal responsibility. And yet the biggest issue is the War on Terror, on which both party machines largely agree, despite big differences in views across the electorate.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see the candidates steer clear of a big dust-up over the War on Terror during these debates, while ginning up on the economy (Kerry territory) and the social issues like gay marriage and education (Bush territory).
These debates could well be won or lost on the fringe of the actual pre-eminent national debate – the elephant in the room that is the over 1,000 Americans dead in Iraq and a situation spiralling out of control.
That’d be a shame, but, hey, Bush vs. Kerry will still make for excellent television. Maybe not “Surviror: All-Stars” excellent, but let’s not set the bar too high.
