The US Election: 3. The TV Debates

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Hello and welcome to Understand the U.S.

Election, a nuts and bolts guide to how the next American president will be chosen.

We focus on the rules, such as as they are, how the candidates are selected, what happens on the campaign trail, on election night, during the inauguration, and beyond.

That's what my guests and I have been talking about, and they bring us a few lessons from history along the way.

My name is Justin Webb.

I'm one of the hosts of AmeriCast, our BBC Sounds podcast on all things American.

I lived in the U.S.

for many years during the presidencies of George W.

Bush and Barack Obama, both of whom I interviewed, both of whom feel, in a sense, like characters from another age.

Talking of which, we focus today on an aspect of presidential campaigning invented when screens were black and white and kept in the corner of the room, the TV debates.

Sarah Smith, the current North America editor, is joining me to share her expertise.

Sarah's a fellow presenter of AmeriCast.

Howdy, Sarah.

Hey, y'all.

Good to talk to you, Justin.

And my other guest today, a proper American, is Margaret O'Mara, O'Mara, who's chair of American history at the University of Washington.

Margaret, hello.

Hello, great to be here.

Let's start, if we may, with a kind of seminal moment in the history, not just of TV debates, but actually of U.S.

elections.

That moment in 1960, the first presidential debate.

It's John F.

Kennedy for the Democrats.

It's Richard Nixon for the Republicans.

Let's hear a bit of that Nixon-Kennedy debate from NewsHour on PBS.

Good evening.

The television and radio stations of the United States and their affiliated stations are proud to provide facilities for a discussion of issues in the current political campaign by the two major candidates for the presidency.

The kind of strength we build in the United States will be the defense of freedom.

If we do well here, if we meet our obligations, if we're moving ahead, then I think freedom will be secure around the world.

If we fail, then freedom fails.

The things that Senator Kennedy has said, many of us can agree with.

There is no question but that we cannot discuss our internal affairs in the United States without recognizing that they have a tremendous bearing on our international position.

Margaret, how did it come about?

Well, it was the first televised debate between two nominees of the major parties.

It was at a moment when, in 1960, this was kind of when television had reached full saturation point in American households.

And, you know, almost every household had a television.

Over 70 million Americans tuned in.

It was a huge event.

Now, Nixon was very prepared on the substance.

He knew what he was talking about.

In fact, perhaps more substantive than Kennedy, those who listened to it on the radio supposedly thought Nixon won the debate, if anyone can win these debates.

But yet on television, Nixon, who was recovering from a two weeks off the campaign trail nursing a knee injury, was looking a little peaky.

The hot lights of the studio were shining upon him.

He had flop sweat and was

brushing his face with his handkerchief and did not come off well.

And Kennedy, in contrast, those of your listeners who are familiar with John F.

Kennedy will remember quite a handsome man and very good on television.

So the visual triumphed over the substantive.

Yeah, which is a lesson about television, I guess, but it's also a lesson to subsequent people taking part.

Because I'm right in saying, Anto, that Nixon was offered makeup, but had refused it, thought it was unmanly.

Oh, absolutely.

Yes.

And his five o'clock shadow showed.

And in subsequent outings, particularly, especially when he ran again and won in 1968, eight years later, Nixon was extraordinarily conscious of his television presentation.

And in fact, hired a bunch of Madison Avenue ad executives, the real-life mad men, to advise his campaign and provide some snazzy television spots and present him in a wholly different light.

Okay, so that's what happened.

Why did it matter so much?

Why was it such a revolutionary moment?

Well, it was the confluence of television becoming this major medium for political communication and also the debate format being something that clearly people were tuning into and that seemed to be quite consequential, a way for the two major candidates or the candidates of a major party to appear together and to say what they had to say about their positions.

But more importantly, what mattered more was how you said it, how you looked when you were saying it.

And what really resonates from the debates and what becomes memorable and recycled are these one-liners, these moments that solidify a candidate's image and reputation or play into a prevailing narrative and reinforce it.

And so when we look back on the debates, no one really remembers what was said about policy, but what is remembered are these little moments of asides, one-liners, put-downs that resonate across the decades.

Did it swing it?

Did it swing the election?

It's not quite clear.

I think that perhaps the debate of Kennedy-Nixon in 60 has taken on this outsized importance.

The election itself was very, very close, extraordinarily close.

And so in these very close elections, it is easy to look back on these televised moments, these electric moments that seem to define the candidates and the race and say, ah, this changed everything.

But really, when we dig in and look at the polling data, whether it be 1960 or more recently,

it is not a decisive moment, but often it can give voters an impression of who a candidate is that can be hard to shake.

And Sarah, they have changed down the years.

For one thing, everyone takes makeup these days.

But, I mean, how?

What has happened to the format?

Has it progressed?

What's its position now, at least up until this year in the presidential cycle?

Well, it's still seen as very important, certainly by the candidates who put an enormous amount of work into preparing for these debates.

Right in the middle of an election campaign, they take several days out and disappear off with their advisors and do full rehearsals with people playing their opponent.

They go through again and again what the most difficult questions or moments might be, practice those zinger one-liners that they hope will be broadcast again and again on the television and of course these days go viral on social media.

So they do put an enormous amount of effort into rehearsing for these things because they know if something goes wrong, it could be absolutely disastrous for them if they freeze on stage or make a terrible mistake.

I would say they have become much more rehearsed and practiced.

As candidates who've been on the campaign trail for months and months by then repeating their same sound bites, their same stump speeches, they tend to use all of the same lines again and again on the TV debate, using as a crutch these lines that they have rehearsed well in public already.

And with the result, it stops feeling so much like a debate these days and it's more like kind of two competing press conferences going on side by side.

And if that is the case, do they still have an impact on people's perception of the candidates before they vote?

For a lot of people who haven't had the opportunity to see the candidates on the campaign trail, if they don't live in one of the states that votes early in primaries or caucuses.

This is their best chance to see what the candidates are like when they're not filtered just through a sound bite or the kind of adverts that they're assaulted with on the television.

This is an opportunity to see how they perform at greater length and get a sense of their personality, how they interact with their opponent.

Because of course in America you are electing your head of state, your president.

It's not a government that you're choosing.

It is the president.

And the debates are the best opportunity for a lot of voters to try and get a more rounded sense of who it is they're being asked to vote for.

Margaret, has there been one since Kennedy Nixon that has had a kind of outsized influence, would you say, that sticks out in recent history?

Yeah, there have been a number of moments that have been consequential.

I think about the 1980 debate between Jimmy Carter, who was then the incumbent president, and Ronald Reagan, who was then his Republican challenger, and where Carter was really hammering on Reagan for his inexperience.

And Reagan was seen as something of a lightweight or someone who was not prepared to be president at the time.

And Reagan was his telegenic self.

I mean, he was a movie star for a reason.

He really knew how to lighten the mood and kept on saying, there you go again, Mr.

President, you know, being dour and down when we should be looking, being optimistic.

and looking to the future.

I also think about 1992, when it's George H.W.

Bush, the father, the incumbent president, again, debating not only Bill Clinton, his Democratic challenger, but also Ross Perot, who was the third-party independent candidate in the general election then.

And Bush was being assailed for being out of touch, for not having his finger on the pulse being relatable to ordinary Americans.

And towards the end of this very long debate that involved two long-winded opponents, he quietly looked at his watch while

another candidate was speaking.

And that moment was caught and really was reinforcing this narrative of George Bush just wanting this to be over, not really caring about what was going on with ordinary Americans.

And that was something that was recycled again and again and again.

Okay, let's bring it up to date.

Sarah, this is going to be an election, this 2024 election, in which Gen Z, Gen Z, millennials as well, making up half of the total electorate.

So to the extent that they watch these debates at all, quite a lot of it is going to be clips, isn't it?

Viral clips on places like TikTok.

So the question, how does that affect the debates themselves and the way they're consumed and I suppose the impact they have?

You can bet the candidates and their teams will be putting an enormous amount of thought into crafting moments and lines that will work on TikTok, on Instagram, on any social media platform, because they know that's the way that their message is going to get to these younger voters who are very unlikely to watch the entire thing on television.

But what we do know already is the more you try to make a viral moment happen, the less likely it is to take off.

It's the unscripted moments, the mistakes, the bloopers that are much more likely to travel.

So, in many ways, what the candidates have to do is try and avoid doing that.

It may mean that they have to encapsulate their message much more briefly than they would have to for an audience who are going to watch the whole of the debate to make sure that it can travel across social media in a very short clip.

And it'll be really interesting to watch whether it means the whole debate becomes much more disjointed than it would when people are assuming that longer clips will be then shared in television news reports later.

Now, we've talked about these debates as if they're going to happen again this year.

There's nothing set in stone, is there, Sarah, that says they have to happen.

No, it's not as though it's an electoral law or rule.

Usually candidates agree to it.

There's always more in it for the challenger.

An incumbent president has more to lose by taking on somebody who hasn't sat in the Oval Office.

Of course, this year it's extremely likely that we will have a sitting president and a former president competing against each other in Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

And it's highly possible, I would say even likely, that Donald Trump will refuse to take part in these debates.

He doesn't need to introduce himself to America via the medium of these debates.

The electorate already know very, very well who he is.

And we know he hasn't suffered at all from refusing to take part in the Republican primary debates.

And he's still miles ahead in the polls, despite despite the fact that all his challengers have taken part in four televised debates and he has skipped them.

So he may well think there's not that much in it for him to actually turn up and do these debates this year.

RIP the debates, Margaret, 1960 to 2024.

Yeah, I agree with Sarah.

I think there's a strong likelihood that we will not see debates if these indeed are the two major party candidates.

This is some, you know, should give all of us pause.

And these moments, as scripted as they can be, when they do become unscripted and when you do see the people head-to-head, face-to-face in conversation or debate, it can be clarifying, it can be revealing, and we will miss those moments.

Hopefully we all understand now why TV debates have been such a big deal in America.

Margaret Amara, thanks very much for joining us.

Great to be here.

And Sarah, thanks too.

It's a pleasure.

And remember, if you want to keep up with everything going on during the 2024 election, you can listen to Americast, available weekly on BBC Sounds.

The next episode of Understand the U.S.

Election is going to be about election day.

See you all later.

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