The 1960 presidential debate, the first-ever televised presidential debate in the history of our country, is not remembered for the candidates’ responses or arguments. The debate in September of this year between Vice President Richard Nixon and Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy is not remembered for Senator Kennedy’s comments on communism and the Soviet Union, or Nixon’s discussion of the economy and rising gross national product. This debate is not remembered as just a talisman of the world’s technological advances, or the onset of a new era in presidential campaigning. This debate is remembered as the time Richard Nixon couldn’t stop sweating, possibly the event that lost him the election.
In 1976, Gerald Ford sparked controversy with his debate performance against Jimmy Carter. Scratch that. Gerald Ford blundered his way into controversy in 1976 by incorrectly claiming that no Eastern European countries, including Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland, were under Soviet domination. This error was subsequently referred to as the “blooper heard ‘round the world,” and can also be attributed to a Ford loss.
In 2012, conservatives, liberals, moderates, basically everyone and their mother are saying that the Presidential debate last week was dreadful for the Obama camp. More than dreadful, people are calling this an extraordinary exception for the rules of normal election politics. Never before have we seen a drop in the polls to such an extent for an incumbent who was leading by an incredible margin before the first round of debates. Besides, of course, the events that occurred during 1960 and 1976. So what was Obama’s big mistake? His huge, campaign-imploding, election-changing gaffe?
…I’ve got nothing. And neither, really, does anyone else who is talking about the Obama loss. Which is a LOT of people. Hendrik Hertzberg, a contributor to the New Yorker Daily comment blog, wittingly titled the October 3rd fiasco as “The Ungreat Debate.” This title may be sentiment to Hertzberg’s argument that Obama was “plainly, not enjoying himself” or “how abjectly [President Obama] ceded the battle on the verbal front as well as the nonverbal, the conceptual as well as the emotional.”
But still, we’re missing the tragic mistake by Obama that so many have made before him, and why a performance that simply didn’t meet expectations can be deemed, well, the collapse of an otherwise flawless campaign.
Hertzberg enumerates the Obama failure in the following way: “By the end of the ninety minutes, Romney had retrofitted himself as the defender of Medicare, the advocate of Wall Street regulation, the scourge of the big banks, the enemy of tax cuts for the rich, and the champion of tax relief for the middle class. All these claims are spectacularly false; all went entirely, or mostly, unrefuted.”
Assuming, thereafter, that Romney did make the kinds of inaccurate statements that Hertzberg, and others, claim. How is it that this doesn’t discredit his performance in the eyes of viewers while Obama’s underwhelming performance is making waves? This is not to say that the commander-in-chief can be wiped of blame – simply put, you lose a debate if you don’t refute your opponents arguments, even if they are blatantly erroneous. But still, what does this say for the way campaigns shape voter opinion?
This debate will go down in history as the debate that cost Obama 8 points in the polls, and an extraordinary lead against his Republican contender. The time when he looked weak compared to the confident and composed Mitt Romney, and nervous as he scribbled notes at the podium. It won’t go down as the time Mitt Romney made false claims on national TV, but won, regardless, due to the president’s sub-par rebuttals. This says something about the way that viewers make decisions, the way in which our electoral process allows for, or doesn’t allow for, accurate discussion of important details as opposed to inflammatory details, and the hopelessness of the bandwagon effect which can cause undue hype.
The “ungreat” debate, to use Hertzberg’s term, reflects for me a sentiment of disappointment regarding both candidates performances, as well as towards the public reaction. But what does this debate have in common with the infamous blunders of the past? Well, it shows just how much appearances matter. The appearance of looking unknowledgeable, the appearance of, I guess, perspiration, and the appearance of one candidate dominating the other. And just how much we prefer a neck-and-neck race over a blow-out.
