Final Debate of 2016 - Preview

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate. It's Wednesday, October 19, 2016. That means tonight is the last presidential election debate, general election debate of the year. This sort of is the end of a whole series of debates. There have been more than 30 debates for the 2016 election cycle, if you count all the primary debates. This is the third and final debate of the general election featuring Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. What can we expect from, from this debate? You always have to look at debates within the context of everything else that's going around. The political dynamics as of today. Right now, all the polls show Hillary Clinton with either a slight lead or a huge lead nationwide. More important in all the battleground states that either candidate would have to win in order to get an electoral majority. So certainly the pressure is on Donald Trump. By all accounts, he lost in a decisive, decisive battle. For the first debate, Hillary Clinton won hands down by virtually all the pundits and more important, by the polls. What the American people thought. The second debate, a bit of a wash. The sort of the standards for Trump were so low, the fact that he didn't completely implode was seen by many as a sign he could stay in the race. And it stopped some of the erosion in the polls he saw. So that one didn't seem to make much of a difference in the polls. This is the third and final outcome. Now, in the first debate, more than 80 million people watched, the second one, 56 million. I would certainly anticipate that an even lower percentage will watch on the final debate. I'm guessing maybe 45, maybe 50 million. But at this point, an awful lot of people are sickened and disgusted by the campaign. A lot of people wish we could fast forward to the day after the campaign. I have sort of mixed feelings about this. As a political junkie, there's nothing I love more than political debates. They don't happen that often. If you're a football fan, you've got the super bowl every year and you've got games every Sunday all fall, end winter. If you're a baseball fan, if you're an American Idol fan, there's always a new season coming around. Well, not American Idol voice. American Idol's been cancelled, but with presidential debates, at best it's every four years. But here's the thing. If, let's say Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump wins and is seen as good at governing for four years, there might be no primary challenge, there might be weak opposition. So this may be sort of the biggest debate. Certainly this could be the only debate we see for a completely open election for eight years. So in that context, this is a really big deal. Now, I'm fascinated by it and presumably a lot of you are, otherwise you wouldn't be watching this channel or listening to this podcast. In that presidential debates are one of the few times in the entire world in the course of a year or four year cycle where so much scrutiny is put on someone's speaking skills and someone's media skills. The average CEO, author, expert, self promoter will never get 1 1000th of the attention that a US presidential candidate gets. And I hate to sound like a provincial yokel, yes, I do understand if you're running for prime minister of India, you may have even more attention because there's so much more media in a place like India and so many more people. But still in the Western world, English speaking world, this is it as far as scrutiny. So what can we expect? The political dynamic is that Donald Trump is, depending on which poll you want to refer to, either going to lose by a little or lose by a landslide in the general election if current trends continue. So the pressure is on him to do something. What can we expect? Well, last time we saw something we've never seen in a presidential debate before, Donald Trump held a press conference with a handful of women who have accused Bill Clinton, the spouse of Hillary Clinton, of a variety of sexual improprieties, attacks, that sort of thing, plus a woman who was upset that Hillary Clinton, as a lawyer, had represented the man convicted of raping her or charged with raping her, I should say so, you had that as a dynamic, as a press conference beforehand, you had Donald Trump bringing up this issue during the debate. And the thing that frankly didn't get that much commentary was that Hillary Clinton, completely unruffled. Now, those of you who don't like Hillary Clinton, and that's statistically speaking, a majority of Americans, if you don't like her, there may be nothing she can do in this campaign or this final debate to make you like her more. But it's hard for me to see how she can really do anything in this final debate that's going to change your opinion of her, good or bad. Because here's the thing we know about Hillary Clinton, again, maybe you hate her. She can take a punch. She's been in this game at the national level since 1992 when her husband first ran for president. She has been attacked, vilified, ripped apart and pummeled daily by not only conservative media, but mainstream media every single day for a quarter of a century. And again, you may think it's completely deserved, you may think she's the worst person in the world, but I have a hard time imagining that Donald Trump is going to come up with something new that is going to ruffle Hillary Clinton, the context of the debate. If Trump just continues attacking Bill Clinton, at some point she could just say, hey, you're right, you make a good case. Vote for Bill Clinton for president. He's not running. She could do that, although I don't expect her to say anything that is at least a little bit joking. There's too much risk as a politician. But, I mean, over the years, Hillary Clinton has been accused of, you know, having Vince Foster murdered in her apartment in Washington, D.C. which she didn't have. She's been accused, along with her husband of, of killing political enemies, of drug abuse, just all kinds of things. She's hurt it all. And again, you might not love her, but she's got a pretty thick skin, and I would be shocked to see her actually get ruffled in this debate. Now, before I seem like I'm too much of a partisan for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump can be a captivating communicator. He hasn't been judged to win either of the first two debates, but let's not forget this is someone who has spent thousands of hours in front of a video camera under the bright lights over his lifetime. Over the last 40 years, he's been in the national spotlight. And so he's not exactly someone nervous or he's not exactly someone who chokes easily in the spotlight. I do think that he's got to be, at some level, desperate. He does want to win. He prides himself on being a winner. And he is getting a lot of polling data showing that he's not winning. So what is he going to do? He's got to try something new. He's got to upset the apple cart in some way. Because here's is the one thing Donald Trump does know. This is potentially the largest audience who will ever see him speak for the rest of his life. Yeah. He can set up his own TV network. And of course, if he's president, well, he'll have large audiences all the time. But if he doesn't win the vote on election Day, this could, in fact be the largest audience Donald Trump ever sees. And he loves audiences, as all good politicians do. You need to love being in front of an audience if you're going to be a successful candidate for office. But he, I think Especially loves an audience. And he might not be going through briefing books and learning detailed intricacies involving strategic missiles and defense systems, but I've got to think he is spending real time thinking about how he wants to present himself to the American people, to voters and to the world at large. Because, let's face it, who becomes president of the United States affects a lot of countries, a lot of people around the world. And that's why so many people around the world outside the US Are watching these debates, are following it. So here's my prediction. My prediction, and you really can never be too confident about predicting presidential debates because they can go in any way. But I think that we're going to see a steady performance from Hillary Clinton, simply. And that's not a brilliant, bold prediction, because that's how she typically behaves in debates. And she doesn't have to deliver a knockout. She doesn't have to have a snappy one lighter. She doesn't have to have a new and improved trumped up, trickle down, the phrase that seems so awkward in one of the earlier debates. She just has to do her thing, take a bunch, seem unruffled and come across as a steady, competent, thoughtful person, which again, unless you really hate her, that is the image she projects in debate. So she doesn't really have to do much other than her normal thing. That, and that alone will either make this judge as a tie or as a win for her. If that happens and the fundamental dynamic of the polling is unchanged, then she needs to go into hibernation, go on a long camping trip in Yosemite or Veroteika Cruz, because all she has to do is not make any mistakes between now and Election Day. Historically, there is simply no precedent in, well, since the advent of modern polling for anyone to make up this much ground in the final few weeks. Now, you can make an exception that there was tremendous movement in 1976 where Gerald Ford almost caught up with Jimmy Carter, but he didn't actually beat him. So there simply is not a track record of anyone making up the sort of ground in all of the swing states that Donald Trump would need to make in order to change this election. You put that all together, I think we're going to see some, some wild, desperate swings from Donald Trump because he already has got to be told, you're gonna lose unless something wildly different wildly significantly changes the dynamic of this campaign. So if you think Donald Trump has been unhinged or no holds barred before, we may be in for a treat tonight. I'll be watching the debate. I hope you are if not be giving you full detailed analysis right here on the YouTube channel as well as on the podcast. Speaking with TJ Walker. As always, this show is brought to you by Media Training Worldwide. If you have an upcoming speech or media interview and you want to prepare, all you have to do is click on the links below in the show notes and you can get access at no charge to our online media training course and presentation training course, plus a handful of my books at absolutely no charge. So please check that out and we'll see you right here after the debate. Thanks for listening to speaking with T.J. walker.