Post-Debate Spin Contest

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders.

So who is winning the post debate spin contest? In political campaigns, after debates, each campaign typically tries to put a good face on it, try to spin perceptions. Because even in a widely viewed debate like this, more people tend to experience it after the fact from news media coverage. So how you spin it can ultimately have a major factor in public opinion and the impact of the debate. Now, if you're listening to this the day the podcast is released, it's Sunday. It's a week after the debate. I'm recording this on the road. I'm in Brussels on assignment this week. So it's only three days after the debate. I am recording this on a Thursday. The consensus is that Hillary Clinton won big. Now this is the very same assessment I made 15 minutes after the debate. And I'm not saying that makes me a genius. Pretty much every pundit across the political spectrum made the same analysis. By the way, those of you who are trying to find a partisan lens, I also said that Mitt Romney beat Obama very handily in the first debate of the 2012 election cycle. So here's what's going on. The initial consensus was that Hillary Clinton won the debate on points. If anything, that perception has changed even more dramatically since attitudes have had a sense to congeal in the last three days. Polling data does show that the public, it's not just the pundits thinking this, but the public in fact thinks that Hillary Clinton won one big Donald Trump didn't do anything to completely discredit himself in the eyes of his supporters. But his supporters, many of them speaking off the record, were very, very disappointed. Hillary Clinton, I think, summed it up nicely when she said, when you find yourself complaining about microphones, you didn't have a good night. She was of course, referencing Donald Trump's somewhat bizarre complaint that he was poorly miked and that's why his sniffles received so much prominence in all the debate coverage. Donald Trump appeared to be and sounded as though he were constantly sniffling, almost snorting. It's been given widespread attention and mockery. We've also seen Donald Trump attacking Lester Holt, the moderator, for bad questions. Here's the thing. Many, many conservative pundits, most of them off the record or on a not for attribution basis, have said, look, Donald Trump was horrible. Many members of his own team said he didn't prepare, didn't rehearse. There were some who speculated that the pre debate coverage, where insiders said Donald Trump didn't rehearse, didn't prepare that. That was just spin. He was just trying to lower expectations that he in fact did prepare, did rehearse, did cram. Well, by all accounts, now, Donald Trump didn't do any preparation and it showed dramatically. He looked woefully underprepared. He was caught flat footed. He was on the defensive the whole time. And again, not just liberals, not just Democratic supporters, not just Hillary supporters, but across the spectrum, the commentary is focused on how Hillary Clinton just cleaned his clocks, she mopped the floor, whatever analogy or metaphor you prefer, she was very, very dominant in the campaign and she had him on the defensive regarding taxes, regarding picking on the poor Miss Universe, who he called Miss Piggy, regarding so many different issues, his ostensible support or lack of support for the Iraq war, you name it, and Hillary Clinton had him on the defensive. Issues that would have been more favorable to Trump, like controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton's foundation, never came up. Now, on a lot of debates, you have each side spinning very forcefully that their candidate won and the other guy, the other gal lost, and it's kind of a wash. And there's no real political impact. That didn't happen this time. Other than the most egregious partisan, you know, the Sean Hannity's of the world, the Newt Gingrich's, very few prominent conservative Republican pundits or commentators really could say with a straight face that Donald Trump won the debate that is hurting him. Time will tell, and we should know within about three days or even two days of this podcast going live if there's any change in the polls. And of course, we won't really know if it has a lasting impact until election Day. Important to note that most of the time in the history of presidential candidates where there have been TV debates, the debates haven't changed that much. Political lore says that Kennedy was helped with his performance. But you can make just as much a case that the crooked politicians in Cook county swaying the votes or stealing the votes for Kennedy had a bigger impact. You could make the case that Ronald Reagan's surprisingly strong performance in 1980 helped reassure people who weren't quite sure if he was up for the job and might have gone with Jimmy Carter, that Reagan was up to the job. But in other cases, there was consensus that John Kerry beat George W. Bush in 2004 but didn't sway the election. You could certainly make the case that Romney, well, he definitely won the first major debate in 2012 and lost in not a popular vote landslide, but did lose in an electoral landslide to Barack Obama. So there's two factors there. One, will Hillary get a bump at all? Two, will it hold till election Day? Or will this be one of those times when people say again, debates were interesting but they just didn't matter? If Trump has a great debate, I think we can predict confidently the first debate will not be seen as having a lasting impact. Back in 1984, I well remember Ronald Reagan massively flubbing the first debate against Walter Mondale. Reagan seemed distant, out of it, befuddled. He seemed like he had Alzheimer's, even though people were too polite to reference it. But for the most part, the only thing anyone remembers from the 1984 debate was the second debate where Reagan used humor to deflate the whole issue of age. And that's what people remember. So there is still time for Trump to reposition the whole 2016 debate based on what he does in the next debate. There are two more debates. We'll be analyzing them here, looking for your comments as well. If you'd like to weigh in on any of the other public speaking, communication aspects of the debate. This isn't the forum just for who you like and what policies you favor. But please feel free to comment on YouTube if you are listening to this on an audio to video on YouTube. If you're listening to this on Facebook, on my blog or on itunes, post your comments there or send me your comments tjediatrainingworldwide.com and other presidential news. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, is poised to do better than any other third party candidate since Ross Perot. But he did not help himself this week when he couldn't name a single foreign leader he admires or respects. Now, part of the Libertarian motto is that the United States needs to worry about the United States and in fact needs to be less entangled in world affairs, spend less tax money on armaments, wars, that sort of thing. So it doesn't necessarily hurt him with his own narrow brand of libertarian voters. But if he's trying to make himself plausible to Republicans and conservatives who are currently disillusioned with Donald Trump, he didn't help himself by being unable to name a single foreign leader. It's one thing not to know a particular capital or a particular obscure leader of a developing nation. That's one thing. A lot of people would just write that off as a gotcha question meant to embarrass a politician. But if you're running for President of the United States and you're expecting millions of people to vote for you to not be able to name a single world leader you respect is embarrassing. And I do think that it's unlikely for third party candidates to typically see their vote total expand in the last six weeks of a campaign. So it was unlikely anyway. But with Gary Johnson's performance in high profile interviews like this, he's only making it harder for conservative and libertarian leaning voters to make him to find him acceptable. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. Love to hear your comments on that issue as well. We'll see you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to speaking with TJ Walker where the communication skills and practices of world class leaders are dissected.