Presidential Debate Preview 2016 The First Debate Trump v Clinton

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

Folks, it is super bowl time. No, I don't mean football. I mean something bigger than that. Well, at least if you're into high level communications and politics and media. Tomorrow is the first debate of the 2012 General Election presidential series. There are three presidential debates. This is the first one. Now, it only happens every four years, so that's one way I'm able to justify this being bigger than the super bowl. Because the super bowl is only once a year. I guess it's more like the World cup, which. Or the Olympics, which is scattered out now. Not everyone loves watching debates. I know I do. I frankly always have. Some of you have as well. Now, I wasn't alive in 1960 to watch the Kennedy Nixon debates, but certainly that was a debate that received massive coverage and it still receives massive analysis. Famously, Nixon was judged to have won by those who listened on the radio because they couldn't see his face and his dour expression, his five o' clock shadow. Kennedy was judged to have won by people who watched tv. He looked more comfortable, confident, relaxed, authoritative. Kennedy famously gladly received makeup from the TV crew. Nixon, not wanting to seem like less than a tough guy, said no, he was getting over an illness, was sweating, and just did not look good. Now, the way history rewrites things and sort of retroactively puts things into boxes, Nixon lost the whole presidential election because of the first debate where he didn't look good. I don't know if it's really quite that simple. A lot of Republicans would say it might have something to do with vote stuffing or stealing in Cook County, Illinois, but I'll leave that to debate on another show. I do want to look at a brief history of presidential debates and talk about why these matter. Now in 2016, it's almost incomprehensible to me that a live, sentient human being who lives in the United States, and it was a registered voter, wouldn't have not only an opinion, but a strong opinion on who they're going to vote for and who they do not want to see enter the White House. But apparently there are some undecideds. There are also voters who are leaning in one direction but could be swayed to go in another direction based on a performance in a presidential debate. Now, a little more history of the presidential debates. 1960 was the first big TV debate for president. Don Hewitt, the famed producer for 60 Minutes, who just fairly recently passed away in the last few years, was the director of that show 64, you had Johnson as an incumbent, war going on. He. He said, let's not do debates. Same in 68. Johnson was at that point no longer a candidate, and there were not debates. 72. It wasn't a part of the culture again. Yet Nixon not wanting to give his opponent extra limelight. So then you come back to 76. That was a big debate. And Gerald Ford famously freed Poland. Now, he didn't say, I free Poland. He said something to the effect that Poland, the country has never been under the domination of the Soviet Union when they were in fact, a part of the Soviet Union, had been crushed and brought under the umbrella of the Soviet Union. To many people, it reaffirmed their worst perceptions of Gerald Ford, which is that he wasn't quite bright enough, wasn't quite on top of things enough to be the President of the United States. Now, in fairness to Ford, this guy was a graduate of Yale University, and by the standards of a lot of congressmen and even people running for president, he'd be considered a genius today, but not the most articulate person and not someone who conveyed great gravitas and also someone who was in the White House who had not been elected as president or Vice president because of the whole circumstances of Nixon resigning and Nixon's vice president being a crook and resigning. So it was a bit of a messy situation. Ford, I don't know if he lost the election because of his performance in the debate, but he certainly didn't help himself. Fast forward to 1980, and Jimmy Carter came across as somewhat weak. He famously said, I was asking my daughter Amy what she thought the most important issue was. I remember seeing that I was not quite of age to vote. I was 17 and just missed the election by a few months as far as being old enough to vote. And I remember just like falling out of my chair saying, wow, that just sounds so stupid. And you had Ronald Reagan coming across as avuncular, grandfatherly to some, saying, oh, there you go again, Jimmy, and really did seem to win the debate came across as more winning, more confident, more upbeat. And of course, the great misconception about that election is that the economy had been horrible under Jimmy Carter's watch and that things became great under Reagan. That is a misreading of history. There was actually more growth during Carter's first term than Reagan's first term in the economy. It's just that Carter's growth came during the first two thirds of his term. In the last year, year and a half, things slowed down. Unfortunately for politicians, that's the only thing anyone remembers right, Reagan had his pain done, out of, got it out of the way the first two, three years of his presidency. And by the time he was gearing up for reelection in 84, the economy really turned around and was on the upswing. People felt upbeat. Now 84, well, remember that debate or the main debate, you know, people, and I'm guilty of this too, they talk about the debate in a particular year when often there was a series of three debates. Our memories compress and we tend to just remember the one debate that was most memorable. That's certainly the case in 1984 when the first debate occurred and Ronald Reagan seemed out of it. There had been rumors, but nothing that really got into the mainstream media about him already suffering signs of Alzheimer's, a disease he eventually did succumb to. And at this point, he is approaching 74 years old. And he frankly seemed out of it, tired, not quite up on things, a little disoriented. And it was considered a disaster of a first debate. At the time I was doing coverage for my student newspaper at Duke University. The Chronicle wrote a column on it. And then in the next debate, perhaps one of the most memorable moments ever, courtesy of none other than Roger Ailes, who's still with us in the news today. So Roger Ailes was called in to help Ronald Reagan prepare for the debate. And he said, look, you're going to get a question about this whole age thing. Here's what you do. You just pause for a second, you look over at your opponent and you say, Mr. Moderator, I refuse to make the youth and inexperience of my opponent an issue in this campaign. Stop, pause, look down for a beat and let the laughter roll in. And that is exactly what happened. Now, I don't think that's a grand testament to the media at the time for failing to ever follow up on that issue just because somebody got a chuckle. But it did work. Roger Ailes, this was his pre Fox News days, was given credit. And most historical descriptions of that all give Roger Ailes credit for feeding Ronald Reagan that line. He used it, it worked. And even Walter Mondale, his hapless opponent, Democratic opponent at the time, burst out laughing. And again, this only works because Walter Mondale was not some 41 year old, two year in the Senate guy. He was a guy who'd been vice president, senator, mayor, lengthy, lengthy, lengthy career in public office. So to refer to him as youthful and inexperienced was so silly, it was genuinely funny. Fast forwarding to 1988, the most memorable Moment, I guess, for me was when Bernie Shaw, then the anchor of cnn, asked Michael Dukakis what he would do. How would he feel about the death penalty if his own wife had been. I can't remember if he said raped or murdered or just murdered. And Dukakis gave a bland, boring, sort of technocratic and. Well, as you know, Bernie, I've long opposed the method of capital punishment, and it just made many people think he was a robot. And the bizarre thing about Dukakis is he had been up by 17 points in the polls after his convention bump in August, which is a huge, huge bump. I mean, people were really thinking that George H.W. bush was toast at that point. But Dukakis ran one of the most inept campaigns ever, went back to the state House and did his job as governor. I think he went on vacation, didn't respond to the Wheelie Horton charges, other charges, or if he did, it was very ineffectual, weak, slow, and timid. And he lost a massive lead, lost that election, which is something that gives Democrats heartbreak to this day. Fast forward to 1992. You had Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and incumbent President George H.W. bush. Clinton, like now and back then, came across likable, charming, engaging, fun, funny, and really quite endearing to the American public, regardless of what doubts they had about him. And they did have a lot of doubts. He had very high negatives. People tend to forget that about Bill Clinton. George Bush just didn't come across that well. He looked like he'd rather be someplace else, kind of similar to what we saw Jeb Bush doing in the primary debates in 2016, where he just looked like he wished he'd been someplace else. And then you had Ross Perot, who had a certain appeal. I do remember my father liked Ross Perot, but I think it was more that he liked his haircut and the guy sounded ornery. So then you go to 1996. I'll be honest with you. Bill Clinton was so far ahead of Bob Dole, and it never really seemed like a close match. That's where my memory blanks out. I can't even remember if they had a debate, although surely they must have. If those of you remember, you want to feel free to comment, comment in the show notes right here. You can comment on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever you're experiencing the show right now. Then we go to 2000. Al Gore. Al Gore famously sighed when he thought that George W. Bush said something stupid or factually inaccurate. And all the media commentary fixated on Al Gore sighing not on what George Bush Bush said. And by most accounts, George Bush, although not an especially articulate fellow, did come across as more likable than Al Gore. By traditional standards of rhetoric, speechmaking, Al Gore was a better, more polished professional speaker than George W. Bush. But as I said at the time, and I'll say now, George W. Bush just came across as more likable and as more conversational than Al Gore. And I do think that George W. Bush helped himself with the debates. That takes us to 2004. Kerry, Kerry, my goodness. I don't dislike Kerry, but he definitely has a problem with being the senator. Itis he speaks in a way. Well, here's how John Kerry speaks and I say to you today, my fellow Americans, I mean, that's kind of how he starts speeches. It's like this. I'm a professional U.S. senator now. He just sounds like a pompous, you know what, and George Bush beat him in the general election. Very close margin. People often forget how narrow the margin was in 2004. And I do think in part Kerry, not just the debate performance, but how he spoke out on the stump, he just did not come across as a conversational politician, as someone likable and fun to be around. And I do think on a really close race, that hurts. So now we're getting into territory that more and more of you are familiar with. 2008, Barack Obama, John McCain. And Obama is a great speaker and he's, I wouldn't say great, but he's a very, very good debater. Certainly back then, didn't have any gray hair, thin, youthful, vigorous, fresh face. His negatives were so low because people just didn't know him. All the Republicans were expecting Hillary Clinton to be the nominee. So when you have this complete, fresh faced new guy who wasn't a part of the old establishment of the Republican Party, he wasn't a part of the old establishment of the Democratic Party. It was almost too easy for him to score points in the debates with John McCain, who, let's face it, is physically tortured in Vietnam, couldn't raise his arms because of his service to his country. Unlike Trump. I'm not going to say I don't respect his service, I do respect McCain's, service. But bald, white haired, old, a little bit shriveled up, frankly, next to the tall, young, thin, vigorous Obama. It was just not a contrast that was ever going to help John McCain, although he's not a bad debater and John McCain is a much better debater than he is a speaker. John McCain is awful at reading from a teleprompter. Stumbles over words constantly. Much better in debate because candidates aren't using teleprompters. So that leads us to 2012 Obama against Mitt Romney. Romney and I'm going to annoy some of you, confuse some of you. I actually think Mitt Romney is a pretty good speaker. It's just if you're running against an incumbent president who's also a pretty good speaker, and that incumbent president can say, look, when I entered office, the country was losing 750,000 jobs month and I righted the ship and now the economy is growing and things are going well and I'm not getting us into new wars and I'm reducing our presence in existing wars. It's just really hard for anyone to beat an incumbent in that situation. And that takes us to today, or rather tomorrow for the first presidential debate of 2016. I'm looking forward to it. I'll be giving you a special analysis of it after the fact. I'd love to hear your opinions, your analysis of it as well. So please stay tuned for the Tuesday program and we'll give you a thorough, thorough analysis. I'm T.J. walker. I do appreciate you listening as always. If you like this show, please do me a favor. Make sure you subscribe number one. Number two, please leave a review in itunes. Now there are a lot of other podcast sharing services. There's Stitcher, SoundCloud, there's all these places. But iTunes is where 80, 85% of people who listen to podcasts get their podcast. So leaving a review there is just infinitely more helpful other things you could do. If you like the program, share it with your friends on Facebook, tweet it to your followers on Twitter, share it anywhere and everywhere. Also send me a note. Let me know what you like. What you don't like. Send me a note on Twitter. I'm J. Walker. You can also just write to me directly tjediatrainingworldwide.com I'd also like your suggestions on future topics and future future guest. Thanks so much. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

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