TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

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

So the first vice presidential debate of the 2016 campaign is about to happen tomorrow night. It's a face off between Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, who is Donald Trump's running mate, and Senator Tim Kaine, who is Hillary Clinton's running mate. Now, I'm going to be brutally honest with you here, folks. Chances are this just doesn't matter at all. When you look at the history of vice presidential debates and even vice presidential selections, they typically haven't amounted to much. There's just not that much impact. All the polling data suggests that voters really just fixate on the top spot. When you look at past vice presidential. And by the way, vice presidential debates are a fairly new phenomenon. They've not been going on for most of our country's history. And the ones that have have really not been a huge, huge factor. Now, a lot of people will look back to Sarah Palin in 2008, and we sort of retroactively look at that and think, well, that was a big deal. Sarah Palin embarrassed herself. A lot of people voted for Obama because they didn't like the idea of McCain, who was already a really old guy, handing over the reins of power to Sarah Palin if something were to happen to him. That's really not how it worked, folks. Sarah Palin had already been humiliated, disgraced herself after the Katie Couric interviews and other interviews, and she just looked like kind of a fool. And the polling data shows it just didn't really affect many people's opinions of the campaign on their final vote. You can look back again and again at various vice presidential debates. The most memorable, of course, Senator Lloyd Benson in 1988 against Dan Quayle. His memorable line of, yeah, I know Jack Kennedy. You know Jack Kennedy, he was a friend of mine. You know Jack Kennedy. It was just such an ultimate put down of Dan Quayle. And he did strike many people as callow as someone who was not really ready to be President, the United States. And guess what? Didn't seem to change a single vote. A lot of people looking at just that vice presidential debate said, I could see Lloyd Benson as president. He kind of looks like one, he's steady, he talks like one. And yet Dan Quayle became vice President. Dan Quayle didn't impress many people at all during the vice presidential debates. Got a lot of commentary, a lot of pundits like me and others had fun talking about it on talk radio shows and cable TV shows. And there weren't really podcasts back then, but you get the idea. So why am I even talking about it today? Well, let's put things in perspective. It's still a big deal. If you're someone who cares about politics, communication, media skills, presentation skills, it's still the second largest stage you can be on. I mean, if the audience is far less than half of what the Trump Clinton debate was, it's still going to be an audience five, maybe even ten times larger than the top rated cable TV show of Bill O'Reilly in a typical day. So it's still a huge platform. It's also significant because win or lose, when it comes to Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine is somebody who has a huge, huge future in politics. He is, by all accounts, widely and wildly respected by Democratic Party officials and frankly, a lot of Republican officials all across the country. So if Clinton wins, he becomes the vice president. And if you follow presidential politics in the last 80 years, vice presidents have a huge jump up on anyone else getting a presidential nomination. If Hillary loses, I don't think anyone's going to say it's because of Tim Kaine or anything he's done, said or not said. Unless some scandal happens in the next month, month and a half, and that certainly, or next five weeks, that certainly doesn't look very probable. It's always possible someone could humiliate themselves on the national stage. But Tim Kaine is someone who, he's been a senator, he's been a governor, he's been the national party chairman and is seen as highly articulate, intelligent and thoughtful. It's hard for me to imagine him saying anything that would destroy his career. Similarly, and folks, I'm not being partisan here. Governor Mike Pence is someone who is seen as articulate. He's a former talk show host. He's very comfortable behind a microphone and in front of a camera. He may say things that might not be agreeable to some liberals or progressives in the audience, but he's certainly not going to say anything even remotely as controversial as a typical 30 second stream of consciousness flowing out of Donald Trump's mouth. So if I had to make a prediction, I would predict that this vice presidential debate has absolutely no impact on the presidential campaign. The final outcome. Now, that's probably one of the weakest, mildest, safest, most tepid predictions anyone could ever make when it comes to politics. So I'm not exactly expecting, you know, a standing ovation from my political courage there. That's, that's a very uncourageous Bland, almost generic prediction there, but I do think it is going to be of interest. Now, Mike Pence hasn't, you know. Now, let's be fair to Mike Pence. Donald Trump is such an oversized political figure, it's almost hard to imagine any person he picks as vice president is having any kind of relevance in a campaign like this. His campaign is really coming down to who do you hate more? I don't say like more or love more, but really hate more. A lot of people do, in fact, hate Hillary Clinton. But at the moment, about 5% of Americans hate Donald Trump more and that is good news for Hillary Clinton. But in that particular dynamic where so many people have very strong, strong feelings of hatred for the top two slots on the tickets, it's hard for me to imagine the vice presidential candidates having much impact. Now, I don't think Pence has done anything to harm his reputation in this campaign, although if Trump does lose in a landslide, I think everyone associated with him will be tainted. Certainly if Trump were to win, then Mike Pence would be the most logical frontrunner in four or eight years. Assuming, of course, Trump doesn't do something so diabolical and despicable that he is impeached from office if he were to actually get elected. Big ifs all the way around. So I'm going to be watching the debate. I'll be giving you analysis after the fact and we'll be recording that, oh, about a half an hour after the debate is over. So I'm going to try to do it without having any of my own analysis colored by other pundits and polling data. So I can give you just my undistilled communication analysis perspective. I'd love to hear from you as well. So please post your comments on the blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever you're listening to this podcast or hearing it. Now, I'm not interested in really who you think is an idiot or who you hate. We're trying to keep this particular show speaking with TJ Walker about public speaking, presentation skills, media skills, not whether you specifically like the top marginal tax rate that Pence talks about or the abortion position of Tim Kaine. That's not really the focus of this show. The other interesting things about these candidates is that they're both much more conventional looking politicians. And I don't mean this to be sexist, but it certainly is a reflection of sexism that Americans are simply used to looking at white men as their political leaders. So that kind of rules out Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and it definitely rules out Donald Trump, who with orange hair, orange face, bizarre, whatever you call the hair on his head type thing going on. Mike Pence looks very much like a traditional conservative politician. Short silvery hair, nothing orange on him. Same with Tim Kaine. But the only thing a little bit different about Tim Kaine at the presidential level is like a lot of us, he doesn't have a thick head of hair. Most winning presidential candidates do. And he's maybe a little bit heavier than the typical politician Tim Kaine, but still, all in all, they're both traditional looking, somewhat traditional sounding. Tim Kaine I had not had a lot of experience with until his recent appointment to the position as the running mate and I was intrigued by his acceptance speech at the 2016 Democratic convention. Sometimes he comes across almost goofy, goofy smile. But he does come across as eminently likable. I do have to say he's someone who just seems like your average nice guy next door neighbor. And with regard to Mike Pence, he does somewhat the same way. I mean they both seem very kind of normal, mainstream regular guys and don't seem to have any of the bizarre qualities of say for example, a Donald Trump. Nor have either one of them been through the wringer and attacked by a particular ideological media every day for a quarter century, like some people running for president. Anyway, as I mentioned, it doesn't really matter when it comes to the final outcome of who's going to become president. But for those of us, and I assume because you're listening to this, you're either a political junkie or a communications junkie, or someone fascinated by public relations, media and communication. So in that case, this isn't the super bowl, but it is the playoffs. It's still a big, big deal. It's still, it's still post season play. I guess if we're going to use more tortured sports analogies. And you can probably tell I'm not a huge, huge sports fan myself, I'd much rather watch a political debate than a World Series game or frankly a Super bowl game any day of the week. So I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are. Tune in tomorrow for a post debate analysis. I'm TJ Walker, thanks so much for joining me as always. If you regular subscriber, I want to thank you. You know so many podcasts and I've been guilty of this myself. Spend so much time badgering people, begging people, pleading people, please, please, please subscribe in itunes when all the data suggests that if you're already listening to this, you probably already are subscribed but if you are subscribed, I do want to thank you. I would appreciate very much a review, especially if it's a nice review on itunes and better yet, share it with others. Perhaps recommend other colleagues of yours, people in your office, that they might want to subscribe to the program on a regular basis. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow.

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