This transcript excerpt records TJ Walker and Ronald Reagan discussing the strategic use of self-effacing humor in politics. They recount Reagan's 1984 debate strategy—on advice from Roger Ailes—where a joking, self-deprecating line about age defused criticism about his fitness and contributed to an easy re-election; the passage emphasizes humor as a gentle, effective rhetorical weapon.
Questions this video answers
1984
Roger Ailes
Chapters
As president, I like to start every day off with hearing a joke or telling a joke.
I like to start cabinet meetings that way. I just find it loosens people up, makes them more receptive to whatever has to be done, even if it's difficult. I also find that the best way of responding to criticism is with gentle humor. For example, in 1984 I was running for re election and people were not impressed with my first debate appearance.
Folks thought I was getting old, seemed disoriented, seemed like I didn't know what.
Was going on, did not seem particularly lucid. Almost as if the Alzheimer's that eventually did get me had already set in. So my advisors and I knew what was coming. In the next debate, people would ask me questions, am I up for it? And at the time I was working with a close advisor who had been a consultant to Richard Nixon and others.
Fellow by the name of Roger Ailes.
And he pulled me aside during our debate prep and said, when somebody hits you on the age of being out of it, here's what you say. I refuse to make the youth and inexperience of my opponent an issue in this campaign and just smile and stop. And sure enough, that's what I did.
Everybody laughed, everybody chuckled.
My poor hapless opponent, Walter Mondale, just.
Laughed and laughed and that was the end of the issue.
And I sailed on to an easy re election.
My name is Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the master at using self effacing humor.
He was always making fun of himself.
How old he was, he would reference Abraham Lincoln and hearing Lincoln speak at the convention, he would always talk about things that gently mocked himself, made fun of himself, and that made it harder for other people to make fun of him and to paint him as mean or vicious or cruel. Humor is a tremendous weapon. As a speaker.
In this particular case.
It was very.
Clever humor because you have to know the context.
Walter Mondale had been a senator, a.
Mayor, a vice president. He had been around forever.
So the idea of making fun of Walter Mondale for being too youthful an.
Inexperience, it was hilarious.
So it was sort of a mild dig at himself in a clever way.
And that's what diffused the issue.
You could make the case that reporters should have continued to dig on that.
Issue, but they didn't.
The humor diffused the issue. So remember, sometimes the best attack, sometimes the best counter attack is not a.
