Whether i was on the staff for a candidate. I am really excited to talk about this today. I want to give you a little bit of history. President ial and Vice President ial general election debates have become a highlight of the campaign season. It is something we expect to happen. When was the first debate . Here is a trivia question. Historical trivia. Does anyone know . I will give you a hint. No one recognizes those people . [laughter] this is a false hint. That is lincoln and douglas. Those debates were when they were running for the senate. Bid illinois in 1858 in 1858. Is and in they had numerous debates. Kind of an odd situation. Two years later, they were on a Major Party Ticket against each other. The real first president ial debate was between kennedy and nixon in 1960. Richard nixon had been Vice President for eight years. Much better known than kennedy. Nixon had taken advantage of television. Believe it or not. He was known as a fierce debater. The Television Networks decided television was mainstream and everyone had one. They decided to sponsor a series of debates. Nixon was confident and willing. He was the front runner. He knew so much more and was such a good debater. He should be able to put kennedy in his place. The consensus was, these debates helped cost nixon the election. Which was very close. It elevated kennedy immediately. Now they are on an even level. The senator and the Vice President. Also his appearance was much better. Much more handsome. More telegenic. There have been some studies on this. The people who listened to the debate, and they were very boring back then. They had very long answers. They were like two hours long. They are more interesting now. Those who listened to the first debate on radio thought nixon won. Those who watched on tv thought kennedy won. Appearances were really important. After that, there were no more president ial debates for a while. Part of it was something called the fairness doctrine. It said if a station licensed by the federal Communications Commission gives a candidate time on the air, they have to give their opponent equal time. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson was not anxious to debate. He had a huge lead. He did not want to debate with barry goldwater. You have all the minor party candidates. It is not practical. He was able to dodge it successfully. In 1968 when nixon was running again, he was not too anxious to debate. He learned his lesson. In 1968 and in 1972, nixon was at the top of the ticket for the republicans. This kind of stopped president ial debates. It looked like 1960 was a oneoff, it would never happen again but in 1976, gerald ford was president. Who took over for nixon when he resigned. He was trailing his opponent but he was trailing his opponent by as much as 30 points that summer. They found their way around the fairness doctrine. If a third party, in 1976, it was the leak of women voters, if a third party held an event and the networks decided to cover that, it was not the networks giving the candidates a forum. It was covering a news event. See how lawyers work they find a way around it. We can do these debates with people we want. Since 1976, we have had president ial and Vice President ial debates every election. Every election season. Threeis usually president ial and one Vice President ial debate. There used to be questions by a panel. Why a panel of reporters. Like four reporters asking questions. More recently they have gone to a single moderator. Encouraging a lot more interaction between the candidates. 1980s, the 1990s, answers from candidates were pretty much wellprepared and thoughtful answers without a lot of interaction. When therebeen times was quite a bit of interaction between candidates. By the time of the debates, most voters had made up their minds. What is the polling now how many are undecided . Does anyone know . Like 5 or 6 say they are undecided. There may be more than that because there may be more people who say one way or the other. But they are a little squishy. Do you have a number . 11 really . Im surprised. You have some voters up for grabs. Television tends to magnify their performance and the personality of the candidates. One observer gave this advice. Be liked. How a candidate comes across will make much more of an impression than the words they said, typically. There are always exceptions. Tv coverage magnifies mistakes or tryouts. When a mistake is made, what is or triumphs. When a mistake is made, what is happening on the news . It is one and done . It is replayed constantly. The comments were talking about, who did well . Who had a good night or a bad night . That can change public opinion. Polling Research Shows after mistakes have been replayed, the Public Perception of the debates as to who won or lost can actually change. Here are some examples. Abdomen 18 after the 1984 reaganmondale debate, an hour after negative reviews, the lead switched to mondale at one by one point. Two days later, polls showed that voters thought mondale had by a margin of 49 . It went from reagan winning to mondale winning. The challenge for reagan in that first debate, he was the oldest candidate. We are now breaking those records. Reagan seemed a little confused and muddled. Maybe he was getting too old for the job. His age became an issue. Another famous gaffe was in 1976. In the redo of debates between ford and carter. This was long before the fall of the iron curtain, if you remember that phrase from the cold war. The soviet union had puppet states in Eastern Europe. In the soviet union controlled Eastern Europe. Ford misspoke. He meant to say the people of Eastern Europe do not feel like they are dominated. They do not accept soviet domination. But clearly they were dominated. He misspoke when he declared Eastern Europe was not under soviet domination. At that point, ford had pulled up from 30 points behind to being even or even slightly ahead in the race. He stubbornly refused to correct this mistake for several days. Right after the debate, polls showed that ford won the debate by about 1 . After news reports carried on for several days, 62 said carter won the debate. This mistake was magnified. He could have gone right out that evening and said, what i meant was this. He could have eliminated a lot of that damage to himself. We will show a couple of clips. This first one is a little recap on president ial debates that cnn did before 2012. Debates can make history. 1960, the first televised debate signified a new era. Appearance mattered more than ever and gaffes are magnified. John kennedy facing off against richard nixon. On screen, kennedy looks cool and calm. Nixon looks uncomfortable, sweating profusely in the hot studio lights. Kennedy went on to win the election. In 1976, gerald ford makes this blunder in his debate with senator, jimmy carter. There is no soviet domination of Eastern Europe and their sovietill be under domination. It became a central theme in carters campaign. In 1980, reagan attacked carter. Reagan repeatedly attacked carter on his position on health care. He began his political career campaigning against medicare. But reagan wins fans and the election by staying cool. There you go again. Four years later he also used humor to handle attacks from mondale on his age. I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I will not exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience. [laughter] in the next election, Michael Dukakis was asked this question. If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable Death Penalty for the killer . The public sees his answer as cold and dispassionate. During the 1988 debate, dan quayle elicited this blistering response. Senator, you are no jack kennedy. Body language plays a part. George h w bush deliberately looks at his watch. People see it is disrespectful. Body language makes a difference in the debate between george bush and al gore. Sighed over and over again. Both president and obama and governor romney are seasoned debaters. If there is one thing that history taught us, expect the unexpected. Prof. Buhler we have one more. It is not advancing now. There we go. I thought we would show a little bit from 2016 just to remind us how we got here. This is a little clip from one of their debates. We will let it go maybe five minutes. In a speech you gave to a Brazilian Bank for which you were paid 225,000, we have learned that you said this. Hemispheric Common Market with open trade and open borders. Is that your dream . If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, i was talking about energy. We trade more energy with our neighbors. Then we trade with the rest of the world combined. I do want us to have an electric grid, an Energy System that would be a great benefit to us. You are clearly quoting from wikileaks. What is really important about wikileaks is the russian government has engaged in espionage against americans. They have hacked american websites. Americannts accounts of private people. Then they have given that information to wikileaks for the purpose of putting it on the internet. This has come from the highest level of the russian government. Putin himself. The most important question this evening is, finally, will donald trump admit and condemn that the russians are doing this. And make it clear that he will not have the help of putin in this election . That he rejects russian espionage against americans which he actually encouraged in the past. Those are the questions we need answered. We have never had anything like this happen. That was a great pivot off of the fact that she wants open borders. How did we get off to putin . Hold on. This will end up getting out of control. Let us try to keep it quiet for the candidates and the American People. She wants open borders. People will pour into our country. From syria. 550 more people than barack obama. He had thousands of thousands of people. We are going to stop radical islamic terrorism in this country. She wont even mention the words and neither will obama. I just want to tell you she wants open borders. She wants to talk about putin. I dont know putin. He says nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good. If russia and the u. S. Got along well and went after isis, that would be good. He has no respect for her, for our president. We are in very serious trouble. Because we have a country with tremendous numbers of Nuclear Warheads. 1800. They expanded and we did not. 1800 Nuclear Warheads and she is playing chicken. From everything i see, putin has no respect for this person. That is because he would rather have a puppet as president. No puppet. Youre the puppet. It is pretty clear that you wont admit that the russians have engaged in Cyber Attacks against american. You encouraged espionage against our people. You are willing to spout the putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up nato, do whatever he wants to do. And that you continue to get help from him because he has a clear favorite in this race. I think this is such an unprecedented situation. We never had a Foreign Government trying to interfere in our election. 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, have all concluded that these espionage attacks, the Cyber Attacks, come from the highest levels of the kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing. She has no idea. Whether it is russia or china. You have no idea. I am quoting 17 intelligence agencies. He would rather believe Vladimir Putin than the military and civilian intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect us. I find that absolutely putin has outsmarted her every step of the way. Putin has outsmarted her in syria. I would like to ask you this direct question. Top National Security officials of this country do believe russia has been behind the attacks. Even if you do not know for sure, do you condemn any interference by russia in the American Election . By russia or anybody else. You condemn . Of course i do. I dont know putin. Prof. Buhler i think we have a good flavor of it. They were very spirited. I dont think there was any breakout moment that really changed the race one way or another. Interesting to watch this four years later. Anyone want to make a comment . I promised isaac that we would show clips. Hopefully, you are happy that we did. And the rest of you. See if i can make this move again. Seems like the video all right. You take care of that let me get one. That out of the way. At these big debates, one of the traditions is that they have a spinner. And this is where you see how crowded it is. Each campaign will have surrogates lined up to talk to the media. And put their spin on what just happened. Is there any way to move that box . Do i need to do something . This has become sort of a joke. It is somewhat inevitable. Whatever bad things happen the , campaign will try to put the best face on it. Whereas if it is a good debate, they will tell it back. That reminds me of the president of mexico. Prof. Buhler i saw something similar in one of the other debates. How come i am not advancing now . That is weird. Im just going to do this. That is weird. Lets see whats going on here. There we go. Wellprepared candidate used a debate to present its argument, deflect attacks, and land blows on his or her opponent. Said ier of this thought this was a great quote they were like soldiers armed with hand grenades. The goal was staying on message. [indiscernible] that was from a book i read a while ago called 40 years of high risk tv. Talking about president ial debates. Lets talk about strategy. First is whether or not to debate. It depends on where the candidates are positioned. They are holding a strong are an if they incumbent, it is different if you are an underdog or a challenger. Your Main Objective is to avoid mistakes. Everything is going well. You just dont want to mess it up. Avoid mistakes. If you are the underdog, you will take more risks. Because what do you have to lose . You are already losing. You can switch things up and get your opponent to make a mistake. That is what you want to do. I saw this up close and personal. I have so many different stories. In 2007 i was running for mayor of Salt Lake City. We got to the primary with several candidates. I knew that ralph was quite a bit ahead of me. And i had about two months until the election. We had always gotten along well with each other. We served in the legislature together. And he was there long after i was. But we always got along fine. This debate fairly aggressive by making attacks on him. That continued in every debate. Very first one i read an article on it. He was like, what happened . I thought you were a nice guy. I thought we got along well and we were friends. At 1. I said to ralph backstage i have to do something. You are way ahead. I cant just lay down and die. I have to take the fight to you. I remember ralph being kind of shocked that his friend was being so aggressive. The other thing in the strategy of whether to debate or not was, how many debates . Which debates . The leading candidate may want to minimize the number of debates. While the challenger may want to expand the number of debates. A couple of examples i experienced. In 1982, i was working on a campaign for senator hatch, his first reelection campaign. Senator hatch was being wilson, the mayor of Salt Lake City. Or the former mayor. Anyway i am confusing it. ,you will see why. Anyway, hatch was the incumbent. Our Campaign Manager had an idea we went through all the different requests for debates. We picked out 10 that we wanted to do. We announced that is what we were doing. It was kind of rude in a way. We did not even talk to wilson. We said, he will show up. This is what we are doing. It made him a little mad. He showed up because we had the upper hand. Six years later, i was working for the governor. Ted wilson was our challenger and he was leading in the polls. We had the opposite strategy. We wanted to get them together to debate as much as possible. Any different audience we didnt , care who it was. Any request that came through, we would accept that. And the shoe was on the other foot. The Wilson Campaign was more picky, we want to limit the risks of making a mistake. How do you refuse to go . That worked out ok. Debate prep. Campaigns will want to prepare their candidates with answers to the most likely questions. You dont want to send a candidate in for a debate cold. You want to send down and spend time with them rehearsing. What are the most likely questions youre going to get . Especially those that will be negative. If there are things that the opponent has been attacking them on, you want to make sure they can respond to the attacks. The usual tactic is to fit it on negative questions. She was able to pivot it to a legitimate subject of wikileaks and russian involvement. It started out as a question open about open borders and immigration. She did that well. She got the subject changed. Prep research is used , quite a bit. You can use Opposition Research a couple of ways we havent really got into Opposition Research. You would use it to know what attack is coming. On issues, you want to make sure your candidate is wellinformed. And has answers to the questions that are going to be coming up. If the debate is televised, this is very important. Your candidate is going to be exposed to probably more people than he or she has seen throughout the campaign. In that 30 minutes. This is a huge opportunity. You want to make sure you maximize it. The conclusion here is that debates can matter. We have seen that through history. You need to be prepared for them and take t