Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Presidential Deba

CSPAN3 Lectures In History Presidential Debates July 12, 2024

Next, a Political Science professor teaches a class about president ial debates and their influence on voters. We will start today by talking about candidate debates. That is my favorite thing about a campaign. 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 became a highlight of the campaign season. I it is something we expect to happen. Guess its also common in high profile races. So when was the first debate . As a historical trivia question. Anybody know . Ill give you a hint. No one recognizes those people . This is a false hint. Thats Lincoln Douglas. The famous Lincoln Douglas debates and they ran against each other for president. Those debates were when they were running for the senate. In illinois in 1858 and they had numerous debates. Around the state of illinois. Kind of an odd situation. That they ran against each other u. S. State. Douglas was elected by the legislature. Two years later there on inter party ticket against each other. But the first debates in 1858 were circulate a lot. 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. Who was a fairly junior u. S. Senator. Although his family was wellknown, he wasnt totally unknown but he was not as well known. Nixon had made a lot of his political career he had taken advantage of television. He was known as a fierce debater. The Television Networks decided that my television was now mainstream, everybody had one and they decided to sponsor a series of debates. Nixon was confident and willing. He was the front runner. He knew some much more and he was such a good debater. The consensus was, these debates 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 listens to the debate, and they were very boring back then. They had very long answers. And like two hours long. They are more interesting now. Those who listen to the first debate on radio thought nixon won. Those who watched on tv thought kennedy won. The appearances were really important. After that, there were no more debates for a while. Part of it was somethinglykykydd the fairness doctrine. It says that if a station license 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 late he didnt really wanted to debate barry goldwater. And they relied on the fairness doctrine say theres no way to do it. 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 68 and 72, nixon was on 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. He took over for nixon when he resigned. He was trailing his opponent by as much as 30 points that summer. They found their way around the fairness doctrine. Which was if a thirdparty later became the commission on president ial debates, if a thirdparty held an event and the networks decided to cover it, it wasnt the networks giving the candidates the forum, they were just covering it as news. See how lawyers work . They found a way around. It we can do these debates with people we want. Without having 20 people on the stage. Four was more than willing to take the chance and to debate. Since 1976, we have had president ial and Vice President ial debates every election. Usually its three president ial and one Vice President ial debate. In 1992, town hall format was instituted from one of the debates in a kind of stuck. There used to be questions by a panel. A panel of reporters for reporters asking questions. More recently they have gone to a single moderator. The moderator asked questions encouraging a lot more interaction between candidates. At least up through the 19 eighties up to the 19 nineties candidates were usually pretty well prepared, stop answers not a lot of interaction. But there have been some times where there was quite a bit of interaction between candidates. Now most of the time, by the time of the debates, what is the polling now how many are undecided . On trump versus biden. Does anybody know . I will guess about five or 6 or undecided. There may be more than that. 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 needs to magnify performance and personality. Of the candidates. One observer gave this advice. He said he liked the emotional content of the debate law. 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 the stakes or triumphs. When a mistake is made, what happens on the news . Its replay constantly, constantly now 24 hour news. Constantly played. And the comments of the commentators who were talking about who did well. Who won, who lost. Who had a good night or a bad night whatever. That actually can change public opinion. So Polling Research shows that after mistakes have been replayed, the Public Perception the debates as to who won or lost can actually change. Here are some a few examples. After the first 1984 Reagan Mondale debate, slight majority of viewers thought reagan had one, about 3 . An hour after negative reviews, the lead switch to mondale by one point. Two days later, polls show that voters thought that vote mondale or won the debate by 49 . So one from reagan winning to pretty even two after a couple of days, model winning huge. The challenge for reagan in that first debate, he was, the oldest candidate. Another famous gaffe was in 1976. Between ford and carter. This was long before the fall of the iron curtain, if you remember that phrase from the cold war. Its when the soviet union had puppet states in Eastern Europe. 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 even or slightly ahead in the race. He stubbornly refused to correct this mistake or several days. Right after the debate, polls showed that he 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 didnt help himself, 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. Were gonna show a couple of clips. This first one is a little recap on president ial debates that cnn did before 2012. September to september 20 6 19, 60 the first televised president ial debate. An 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. Domination of Eastern Europe and never will be under the present administration. Carters campaign. In 1980, reagan attacked carter. Campaigning against medicare. Reagan stayed cool. There you go again. Humor to handle attacks. I want you to know that i will not make an issue in this campaign. Im not going to exploit for political purposes what my opponents youthful inexperience. In the next election, governor with us this controversial question. Governor governor if Kitty Dukakis was raped and murdered, would you favor and a rather cobble Death Penalty for the killer . No i dont bernard. The public sees answers cold in dispassionate. And that very night is plummers. Drop you are no john kennedy. Body language plays a in part in the president ial debate of 1982. Body language makes a difference between al gore and george w. Bush. Gore size over and over again. And bush wins the debate and the election. President obama and governor romney are experience debaters. But there is one thing that history has taught us, is that the president s debate you can expect the unexpected. All right well, leave their we have one more and its not advancing now. Okay there we go. I want to show you a little bit from 2016, just to remind us how we got to where we are in this election today so this is a clip but about one of their debates. I will let it go maybe five minutes. What is your position on this issue, because in a speech you gave to Brazilian Bank in which you are paid and we learn from wikileaks, you said my dream is a hemispheric open market with open borders. That is the question. Is that your dream open borders . Well if you went on to read the rest of the sentence i was talking about energy where 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, and Energy System that crosses borders. I think that will be a great benefit to us, but you are very clearly according to wikileaks, and whats important about wikileaks is that the russian government, has engaged in espionage against americans. They have had american websites and accounts, and private people in institutions and theyve hacked them, then they have given the information to wilkie links for the purpose of putting on the internet. This is coming from the highest levels of the russian government, but in an effort as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, they have influenced our election. I think the most important question of this evening chris 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, and that he rejects russian espionage against americans. Which he encouraged in the past, and those are the questions we need answered, weve never had anything like this happen in any of our elections before. That was a great pivot off the fact she wants to open the borders. Hold on hold on. Hold on. This will end up getting out of control. So for the candidates, and the American People lets keep it quiet. Just to finish on the borders, she wants open borders, and people are going to pour into our country, people will come in from syria, and she wants 550 more people, than broccoli balmy and he has thousands of thousands of people there. With no idea where they come from, and we are going to stop radical islamic terrorism in this country. And she wont mention the words, and neither will president obama. I just want to tell you, she wants to open the borders now we can talk about putin, i dont know putin he said a lot of nice things about, weve got along well thats good, and if russia and the United States got along well when after isis that would be good. He has no respect for her, and he has no respect for our president and i will tell you what, we have a country with tremendous numbers of nuclear warheads, 1800 by the way. And they expanded and we didnt. 1800 nuclear warheads, and she is playing chicken. From everything i see she has no respect for this person. That is because hed rather heavy puppet as president. No puppet no puppet. Its pretty clear, that you wont admit that the questions have been engaged in Cyber Attacks against iran states of america, that you encouraged espionage against our people. That you are willing to spout the putin wine, sign up for his wish list, wake up nato and do what he wants to do and you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favor in this race. I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. That weve never had, a Foreign Government trying to interfere in our elections. 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, were all concluded that these espionage attacks, the cyberattacks come from the highest levels of the kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing, and you have to take a stand. I am 17 intelligence. Yeah forget it. Forget he would rather believe vladimir putin, then the military professionals who are sworn to protect us. I find that just absolutely terrible. Because putin has outsmarted her every step of the way. Excuse me putin has outsmarted her in syria. The you will get to answer the question, but i would like to ask you the Top National Security officials, do you believe that russia has been behind these attacks. Even if you dont know for sure if they are, but do you believe theres been any interference by russia. For russia or anybody else. Do you condemn them . Of course i condemn them. Paul i dont know putin,. Okay i think we have a good flavor of there, so in 2016 debate, i dont think there was any breakout moment that really led the race one way or another. Its interesting to watch this for years later, all the more information thats come out but anyone would like to make a comment on this . I promised isaac, that i would show you this clip. Hopefully your happy with that. Thats all right, now lets see if i can make this move again. Just a video, all right so, lets see lets get this out of our way. All right so, these big debates the Vice President debate debates one of the traditions is they have a spin room. This is where, you see how crowded it is, this is one of the primary debates. Each campaign will have usually surrogates, or sometimes a candidate, like in this case lined up to talk to the media and to put their take on what just happened okay czar anyway to move that box . We do something. So in a way this is become, i think sort of a joke. Because its inevitable whatever bad things happen, the campaign will try to put the best face on it, which is a good debate and they will tout that so ok. They did something similar one of the other debates, okay i dont know why not advancing now. Thats weird im going to just fix this. Okay thats weird. Sorry let me see whats going on here. We dont want to end the show. Okay here we go. So, a well prepared candidate uses the debate to present their arguments, deflect attacks, land a blow on his or her opponent. One observer of this, theres a great quote, like soldiers armed with hand grenades, candidates walk into the debate with rhetorical ammunition. And have predetermine dismay responses. The goal is staying on message, and advertising invites debaters, to discuss things that have been audience tested, and thats from a book i read while ago, i think about president ial debates. Okay well lets talk a little bit about debate strategy. The first strategy the campaigns deal with, is whether or not to debate. Or how much to debate. When the campaign approaches a question of debate, it depends on where they are positioned. If they are holding a strong lead, or an incumbent it is different than if an underdog or challenger is there so if youre in the league, your Main Objective is to avoid mistakes. You know everything is going well, you just dont want to mess it up. So avoid mistakes, and if youre the underdog you then well take the risks because what you have to lose. Youre already losing right. So maybe mix things up get your opponent to make a mistake, and thats what you want to do. So i saw this, a close and personal theres so many different stories, but i think locale uses one in 2007, when i was running for mayor of Salt Lake City. After the primary. It was me versus ralph backer. Our first debate, was at the institute of politics back in the old days, in this beautiful nil new building, and i knew that ralph was quite a bit ahead of me. Then i had about two months until the election. Ralph and i have always gotten along, we knew each other we both served in the legislature together, and he was there long after i was but we always got along fine. So i went into this debate, very dresses and making attacks on him. That continued and in every debate and even that very first one, there was an article on it, ralph was kind of like what happened to you dave . I thought you are nice guy. I thought we got along well. I thought we were friends. At one point i said to ralph, look ralph i have to do something. You are way ahead. I have to do something i cant just lay down and die. Ive got to take the fight to you, and i remember ralph being like shocked that his friend was being so aggressive. So the other thing, in the strategy of whether to debate or not. Is basically how many debates on which debates . The leading candidate, may want to minimize or limit the amount of debates, but the challenger may want to expand the number of debates. A couple of examples, that i experienced on this. In 1982, when i was working on the campaign of senator hatch, his first election campaign. He was being challenged by ted wilson over there. I guess he was the former mayor but ok yeah so i guess he was still mayor sorry, its confusing so hatch is the leader and our campaign, and this is not my idea but our Campaign Manager, was we went through all of the different request for debates and we picked out ten that we wanted to do then we Just Announced that heres the debates were doing and it was kind of rude in the way, we dont even talk to the wilson people we just said well show up and heres what were doing thats what we want to say. And it made them a little mad, but guess what they showed up to it because we had the upper hand now six years later, this is why i was confused i was working for the governor, and ted wilson was our manager. We were leading in the p

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