Dr. Debate, continued

by Dan Kennedy

Q: Bush does has a reputation for being loose and natural in small venues, but he never showed that in the primary debates earlier this year.

A: No, he didn't. He never cut loose and had fun with it. We know he's funny, but he seems almost afraid to be funny in debates. And funny is something that, if you can pull it off naturally, works very well. Where it doesn't work is when they try to do these pre-scripted gag lines that just are excruciating to have to listen to.

When to watch George W. Bush and Al Gore will debate three times next month, and their running mates, Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman, will meet once. The debates will not feature any minor-party candidates, the best known of whom are the Green Party's Ralph Nader, the Reform Party's Pat Buchanan, and the Libertarian Party's Harry Browne. The Commission on Presidential Debates -- controlled by the two major parties -- decided earlier this year to invite only those candidates who were registering at least 15 percent in national polls. All four debates will begin at 9 p.m. and will last for 90 minutes. They will be broadcast on PBS and the Big Three commercial networks (in Greater Boston, Channels 2, 4, 5, and 7); the all-news cable outlets CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox News Channel; and C-SPAN. The schedule is as follows: Tuesday, October 3. Presidential debate, UMass Boston. Thursday, October 5. Vice-presidential debate, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. Wednesday, October 11. Presidential debate, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Tuesday, October 17. Presidential debate, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. It's too late to vote for Walter Mondale. But you can watch the 1984 debate in which he exposed Ronald Reagan as a doddering old fool -- as well as a number of other historical debates -- on C-SPAN's Web site, at www.c-span.org/campaign2000/archivedebates.asp. -- DK

Q: Or, as you write, like Perot, who tried to be funny all the time.

A: Yeah, exactly. And not even varying the jokes. So he would literally repeat "I am all ears" in a later debate and people sort of said, "Okay, uh, you did that one last week." [Laughter.]

You're right about Bush, and I think that shows you how intimidating debates are, because you don't want to get up there and -- above all -- make a mistake. If that means reining in your humor -- if that means suppressing an urge to view the whole thing as slightly ridiculous -- then that's the price you pay. Look at Bob Dole. Bob Dole, one of the funniest men in politics, and in the very first debate he did with Walter Mondale [the vice-presidential debate of 1976], he didn't rein it in one bit.

And he got nailed for that even though, if you go back and watch that debate, it's like a comedy special. You're laughing at the jokes. And then, in '96, when he debated Bill Clinton, he got off maybe one or two little funny lines. Candidates are very wary of wit in debates because wit is spontaneous, and it goes against all of their efforts to be in control of the situation.

Q: As you suggest, in '96, by deliberately playing down his sense of humor, Dole took away so much of his personality that he just came off as a zombie.

A: Yeah, it was so disappointing. To people who are connoisseurs of Bob Dole -- and I'm a native Kansan, so I go way back with this guy, and have enjoyed his rhetoric over the years so much -- to see him really temper it was disappointing.

Q: Dole went on MSNBC during the Democratic convention. You probably saw it. They were talking about Clinton's reluctance to leave the White House. And Dole said, yeah, they're going to have to send in a SWAT team to get Clinton out of there. [Laughter.]

A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But so few politicians are funny. There's a whole different thing to be written about politicians and humor, why so few of them have that ability to be naturally funny. But it seems that if you have that, you ought to be able to use it, of all places, in a live debate. But there's a danger, I guess.

Q: I think Dole's problem is a lot of his humor stems from his bitterness.

A: Exactly.

Q: The first debate now is just a little more than a week away. You write that the most important thing a candidate can do is come across as being comfortable with himself. Does that suggest a hidden advantage for Bush?

A: Possibly that is a hidden advantage for Bush. But it isn't how comfortable they are with themselves in general, but how comfortable they are with themselves at this moment in the campaign. It seems to me that when Bush gets into trouble, he has almost a look of fear in his eyes, and that is not good. You don't want to go into a debate seeming scared or intimidated.

On the other hand, Gore, who never has seemed terribly comfortable in his own skin, seems to be getting more comfortable as a result of his improvements on the campaign trail. I watched Al Gore on David Letterman, and he seemed very comfortable with himself in that milieu, and one would not have thought that possible.

Q: A lot of people, including me, think minor-party candidates such as Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, and Harry Browne should take part, at least in the first debate. And if polling is going to be used to exclude them, it should only be done after they've had a chance to make their case. What's your opinion?

A: I'm going to take the contrarian view here. Because there are so few of debates and we have so few opportunities to check out the candidates in this way, I am reluctant to introduce any third-party or independent candidates who don't have a fairly realistic chance of either winning or establishing a movement that might, four years later, lead to a serious party.

In other words, I would say that including Perot in '92 was the right decision. I think that 15 percent in the polls, which is now the established limit for qualifying for the debates, is a little high. A lot of people like five percent, because that's the Federal Election Commission guideline for qualifying for matching funds. But 10 percent seems okay to me.

Let me give you an example. I was very frustrated watching the Republican primary debates because of the presence of Gary Bauer and Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes and people who, at some point, you realized, weren't going to go the distance. Now, they probably should have been included in the beginning until things kind of settled in a bit. But I felt toward the end of that series that what I really was hungry for was a debate between George Bush and John McCain. And that depriving the public of that opportunity was perhaps worse than bending over backwards to be fair to everyone and including them in every debate.

But obviously you can make a case for the other side, too. This is one of those things that's probably just going to have to be revisited every four years, case by case.

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Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www.dankennedy.net

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Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com

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Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here

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