Cautious candidates will likely offer more policy than spectacle
With millions expected to tune in, Wednesday night’s US presidential debate will see trailing Romney looking for 'Aha!' moments
Wednesday will be a busy day for President Barack Obama. Besides his presidential duties, he will have to find time to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary and, by evening, make it to the University of Denver for the first of three planned debates with challenger Mitt Romney.
The Wednesday debate kicks off a month of breakneck electioneering until the November 6 elections, a period pundits have started to call the “political Super Bowl.” Obama and Romney will debate twice more, on October 16 and 22, and vice-presidential contenders Joe Biden and Paul Ryan will face off on October 11.
Wednesday’s debate will likely focus exclusively on domestic policy, according to a list of topics released by the moderator, former PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer.
Half the time, or 45 minutes, will be spent discussing the tattered state of the American economy and years of high unemployment. The remainder will be focused on healthcare, the role of government and the candidates’ thoughts on governing.
Wednesday’s presidential debate will be the first in which debate organizers publicized the topics ahead of time.
The later debates, and particularly the last one on October 22 that will be moderated by Face the Nation’s Bob Schieffer, will deal with foreign policy questions, including Israeli-Palestinian peace, Iran’s nuclear program, and the uprisings of the “Arab Spring.”
Cautious debaters don’t have ‘Aha!’ moments
The period between the party conventions and the presidential debates, this year lasting from September 6 to October 3, is famous among journalists for being relatively devoid of major political news. This is one reason the media is approaching the debates with such excitement.
For the past week, American media outlets have offered countless predictions on what questions will or should be asked and how they will be answered, discussed the minutiae of each candidate’s debate preparations, and delivered untold numbers of articles analyzing what each candidate needs to do or say in the debate in order to “win.”
The consensus seems to be that Mitt Romney, who trails Obama in most polls of battleground states and by 3.3% nationally in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, must create media events, “aha!” moments that will be entertaining and memorable enough to help Romney dominate the media coverage coming out of the debate. Thus, according to reporters following the Romney campaign, Romney is planning to deploy one-line “zingers” into the debate, while Obama will seek to preserve his current lead through a more conservative debating style.
The debates are, first and foremost, the closest thing the American people will have to an unscripted conversation with their future president. The media would do well to focus on the substance of the candidates’ answers and less on moment-to-moment coverage of rhetorical tactics.
And media conjectures aside, Wednesday’s debate is starting out a tie. It is a race between two consummate Harvard Law-trained debaters, two men with a history of running for office as ideologues but governing as centrist policy wonks. Both are by all accounts good family men without scandal or tarnish. They even share the distinction of being the two leading American politicians to successfully pass remarkably similar individual-mandate-based health care reforms while in office.
While the media, having heard there will be “zingers,” will spend the debate looking for them, it is unlikely that there will be a clear “winner” Wednesday night. Two cautious, intelligent debaters will likely offer serious explanations on the state of the country and the policies that might make things better.
In fact, the greatest danger is not that the debate will descend into childish one-liners, but that the candidates, forewarned about the topics of the questions, will arrive too well prepared. Instead of the proxy conversation with their future president that American voters expect, they may instead get answers that are so cautious and rehearsed they can’t help but be pandering.