Opinion

The Obama and Romney Debates Do Matter

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The conventional wisdom is that debates are virtually meaningless. Countless studies, surveys and polls have tracked presidential debates and their impact on voters over more than five decades.

They looked at the gaffes, the routine ducks and dodges, the gestures, and the physical appearance of the candidates. The Nixon and Kennedy debate in 1960 showed a disheveled and nervous Nixon. In the 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford uttered the colossal gaffe, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”

In the 1980 debate, Reagan zinged Carter with the classic question to the audience, “Ask yourself, ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’” In the 1988 debate with Bush Sr., Michael Dukakis horribly fumbled a question about the death penalty. In the 1992 debate against Clinton and Ross Perot, Bush Sr. repeatedly glanced at his watch. In the 2000 debate with George W. Bush, Al Gore sighed and rolled his eyes impatiently and exasperatedly.

Their fumbling performances barely nudged their poll numbers down. In a close race, the bump up for the debate winner can be huge. But it usually doesn’t last.

The proof of that is Democratic presidential contender John Kerry. He beat the pants off Bush II on the issue of foreign policy in their 2004 debate. Kerry got an instant poll bump-up. Yet Kerry still lost.

No matter how ineffectual or just plain bad a Republican presidential contender, the overwhelming majority of Republicans will still dutifully pull the lever for him. Likewise, no matter how ineffectual or just plain bad a Democratic presidential contender is, the majority of Democrats will dutifully pull the lever for him.

The hard balkanization of American voters along party lines was glaringly apparent in 2008. Despite the endless warning that Obama might be done in by racism, namely that hordes of white Democrats would not vote for a black candidate, it never happened. Obama got more white votes than Gore or Kerry, and a crushing majority of the vote of white Democrats.

By the time of the presidential debates, most voters have already heard and seen enough of both candidates. They have long since made up their minds who they’ll pick. They don’t generally flip to the other side on a whim or based on something that they heard from the other candidate that suddenly touched a nerve. It will be the same this time around. Obama and Romney are well-rehearsed and skilled, and won’t stray from their talking points. Republicans will claim victory for Romney. Democrats will claim victory for Obama.

It will be tantamount to an NFL game with a tie score after one overtime period. It goes down in the books as a tie. The Romney versus Obama debate will be the same.

Still, the debates do matter. More Americans will be watching the candidates than at any other time during the campaign. They can’t totally slip and slide for an hour or so around every thorny issue and talk in vague generalities.

They’ll have to be at least marginally specific on how they’ll deal with policy issues and problems. This will give some glimpse of what they’re likely to say and do if they wind up in the Oval Office.

Americans will also get a rare chance to see the candidates show a flash or two of emotion in answering the scripted questions. This in itself is rare in the age of the dumbed-down gossip, mayhem and celebrity chitchat that passes for news and information and is spoon-fed daily to American audiences.

The jousts that Obama and Romney will engage in and the barbs they will toss at each other will tell much about which candidate is the niftiest and nimblest on their feet with a pointed response or rebuttal to an attack. Americans want presidents to be able to think on their feet and respond thoughtfully and swiftly to a crisis. They regard this as firm leadership.

Then there are the events and issues that define the candidate and that give them an edge with the public before the debates. Dukakis’s death penalty answer and Ford’s Soviet Union gaffe didn’t sink either of them in their poll numbers after their debate. But it did reinforce the notion among Democrats and Republicans that their man was the best choice for the job. This gave them even more incentive to get to the polls to punch the ticket that they had already decided to punch for them.

Romney needs a big and impressive win in the debates to claw back into the race. But as the history of presidential debates show, the chance is that whatever bump up he gets from that won’t last. When the dust settles, the Obama and Romney debates will do little to change the minds of most voters. They will simply further convince Obama’s backers that their guy is the right choice for the White House. They will do the same for Romney’s backers. Their debate will still be great political theater, though.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst.

+ Add Comment

Oct 4 14:40pm by G Djata Bumpus [71.192.25.121]

To me, the first of the 2012 presidential debates shows how anti-intellectual most Americans - especially the opinion-making, mainstream media journalists - are. Moreover, the total lack of analysis of what actually unraveled last night proves, as it has always, that what passes off as an "election" `in our fake "democracy" is often nothing more than a personality contest.

I mean, the event had been billed as a debate. Yet, the discipline of polemics was not a part of the agenda. Huh? For example, when Romney mentioned that he would clip the wings of Sesame Street'sBig Bird, President Obama should have asked him what was it that the former governor didn't like about the famous yellow children's icon. It's a simple question! Moreover, such inquiry would have led the thoughtless Romney to babble, bumble, and stumble all over both the stage and the airwaves. Did someone say "polemics"?

The commentator was more than generous about letting each candidate get his points across. Consequently, a competent polemicist would have used that opportunity to make Romney show us who he really is and that in which he really believes. Obama's far superior intellect would have shined. Instead, The president allowed a complete intellectually-challenged lightweight make it seem as if he deserved to be part of the discourse.

When one is in a fight, whether verbally or physically, s/he must have techniques in his or her arsenal, at hand, that will allow him or her to maintain confidence. Losing confidence during a fight can lead to one's defeat. As my old boxing trainer, Val Colbert, taught me, and I still teach, "If you're gonna win a fight, you have to have a cup of confidence to let the other guy know that you gonna win the fight."

In boxing, we have a punch that is called a "jab-to-the-belly". Thejab-to-the-belly is what I call the only free pinch in boxing, In other words, all head punches that a fighter throws have a cost, in terms of consequence, be they straight punches like either jabs or "crosses", or round punches like uppercuts and hooks. So I call the jab-to-the-belly, the only "free" punch in boxing, because even if it doesn't land, when thrown properly, there will be no consequence. Therefore, one can maintain his or her confidence by throwing a punch/attacking, without having to worry about being attacked back.

Finally, in the next debate, President Obama should use genuine tactics of polemics, as well as fighting. and go back and keep focus on Romney's Big Bird insult. Again, the whole thing is a personality contest. I hope that next time, the president has a jab-to-the-belly in his arsenal. Cheers!