Essays on the Election
Archived article from Oct 18, 2004
Election 2004
The U.S. presidential campaign is at a boil, with Senator John Kerry and President Bush battling over the Iraq war, the economy and homeland security. In the impassioned run-up to Election Day, Focus asked six faculty members who watch such matters to illuminate some of the important issues arising from this year’s presidential contest.
The power of debate
Nationally televised debates between presidential contenders, first staged between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 and held every four years since 1976, have for decades been the most anticipated, important and widely-watched campaign events of the general election season.
Candidates appreciate the high stakes and recognize the perils of committing a memorable gaffe on live television. The dangers have been especially acute for incumbents. Gerald Ford misspoke in 1976, when he suggested that Poland was not under Soviet domination, and never recovered. Challengers try to convey command of issues and a presidential deportment to the nationwide audience. John F. Kennedy in 1960, Ronald Reagan in 1980, and George W. Bush in 2000 all seemed to benefit from exceeding low performance expectations and clearing a credibility threshold.
Fearful of disasters, most candidates spend weeks preparing themselves and rehearsing memorable lines. Reagan’s famous quip, “There you go again,” and vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen’s devastating “You’re no Jack Kennedy” appeared spontaneous to journalists and voters, but both unforgettable sound bites had been planned well in advance.
This year, the Bush and Kerry camps met privately for weeks in reportedly heated negotiations over nearly every aspect of the debates. Such maneuverings are hardly novel. Ford staffers arranged for a special rail to be built on their candidate’s podium to avoid an inadvertent water-glass spill; Dukakis handlers negotiated at length about avoiding unflattering side-by-side images with the considerably taller George H.W. Bush; and more than a few campaigns have taken pains to avoid lighting and makeup that might initiate a dreaded Nixon-style outbreak of perspiration.
The 32-page Bush-Kerry rules for this election’s three debates, however, appeared to take the careful scripting of these events to new heights. The “memorandum of understanding” attempted to establish unprecedented control over the content of questions, forbade candidates from directly quizzing each other and spelled out almost every imaginable rule of engagement. NBC’s Tom Brokaw joked that the debate rules stipulate everything but whether the combatants must wear boxers or briefs. He spoke too soon. The agreement went so far as to clarify that candidates were prohibited from wearing under the clothes any “padding, girdles, prosthetic devices or ‘elevator’-type shoes.” Little wonder that pundits have fretted that presidential debates are poised to become as wooden and staged as national party conventions.
Yet something surprising happened in Coral Gables. Despite every attempt to prevent spontaneity, we had a real debate: crisp, feisty and defining. At the end of the day, live television defies the best efforts of candidates to make presidential debates into entirely scripted rituals. The second “town meeting” debate proved equally compelling, largely due to the quality and directness of questions posed by independent voters in the audience. It seems safe to conclude that these events provide voters with some of the most authentic moments of today’s manicured presidential campaigns, however rare or fleeting.
- Daniel J. Tichenor, associate professor, department of political science and the
Eagleton Institute of Politics.
Religion and politics
Approximately one-fourth of the American population is Roman Catholic, and another one-fourth is white evangelical Protestant. These groups have shaped the direction of the presidential campaign and may influence the outcome.
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