Debates and Popularity

The election in 2000 was about personality. George W. Bush was more likeable than Al Gore, so Bush won. It was a lot like a High School Election. Al Gore was the annoying loser who promised that we could all work together to build a great homecoming float and that he'd see that Study Hall was kept quiet. George W. Bush was the guy who said nothing about boring issues like that, made some vague promises and seemed to suggest a party might happen after the election that we'd all be invited to. And frankly, Candidate Bush wasn't boring and seemed like an OK guy (and it's not like it matters all that much).

This time we aren't under any illusions about the Presidency being unimportant. So the question is how are we to judge the debates? Well there's a certain faction of the media that will whole heartedly support President Bush, no matter how he does. There is a much much smaller group who will support Senator Kerry.

The majority of the media, worried about cries of "Liberal Bias" will go out of their way to be nice to President Bush, unless he totally screws up. But they won't want it to be a blow out either; the media wants ratings, and a close race means more ratings. So barring any real screw up or melt down, the media will play the debates down the middle, I think.

Adam Clymer, writing an op-ed at the Times today, talks about the debates, and puts front and center the role the media plays in how people see them.

. . . the debates provide critical moments when the public pays attention, when voters can measure one candidate against the other. And the press will, as it has for years, do a creditable job of summarizing what is said, broadcasting the encounters live and even printing transcripts.

That will not be enough. For just as the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey showed that voters learned what candidates stood for by watching debates, other research has shown that the public's views are influenced by what the news media emphasize.

The immediate judgments of television watchers can be changed by analysts citing a moment as a blunder or an overall presentation as strong or weak, commanding or uninformed, human or condescending. Often that impression has not even been conveyed by a seriously developed journalistic case, but by the trivia of television sound bites or reports in newspapers, like Al Gore's sighs or his flawed recollection of just who accompanied him on a trip to a disaster in Texas. Or when George H. W. Bush glanced at his watch, a movement interpreted to prove that he was uncomfortable debating Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

My biggest concern is Conservatives saying, "Look, the Democrats said that President Bush was too dumb to read scripted responses provided by Karl Rove, and it turns out they were wrong. Clearly President Bush is the right guy." Which is kind of what happened in 2000.