PAUL: What debate strategies was each candidate employing last night that maybe the average onlooker wouldn’t catch? LOUDEN: You can see Obama’s legal training at work in the debates. Arguably, she has the same legal training, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. She’s probably more removed, since she was a lawyer longer ago. The common wisdom is that you never give ground in politics because it will come back to haunt you. You always deny or oppose something because giving ground is a sign of weakness. She tends to do that. She’ll defend anything, and sometimes it’s highly defensible, like her plan for health care, and sometimes it’s a little specious, like the plagiarism charge. But she still defends that turf because to let it go would create a snowball effect you can’t control.
But that isn’t his tendency. His is to grab the other person’s argument and say, yes, that’s right, yes, I understand your point of view, and given that, here’s my new position. The most obvious example is with Farrakhan, denounce vs. reject. The reason the question was asked is about how to deal with the tension between black voters’ support and having to repudiate part of the black community. That’s the question he was actually asked. And he said, I understand what’s going on here and have repudiated it and, yes, the Jewish community can count on me. She said, well, not strong enough, because she still wanted to make a point about the Jewish community. And he comes back and says, OK, we’ll do both. He does that a lot. He grants the argument—that McCain is a hero worthy of respect, that she is a good, perfectly electable candidate—and that creates a different argument. It’s transcending the argument, as opposed to strict denial. That’s an argumentative move not often practiced, but it makes a lot of sense.
The health care example is interesting, too. In the last two debates, he said, we essentially agree on everything—now what? So that makes the argument about who can redefine the political system valid. Typically, you argue about who has the best policy. He changed argument to who can actually get something passed. That’s different ground. Divisiveness and high negatives all becomes part of the calculus in people’s thinking. He does that all the time, on all kinds of issues. That’s part of the reason it’s so damn hard to get underneath his rhetorical frame.
What about Hillary’s strengths? She’s really pretty good in these. For the debate last night, there are multiple audiences. The moderators tried to exploit the tension between the Texas and Ohio audiences, and the candidates are well aware of that. I think she won the debate in Ohio, in that she spoke much more about Ohio local concerns, grounded in citizens’ reactions, how many kids are covered by insurance. I would say three-quarters of her answers had a recognizable Ohio reference. And that’s probably good politics. His wasn’t nearly as specific to Ohio, but more about the meaning of election, aimed at a national audience. It was more about how to interpret what’s going on. I think she wins the debate in Ohio, but he wins the debate nationally.
More generally, she uses her expertise to argue. And, if you watch the debates, the experience is very different than if you listen to them. It changes your perceptions entirely. Oddly, George W. Bush doesn’t actually sound too bad, though the speeches are dreadful if you’re seeing them. When I was just listening to Clinton, I found her to be much more substantive and nuanced than when watching her. I thought she won the first half of the debate. Obama was much more inclusive. He subsumes arguments.
Does this type of debate format put one of them in a better light? Free flowing format was better for both of them. But there’s always a tension between talking too much and not enough. There was one point on health care when she just went on and on, while later in the debate on foreign policy, he went on and on. We often see holding the floor as dominance, but that can be perceptual. Back in the Cheney-Lieberman debate, Cheney spoke about 20 percent less than Lieberman did, but the perception was that he spoke more. With the format, because there is turn-taking and politeness factors, much judgment is not about the content or the person’s character, but about how they interact on a personal level. So, pulling a chair out, patting a hand, looking at each other, and that includes turn-taking—showing you know when to quit talking. In that sense, the open format allows relational thing to play out. And I think they both handled that well.
Obama often says things like he’s happy to let Hillary talk, right? Yes, he does respectful deference. It looks like he’s agreeing on most of the question, but then by the end of it he’s “turned.” We call it a turn, when you say the exact opposite is true from what you were led to believe before. He’s fairly good at letting others outside the debate make the arguments about when he’s not being treated fairly, which adds to credibility.
A gaffe happens when something gets media play. There are all kinds of gaffes, but what goes out is that which fills the narrative that’s already out there. Is she ticked off? Is she desperate? Is he an empty vessel? Is he just pretty talk? Anything that would reinforce that image becomes news. It’s not about the debate, but about how the debate fits into larger campaign. And a lot of that is relational, about how you treat each other. She got a lot of compliments in that last debate with her closing statement, which was personal. It was the first time that she showed a little that she knew what was happening to her politically. And that allowed a closeness—everybody ran there and hugged her afterwards.
Is there any weight to Hillary’s complaint that she always gets the first question? From a debate coach’s standpoint, is that better or worse? That really wasn’t about that at all. That was about calling the press biased. And I think she made that point. It’s ironic that our understanding of the media process is informed by a late-night comedy show on the weekend, but it is. So I thought she made that point even though it sounded silly.
But clearly, the networks have taken over ownership, the 24/7s, and they use it for their own purposes. I thought opening the debate with the tension between the two Hillary’s was highly unfair—it wasn’t the purpose of the debate, it’s the purpose only of 24/7 news outlets. Even if I think Obama does a better job at an argument level, it still think that was a cheap shot. Save it for Meet the Press. But it did give her the chance to come back, and she handled it with humor, and she made it a health care topic. It’s the old adage; don’t talk about what you were asked, talk what you want to talk about.
Part of what’s happening with this campaign is that a lot of the tactics and debate ploys that would have worked before simply aren’t now. Everyone’s an eyewitness now and can make their own judgments. When you can go to Youtube and get 7 million people viewing the speech rather than it being filtered, you change the relationship between the voter, media, and the candidate. Access is entirely different than it was two years ago. The curiosity factor has driven up numbers this year more than anything else. When people are watching and blogging the debate, you change what spin means, you change the power of mainstream news to cover debates.
So now they throw things into debates to get them to become news cycles, because then the fact-checkers kick in. They don’t have any meaning in the debate itself, but candidates know that people will have to investigate it and it’ll become a story. Like Farrakhan, the Jewish vote, Walmart all had to be covered because of what happened in the debate—they produced stories, video, a whole little movie about her speaking at the Walmart conventions.
How does one avoid the appearance of whining in a debate? It’s the old double standard. If you’re being treated unfairly and you say so, you sound like you’re complaining, and if you say nothing, you’re not contesting it. It’s interpreted as you’re trying to play the game. Any purity of purpose is misinterpreted. That’s the beauty of his campaign, too, is that mostly things are not portrayed as strategic but as pushing his overall message. So, yes, she’s between a rock and a hard place now. Is that earned over time? Because of a history of old political games, is that why we now interpret her that way? Or is that just a function of a horserace media that we become so cynical? It’s probably a combination. She’s obviously had to play that came to survive, and has done well. She’s been a very effective senator that way. It’s the game she knows. So when she says something, it’s political, when he says it, it’s grand. Is that unfair? Yeah. Is it earned? Yeah. Is it how the process goes? Yeah.
