Some preliminary thoughts on the coming presidential debates, the first of which is Oct. 3, in 3½ weeks:
1. People will be watching. Convention viewership may have been down, but almost every voter who can, will watch at least some of the debates. Three reasons. First, nothing else has moved the needle, the race has been neck and neck for months. Second, a lot of people will use the debates to test and double-test their preliminary judgments. Is Romney really strong enough for this job? Is Obama really who I want to stick with? Third, it’s a contest, it’s combat. Someone will cross the goal line, one of them will beat the other. Someone will emerge the champ, or at least an undamaged contender. Unlike a convention, a debate is something a candidate can win right before your eyes.
So: everyone will watch. What do they hope for? They’d like to think by the end, “That guy is a president” and turn it off and go to bed, resolved. They will also accept, “My guy didn’t screw up! It was a tie, but he didn’t lose, I’ll watch the next one.”
2. Everyone says Obama has the advantage because he’s a wonderful debater. It’s not true. There’s no evidence he’s ever been a wonderful debater. He won the election in 2008, so people think, retrospectively, that he was great at debate. But he wasn’t, he just never lost an inch to John McCain and seemed steadier, less scattered. But he never said anything interesting. In all the 2008 Democratic primary season and then in his presidential debates with Mr. McCain, Obama never offered a memorable moment or said a memorable thing, with one exception. That was when he said, in response to a facetious comment by Hillary Clinton, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” And that was memorable, in retrospect, because he let his inner rhymes-with-witch come out. What Mr. Obama tends to be is unruffled, steady and cool. But this can also come across as passive, uninterested and unforthcoming.
3. The incumbent labors at a disadvantage in many respects. The first is that he has a record to defend. He’s not promising a better future, he’s saying he did a good enough job to merit re-election, which will usher in a better future. Everyone knows the economic facts: There’s a lot that needs defending.
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