A Guide to Watching, Listening or Reading about the U.S. Presidential Debate

A Guide to Watching, Listening or Reading about the U.S. Presidential Debate

By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist

LOS ANGELES – Is the American presidential debate -- the first in this election-season’s series is scheduled for Thursday night, Washington time -- nothing more than 90 minutes of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Rather the opposite: In our visual age, the epoch in which TV is the predominant medium (with the Internet rabidly on its heels), this year's three-debate process is more significant than ever. It could, in fact, decide the U.S. presidency's winner. So, here's what to look for, what not to hope for and who will probably win the debates.

1. Both candidates will try to appear presidential: The Republican incumbent is generally a strong TV performer, certainly cooler and sharper than his 2000 debate opponent, Al Gore. But his talents lend themselves better to the role of punchy challenger than above-it-all viceroy. Democratic hopeful John Kerry, by contrast, has a good presidential look but so far has shown little avidity for attack-dog drool. Given these offsetting factors -- and especially if Kerry has a bad-hair day Thursday night -- since Bush is president and Kerry is not, advantage: Bush.

2. Both candidates will try to appear very smart: Here, the incumbent may be at a disadvantage. Maybe history may judge him as sharp as Winston Churchill, but the general American consensus right now is that while decisive, even Reaganesque in focus and charm, Bush’s IQ is not high on his list of virtues. By contrast, Kerry is either an intellectual in the best sense of the word or he has no chance at all in this election. Given that Kerry is smarter than Bush, advantage: Kerry.

3. Domestic issues: The U.S. economy is not bad enough to help Kerry nor vibrant enough to render the president a slam-dunk advantage. Instead, both will refer to domestic issues that mainly appeal to their core constituencies. To this end, Bush (abortion, stem-cell) will hope to drive up GOP voter participation; Kerry (health care, income distribution) will emphasize Clinton-like issues that appeal to the middle and lower class. Assuming both candidates are equally efficient in their partisan regard, then advantage: Draw.

4. The Iraq War: The problem here for Kerry is to avoid appearing a defeatist, or trumpeting the failures in Iraq while U.S. boys and girls are having their heads blown off. The problem for Bush is that the U.S. media reports from Iraq lately have been blowing frigid air on the president's ("light at the end of the tunnel") optimism and high-school cheerleading.
So, if Kerry can come across as patriotic while pressing the obvious (i.e., Iraq is a real mess), he can maneuver Bush into “what is the president smoking?” market. Advantage: Kerry.

5. Other foreign issues: Probably none -- certainly not in Debate One. The capacity of the American public to absorb more than one major foreign issue is limited. Everything in the United States now is Iraq, 24/7. It's possible even Afghanistan will not come up. Certainly, you can forget about growing tension over the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan's threat to buy missiles aimed at Shanghai and the huge Chinese missile buildup. Forget about India and Kashmir, even about the extraordinary good news out of Indonesia, where a new president has been elected by full democratic vote, the biggest ray of sunshine to hit the international stage in a long time. Probably nothing, either, about Hong Kong's successful election and improving economy; nothing about Japan, the world's second-biggest economy, and its continuing up-tick. Maybe the continuing Korean peninsula crisis will surface: After all, Pyongyang probably has a bomb or two (Iraq didn't). Maybe Iran will come up; unlike Iraq, it is close to a nuclear capability. If -- and it's a big if -- any of these foreign issues come up, because many of them have been more or less back-stoved by the incumbent administration, then advantage: Kerry.

So, who will win the debates? If this analysis for Debate One is correct, and if the pattern of the first debate holds through TV debate ordeals two and three, then Kerry will win the debates. With such victories, in a close election, Kerry will probably win. But should he win simply because he is better on TV? Of course not. But this is media America, where the medium is the message.

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Tom Plate is a professor of Communication and policy Studies at UCLA. He is a regular columnist for the The Straits Times -- and is syndicated through UCLA's MEDIA CENTER to papers througout the world, including The Honolulu Advertiser, The Japan Times, The Seattle Times, the San Diego Business Journal, the Korea Times and the Orlando Sentinel. He has been a participant member of the World Economic Forum at Davos, and is a member of the Pacific Council on International policy. The author of five books, he has worked at TIME, the Los Angeles Times and the Daily Mail of London. He established the Asia Pacific Media Network in 1998 and was its director until 2003. He is now founder and director of UCLA's MEDIA CENTER.

For publication and reprint rights, contact the MEDIA INSTITUTE at platecolumn@hotmail.com -- or Tom Plate directly at tplate@ucla.edu.

The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.

Date Posted: 9/28/2004