The long tradition of American Presidential debates has meant make or break for Presidents and presidential aspirants
Donald Trump’s decision not to go ahead with a second debate with Kamala Harris, coming as it does on the heels of his failure to stay on script in the first — and the resultant widespread consensus, even among Republicans, that he had lost the debate with the feisty Democrat — prompts me to recall the long tradition of American Presidential debates I have viewed, that were said to have impacted the final result.
When JFK charmed America
It all began with the first televised debate in 1960 between Republican Vice-President Richard M. Nixon and the youthful Democratic challenger from Massachusetts, Senator John F. Kennedy. As many Americans heard the debates between them on radio (until then the favored medium for political broadcasts), I was amazed to learn that when polled, a majority of those who listened on radio, thought the experienced and polished Nixon had won, whereas an equally large majority of those who saw the debates on TV thought he had lost. I saw recordings of the debates myself a decade-and-a-half later, as a graduate student in the United States, and could see why. On TV, the somewhat glib and brash-sounding (on radio) Kennedy appeared handsome, confident and smart on screen; he looked straight at the camera and seemed to appeal directly to the audience. Nixon, on the other hand, despite having served two terms as Vice-President under Dwight Eisenhower, was less well coached: he did not wear make-up or shave, and had a pronounced “five o’clock shadow” that gave him a sweaty, dark and glowering appearance against his tanned and fresh-faced young rival. He also looked at the moderator, not the camera, and this sideways angle made him seem shifty and furtive, especially in contrast with the open, relaxed and friendly Kennedy. In the event, Nixon lost the debate — and the election.
I was in the U.S. as a student in 1976, and watched live the election debates between the “unelected president” Gerald Ford, who had succeeded President Nixon when he resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal, and Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Ford was a wooden speaker at the best of times, but he had defeated the charismatic Ronald Reagan in the Republican primaries as a “safer pair of hands” to lead the nation during the fraught and tense days at the height of the Cold War. Ironically, it was a gaffe he made about the Cold War that did him in. During the debate, Ford said “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration”. His opponents spent the aftermath of the debate pointing out that the Soviet Union had troops deployed across Eastern Europe, whose States were all under the Soviet jackboot as members of the Warsaw Pact. When Ford finally explained himself, his defense — that he meant only that the Soviets were not “dominating” the spirits of the East European people — came across as lame. Ford’s debate fiasco led the public to conclude there was no great risk in voting for the untried and untested Carter if the “safer” Ford was so ignorant of the geopolitical facts of his job. Carter won.
Reagan turned the tables in 1980, of course, but in 1984, the by-then 73-year-old President Reagan was up against a far more youthful challenger, former vice-president Walter Mondale, a sprightly 17 years his junior. But the gifted debater that he was, Reagan turned his weakness into an asset. When the dreaded question of his age came up — no President in history had been as old as 77, the age he would be in the final year of his second term — Reagan responded with the broad smile that always accompanied his trademark wit. “I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” Reagan answered the barbed question. “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Even Mondale laughed. Reagan won.
Both of Barack Obama’s challengers in 2008 and 2012, John McCain and Mitt Romney, had served in the military and placed their record of nationalism and tough-guy service up against the comparably wet-behind-the-ears orator. Romney, whose father had made an unsuccessful run for the presidency four decades earlier, attempted to make the military an issue, calling for increased defense spending and pointing out that the U.S. Navy had fewer ships than it did in 1916. Obama, always quick on his feet, retorted cuttingly: “Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines.” Romney, taken aback by Obama’s witty comeback, never recovered.
The Trump-Hillary debate
The 2016 debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was deemed particularly nasty, even vicious. Trump left the podium and advanced menacingly towards Hillary while she was speaking, seemingly casting a shadow on the woman then considered likely to become the first U.S. woman President. Gender was undoubtedly a key issue in the election, pitting as it did a woman candidate against a man who was widely portrayed as a serial womanizer, and boasted on video that his celebrity status allowed him to do anything to women.
Despite his own unsavory past, the Republican candidate tried to turn the tables on his female opponent by attacking her husband, former President Bill Clinton, accusing him of being “so abusive to women”. This below-the-belt blow hit Hillary in a weak spot from which she was never quite able to retaliate.
“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” was the best Hilary Clinton was able to muster. Trump retorted: “Because you’d be in jail.” His references to “crooked Hillary” stuck in the minds of enough voters to throw a close election to him. Hillary, of course, was never convicted of any wrongdoing, whereas just this year, Trump himself was.
Biden bows out
In 2020, President Trump went after the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, frequently interrupting the latter’s debate speeches until an exasperated Biden snapped: “Will you shut up, man?” Biden won a bitterly-contested race against the incumbent, whom in one debate he called a “clown”. But in 2024, the man Biden had dismissed as “Putin’s puppy”, had his revenge on his 81-year-old opponent in what was seen as the most decisive debate of the current Presidential election. As AFP reported, Biden “repeatedly lost his train of thought, stared blankly and spoke incoherently and with a raspy voice at times”. The debate conclusively proved to the electorate, including a majority of Biden supporters, that their man was too old, forgetful and weak to win re-election at 81 and serve four years beyond that age. Biden’s dismal debate performance proved decisive — not to enable a Trump victory but to prompt enough supporters and donors to pull the plug, obliging Biden to eventually drop out of the race. This enabled his much younger running-mate, 59-year-old Kamala Harris, to take over and to turn in the kind of effective debate performance that prompted Trump to say “no more”.
But will her debate victory prove as decisive as some of the others I have recalled? It is too early to tell. Many point out that when voters go to the polls in less than two months, the election will come down to the preferences and prejudices of a small number of voters in six battleground “swing states” (the others are largely deemed to be safely in the Democratic or Republican columns already). Whether debate performance will change the minds of a handful of undecided voters is anybody’s guess. Has the debate shown Americans a rambling, easily-baited, myth-peddling and blustering Donald Trump? Maybe, but most Americans who support him know their man was like that anyway, and still believe he represents their hopes and resentments better than his rivals. By avoiding another debate, Trump is refusing to underscore this perception of his nature, and trying to win the election on his issues. It will be fascinating to see if he does — or whether, by winning their only debate, Harris wins the presidency after all, defeating the man who just eight years ago, ended another woman’s dreams of becoming America’s first female President.
(Shashi Tharoor is a four-term Member of Parliament (Congress) for Thiruvananthapuram, who served nearly three decades at the United Nations, where he rose to the position of Under Secretary-General. He has also been a Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India and is the bestselling author, among others, of Pax Indica: India in the World of the 21st century, and, most recently, A Wonderland of Words)
(First published in The Hindu)