Dr. Lisa Esposito
Chair of Philosophy & Religion Department
Associate Professor of Philosophy & Religion
Phone: (417) 873-7229
Fax: (417) 873-7435
lesposit@drury.edu
Understanding Presidential Debates
E. Claire Jerry, MacMurray College, 2001
Presidential debates have been praised and blamed for many things in the last eleven elections. Debates are credited with Kennedy’s victory in 1960, Dukakis’ slide in 1988, and the narrow margin between Bush and Gore in 2000. Voters have learned many things about candidates and campaigns but not always what the candidates intended. Audiences have heard major gaffes (Poland was not? under Soviet domination), memorable lines ("there you go again"), and meaningful exchanges ("Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy"). With so many debates now part of our past, representing many candidates, many viewpoints, and many styles, how are students to understand and make application of such a significant part of American campaigns and American political life? Relying on Kenneth Burke’s metaphor of terministic screens, this paper will explore four aspects of presidential debates demonstrating that the perspectives, methods, and research of many different disciplines should inform the teaching of these communication events.The Perspective of Screens
In his essay "Terministic Screens," Kenneth Burke explores the powerful role language plays in shaping our ability to observe and understand the world. He states:
The dramatistic view of language, in terms of "symbolic action," is exercised about the necessarily suasive nature of even the most unemotional scientific nomenclatures. . . . Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality (45).
His claims about language in general have profound implications for the specific language of researchers and teachers, especially those desiring to look beyond the confines of any particular discipline. Burke continues:
Not only does the nature of our terms affect the nature of our observations, in the sense that the terms direct the attention to one field rather than to another. Also, many of the "observations" are but implications of the particular terminology in terms of which the observations are made (46).
Therefore, as researchers, the language we use (in Burke’s terms our screens) constrains the questions we ask as well as the results we find. As teachers, the disciplinary screens we bring to bear on the material we present to students cause us to reflect and select only a portion of the whole.
This incomplete (which is not to say inaccurate) representation has significant potential consequences when the topic at hand is one that has implications for students far beyond the classroom. A general understanding of the political process and all its component parts is a fundamental goal of a liberal education, leading as Mortimer Adler suggested, to "citizens who can exercise their political liberty responsibly." Nowhere is this process more fully realized than in the candidate debates whether you see them as true debates, joint discussions, "parallel press conferences" (Graber & Kim 418), or just another leg in the latest political horse race. Presidential debates provide one of the best laboratories for exploring and developing what W.R. Conner described as the central skills for liberally educated students:
What does it take to make wise decisions in a world as complicated as ours? How does a citizen know when to trust and when to distrust the experts? . . . The ability to read texts closely, an alertness to turn of phrase or shift of argument, clear thinking and effective argument in all their forms, good writing, an understanding of how individuals and communities in the past have dealt with practical challenges and moral perplexities, alertness to the ironies of history, the ability to imagine the situation of others and to assess the responses most likely to prove effective are still rare commodities in our society.
In order to approach all these goals, students will need as many tools as possible at their disposal. An interdisciplinary approach to teaching this important and complex subject is therefore imperative.
Four possible aspects of the study of presidential debates will be explored in this paper: the argumentative, the rhetorical, the journalistic, and the historical. Precisely because they are debates, the argumentative aspect of these events will be explored first. Questions to be examined here include the clash or lack thereof between candidates, the nature of claims made by the candidates, and the logical coherence of the arguments presented. Second, the rhetorical aspect includes the ways in which debates function as campaign strategies, the rhetorical impact of specific stylistic choices, and the rhetorical function of the debates within the broader democratic context. Third, the journalistic aspect yields questions on broadcasting form and techniques, the effect and role of "spinning," and the dissemination of debate information. Finally, the historical aspect enables the student to place a debate within the context of an individual candidate’s career as well as within the collective context of presidential debates across the decades. Each of these aspects draws more heavily on the methods and perspectives of some disciplines than others. These methods may involve differing reliance on texts and artifacts, different questions about measurement and results, and potentially different conclusions about causality and impact.
Argumentative Aspect
The argumentation perspective seems to be a logical starting point for students. These communication events are, after all, called debates, implying that they are forums for clash and structured disagreement. Analysis from this perspective is most often done by teachers and coaches of academic debate who, given their terministic screens, have asked the not unreasonable question, "Are these really debates?". The answers to this question can be grouped under "no," "yes," and "maybe." The landmark "no" answer was given by J. Jeffrey Auer in his 1962 analysis of the Kennedy-Nixon debates. Auer maintained that "true" debates require
"(1) a confrontation, (2) in equal and adequate time, (3) of matched contestants, (4) on a stated proposition, (5) to gain an audience decision" (146). He concluded that the debates of 1960 were "counterfeit" because they failed to meet each of the five criteria. Auer’s categories have been applied to many of the subsequent presidential debates with the same results (Trent & Friedenberg 252). Diana Prentice Carlin has a simplified list and claims that these appearances are, in fact, debates. She says debates require only that "(1) participants are on opposing sides of a conflict; (2) participants adhere to a formalized set of rules to present their ideas; and (3) a third party is the target of candidates’ messages" (209). Michael Weiler takes the "maybe" ground. While acknowledging the validity of Auer’s claims, Weiler posits that argumentation theorists have misidentified one of the key "debaters"—the press moderators who frame the questions to which the candidates respond. He concludes that the debates can only be understood as debates when we acknowledge that "Through lengthy declarative prefaces to questions, repetition of questions, hyperbole, and other devices, the press may become as much debater as facilitator of debate" (219). Many fascinating accounts exist of the way in which moderators have been chosen for various debates, how they have framed their questions, and how they have determined the amount and duration of clash. For example, Joshua Micah Marshall claims that Jim Lehrer actually harmed the debating process by failing to acknowledge his role as "the stand-in [debater] for the voters." These different debate perspectives can be useful to students even if the professor’s concern is not formal definitions of debate. This approach, which requires close textual analysis, forces students into an analysis of clash which they might otherwise miss.
A second question that can be raised through the argumentative screen is an analysis of the claims made by the candidates. For example, in a close textual analysis of the 1960 debates, William L. Benoit and Allison Harthcock examined the frequency and content of utterances they label acclaims, attacks, and defenses. They then were able to show the key role played by the debates in the recurring flow of arguments predicted by the functional model of campaign communication. An argumentation perspective enables the students to see the individual claims of a candidate in a context beyond the specific content dictated by the particular year of the campaign. Of course, this perspective also encourages careful examination of the logical coherence of the claims and data presented by individual candidates.
Rhetorical Aspect
The rhetorical screen highlights the strategic and stylistic aspects of the debating process. Keeping in mind Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (1355b), this perspective focuses attention on persuasive strategies before, during, and after the debates, the persuasive impact of specific stylistic choices, and the persuasive function of the debates within both the campaign and the broader democratic context.
Debates as a communication event are strategically designed by candidates and their teams in an effort to shape the interaction and influence audience perceptions of the debates, the candidates, and their opponents. For example, as we saw for weeks in the 2000 campaign, candidates have pre-debate debates over whether there should even be debates, what they should look like, and how they will be run. Conventional wisdom suggests that debates are no longer optional and that no "real" contender would seriously entertain the idea of skipping them (witness the dogged attempts of the third parties to get into them) but the major parties still go through the motions of debating the idea of debates and posturing for any perceived advantage going into them.
Among the pre-debate strategies that are most enlightening (and entertaining) to students are the debates over staging and the attempts to create expectations of individual performances. With respect to staging, Alan Schroeder, in his recent history of televised presidential debates, relates several wonderful anecdotes about podium height. The relatively well-known discussions during the Bush-Ferraro and the Bush-Dukakis debates pale in comparison to the "belt buckle compromise" of the Carter-Ford debate:
. . . Ford’s lectern was built to intersect his torso two and a half inches above his belt buckle, while Carter’s podium intersected an inch and a half below his buckle point. In exchange for this concession, the Carter camp agreed to let Ford’s people choose the color of the backdrop, something the Republicans wanted in order to mask the incumbent President’s thinning hair (31-32).
Schroeder also traces the history of debates over podium versus table versus town hall format. As recently as 1996, the "seated at a table" format was proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates and rejected by both participants (33). Its adoption in the 2000 debates was hailed by viewers as a great advance although its long-term impact is still under review. Students, prior to adopting a rhetorical screen, have often not given much thought to the conscious attempts to alter staging for persuasive impact.
Another pre-debate strategy that reveals a great deal about candidates is their effort to influence public expectations of their performance and the anticipated performance of their opponent. For instance, Kennedy downplayed his success in Senate debates while Nixon and the press played up his successes in his Congressional campaigns and his famous "kitchen debates" with Khrushchev. As it turned out, both of these orchestrated expectations played into Kennedy’s hands. Because Jimmy Carter had done well in the 1976 debates, he was expected to do well in 1980; Reagan was expected to be shallow. Heightened expectations of the former were not met and because Reagan did better than anticipated, he was perceived as the winner. The 2000 debates followed this pattern. George W. Bush repeatedly reminded voters that he did not have the debating skill of his opponent and, thus, was able to exceed the lowered expectations his campaign staff helped to create. If students are expecting to judge a debate solely by what takes place during those ninety minutes, a rhetorical perspective can help them attend to additional relevant details.
The rhetorical aspect of a debate also includes analyzing specific stylistic devices chosen for their impact more than their content. Ask most voters what they can recall of presidential debates and you will likely get a recap of the gaffes and quotable lines mentioned previously. Steven E. Clayman calls them the "defining moments" of the debates. Some of these lines seem clearly unrehearsed ("Who am I, why am I here?") but others are crafted to be used as soon as the opening appears. For example, Lloyd Bentsen’s staff heard Dan Quayle make the JFK analogy several weeks before the debate, giving them ample time to create the perfectly phrased response. His "Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy" was the main soundbite to emerge from this debate and, even though Quayle was the November victor, this phrase framed the rest of the campaign and Quayle’s tenure as vice-president.
Finally, debates serve a persuasive function within campaigns and within a broader democratic context. Roderick P. Hart has developed a detailed and thorough content analytic method that enables researchers to discern very specific functions performed by a variety of political discourse. In his recent book, Campaign Talk, he describes five functions debates uniquely serve: adding prudence, bringing focus, ensuring self-involvement, establishing a common meeting place, and interestingly enough, reducing campaign bombast (116-126). In this last case, the careful textual analysis required by the rhetorical perspective enables students to see features of a debate they might otherwise dismiss without consideration. Hart explains:
. . . debates cut through the political glad-handing—the rallying of the troops, the overly embellished claims, the invocation of the deities. Debates produce an almost philosophical, or idealistic, discourse by establishing a space for examining basic premises. No doubt, idealism’s opposite—realism—will always be the nation’s most native political vernacular given its people’s modernist tendencies. Still, that voice is temporarily suspended as candidates confront the difficult questions often asked of them (121).
In addition to playing a unique role within specific campaigns, debates are widely perceived to provide "a rhetorical legitimacy for the electoral process" (Lucaites 232). Countless observers claim that debates play such roles as reinforcing our open democratic heritage, socializing our young people, raising our confidence in our institutions, and legitimizing the transfer of power between administrations. In part this is because, in the words of Rep. Edward J. Markey, "The debates are truly a national event. Like the Super Bowl and the World Series, they give Americans a sense of shared experience. And they build a sense of enthusiasm and anticipation about the election, drawing people to the polls." Debates, then, cannot be viewed strictly as instrumental communication events; a rhetorical screen is necessary to discern their broader persuasive function.
Journalistic Aspect
The journalistic perspective on presidential debates perhaps most closely parallels the lived experience of students. Whereas they may not have considered perspectives grounded more in scholarly research, they have heard the commentators, the analysts, the "spin-doctors." This screen allows the students to examine more systematically those reactions to debates they think they already know. The results may surprise them. This perspective invites questions on broadcasting form and techniques, the effect and role of "spinning," and the dissemination of debate information.
Today’s students are truly part of the video generation; they are so immersed in it that, unless they are journalism or broadcasting majors, they may never have been taught to attend to television’s form. Charles Conrad has argued that, for all viewers, these "joint appearances" are television first and debates second. In other words, we are socialized to respond to the compelling nature of the form over the nature of the information we receive (67). S.J. Drucker and J.P. Hunhold go even further with their claim that we respond to debates as we do to game shows, for their entertainment value. The effect of television’s form can be further enhanced by techniques such as camera angles, cut away shots, etc. John T. Morello has analyzed the broadcasts of the 1984 and 1988 debates and concluded that "visual structuring of candidate statements of class altered the verbal record of clash" (1988: 277). In other words, "commonly accepted television practices affect the way argumentative exchanges in debates are perceived by media critics and lay persons" (286). Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institute, confirmed this after personally attending the first of the 2000 debates. Because he did not have the "benefit" of split-screen viewing, he was unaware of any significant nonverbal communication until the following day. He reported a sense of some astonishment at the difference between his reaction and the reaction of those who saw the televised version. The best known of the claims that television matters revolves around the Kennedy-Nixon debate and the widely believed position that radio listeners supported Nixon and television viewers supported Kennedy. Unfortunately, there is compelling data to suggest that this commonly accepted disparity is probably wrong (see Vancil & Pendell), even though the myth persists. Nonetheless, there is more than enough evidence for the influence of the medium to demonstrate that this topic should be included for student analysis.
The presence of television as an actual player in the debate is intensified by the impact of post-debate commentary. Schroeder observed that, by 1976, "‘spinners’ and their comments, along with those of the journalists themselves, would dominate the postdebate agenda. . . . Presidential debaters no longer played to win just the audience at home; they played to sway the media as well" (176). Often the commentary reflects vastly different attention than that paid by ordinary voters. For example, the vast majority of voters did not report negative responses to Ford’s Eastern Europe error or Dukakis’ nonpassionate rape answer until after the commentators framed these as controversial. This ability of the media to interpret, if not actually change, the perceived outcome of a debate is magnified by the increasing presence of the Internet. Barb Palser reports that within twenty-four hours of the third debate last fall, more than 135,000 opinions had been cast on just two dot-com polls. Other innovations included Washingtonpost.com’s "‘Debate Referee.’ Click on the referee and a commentary window pops up to cut through the debate rhetoric" (Palser). Palser concludes, "The 2000 presidential election shows that the Internet has the potential to make debates and campaigns much more substantive. It also has the potential to paralyze, confuse and overwhelm." Once again, students should not assume the debate’s impact is limited to a single ninety-minute span; a journalistic perspective helps them to see literally outside the box.
Finally, the journalistic screen may be largely responsible for the horse-race mentality and vocabulary that surround presidential debates. It certainly plays up the desire to identify the winners and losers and to value the debates only for their measurable effects. After the 1976 debates, Steven H. Chaffee analyzed the results of more than thirty studies and determined that debates, while perhaps not effective, are useful. They increase exposure, provide information about positions and personalities, and influence voting decisions. Kathleen Hall Jamieson reported that the 1992 debates yielded a thirty percent increase in viewer knowledge (163). Both Chaffee and Jamieson posit that these increases occur, at least in part, because news outlets do not adequately cover the substantive issues candidates and viewers wish to see in the debates. Instead, the news reports who "won" the debates, how they performed, and what personal qualities they revealed (334). Benoit, Webber, and Berman’s study of the 1996 debates confirmed these results concluding that debate viewers had more issue knowledge and different attitudes about candidates than non-viewers. An on-line questionnaire posted by the Commission on Presidential Debates immediately after this year’s final debate found that 82 percent of respondents felt that the debate provided information that would help them make a voting decision and, therefore, "the debate was valuable to them as a citizen." Sixty-six percent "agreed that the debates taught them something new about one or more issues." Viewers at least perceive that the debates influence them; we often learn of the influence from journalists.
In sum, the journalistic screen works particularly well in combination with other perspectives. This perspective does not rely quite so heavily on close textual analysis of debate transcripts but it allows students to take the words of the debates and frame them as an actual voter might have done.
Historical Aspect
Traditionally-aged college students have little if any personal involvement with presidential politics. They have probably voted in, at most, one election and many of them have conscious awareness of only one or two presidents. The historical perspective enables them to place debates within the context of an individual candidate’s career as well as within the collective context of presidential debates across the decades. Numerous histories of individual candidates (ex. Windt), journalistic coverage (ex. Plissner), and debates as a whole (ex. Hinck) are available to match students’ specific interests. But virtually everything discussed thus far about debates must be understood within this most global of the screens. With respect to the individual candidate, John M. Murphy has lamented the division between argumentation theorists, historians, and rhetoricians. He claims that knowledge of a candidate’s previous campaign discourse provides the "rhetorical legacy" in which the debate must be understood (227). James Fallows went even further to provide not just a history of Al Gore’s previous speeches but a specific record of his personal history as a debater. Candidate attitudes toward debates are also worth noting. George Bush is well known for his disdain for debates while Bill Clinton obviously thrives on them. Even the candidates themselves understand the role of the debates in their own political and rhetorical legacy. As Chaffee noted, debates modify the environment in which everything else happens (342). Students need to be able to see that debates are not isolated events for the campaign or the campaigner.
Even more profound for students, however, is exposure to the rich tradition of political debating in the United States. If time were unlimited, one could begin with the Lincoln-Douglas debates from which much can clearly be learned. However, realistically, most courses must begin with the "Great Debates" of 1960 and move rapidly toward the present. To fill in these historical gaps, Robert V. Friedenberg offers an excellent explanation of why there was a sixteen-year gap between Kennedy-Nixon and Carter-Ford and demonstrates the pivotal nature of the 1976 debates. PBS’s recent retrospective on debates, "Debating Our Destiny," provides invaluable observations directly from the participants themselves. Understanding the history of debates will better help the student sort through the changes between 1996 and 2000: the use of the same single moderator for all three debates, the change in and varieties of format, the seeming reluctance of candidates who should have benefitted from debating, etc. Interesting as debates are as individual textual artifacts, the historical screen is pivotal for making sense of all other perspectives.
Conclusion
As this cursory description of four distinct perspectives has hopefully demonstrated, teaching campaigning in general and presidential debates in particular requires an interdisciplinary perspective for two compelling reasons. First, students simply miss too much about these events if they do not view them through a variety of perspectives. The study of presidential campaigns is more than an interesting academic exercise; it potentially shapes the participation of citizens in the democratic process. An interdisciplinary approach provides students with the maximum number of tools/screens with which to make informed decisions and enables them to attend more fully to all these events have to offer. Second, if we, the professors, rely on only one perspective/screen we also simply miss too much. Any one approach to this type of communication event runs the risk of being reductionistic rather than heuristic. I am a better debater, professor, and citizen because I have been empowered by a variety of terminologies with all their implications. I have learned to see through multiple screens; I hope my students can say the same.
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