US debate can clear pre-poll fuss

Presidential debate is likely to force both nominees to face a direct media interrogation, which they have so far avoided.

Monday’s presidential debate will contrast two remarkably different approaches to entertainment: Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s carefully planned and polished production versus Republican nominee Donald Trump’s seemingly impulsive and brash reality style.

Throughout the campaign, both nominees have used entertainment forums — from appearances on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon to cameos on Saturday Night Live to Twitter feeds — to bypass the mainstream media and bring their message directly to voters in an unfiltered, and unchallenged, manner.

This year, the presidential debate is likely to force both nominees to face a direct media interrogation that each has used their entertainment strategy to avoid.

Though the function of the debates as performance art may seem to play to Trump’s strengths, a nominee historically needs to convey substance to be successful. Debates are a crucial opportunity not simply for Clinton but also for the news media to hold Trump accountable for his outlandish statements and dramatic policy reversals.

The history of televised debates is frequently told in clichés. Two in particular dominate: How Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy’s tan triumphed over Vice President Richard M. Nixon’s sweaty brow in 1960, and how President Gerald Ford lost credibility in 1976 when he claimed Poland was not under Soviet domination.

These frequently invoked stories reinforce the belief that style always triumphs over substance. On-camera performance emerged as a key qualification for public office, which has heightened the power of media consultants and spin doctors in American political life. The 1960 Kennedy-Nixon face-off served to demonstrate the importance of visual performance. As legend has it, voters who listened to the radio broadcast of the debate thought Nixon had won, while television viewers believed Kennedy triumphed.

Nixon saw the debates as an opportunity to show his expertise and qualifications, an image he also cultivated with his political advertisements, which showed him sitting at an office desk. Kennedy, however, saw the debates as an opportunity to connect his personality to viewers with the same strategy he had used over the course of the campaign. That fall, Kennedy’s schedule was filled with a carefully designed effort to saturate news shows likeMeet the Press, Face the Nation and even the more entertainment-based Jack Paar Show, an early iteration of The Tonight Show. Because his campaign had scheduled these interviews to gain free media attention, Kennedy used the debates as yet another platform not to attack his opponent but to reiterate the message that had dominated news programs.

The debates reflected Nixon and Kennedy’s different media approaches. But the memory of the broadcasts, in particular, haunted the former vice president. Nixon believed they had cost him the election, and, as a result, he chose not to debate his presidential opponents in 1968 and 1972. More significantly, however, they transformed Nixon’s approach to winning the presidency. Media coverage of the debates in 1960 focused on each candidate’s message, not their style. Over the following years, however, as political advisers and analysts looked back at Nixon’s defeat, they increasingly blamed it on his poor performance in the television debates. When these advisers, like Patrick Buchanan and Roger Ailes, joined Nixon’s campaign, they told him that the difference between Nixon the loser and Nixon the winner would be an effective media strategy that would bypass the mainstream press to connect Nixon’s message and personality directly to voters. The rise of 24/7 news generated more opportunities for political commentary about campaign messaging and the importance of spin. The result: The same strategists who advised campaigns also generated the norms of political analysis and commentary on cable news programming.

In this context, both news programs and political parties began pouring even more resources into preparing for debates and setting their parameters. Media advisers now negotiate who takes part, how long each participant speaks, what the podiums look like and who moderates.

But now, in a campaign that has taken entertainment and celebrity to remarkable new heights, the debates, if executed with care and precision and covered in substantive ways, offer a critical opportunity. Political journalism has struggled to cover this entertainment-saturated campaign, but Monday offers a national stage that can bring the fourth estate, rather than entertainment media, back into the election to ask the hard-hitting questions that presidential nominees need to answer.