Winning election is survival of the chillest
A new debate strategy is emerging: opponents are being tired out, rather than knocked out
The pugilistic metaphor of the “knockout line” is one of the big draws of election campaign debates.
Partly this is because dry, over-rehearsed political oratory needs to be spiced up to be memorable and viewers cherish whatever drama they can get. Mainly, though, it is because screen media — television, laptops, phones — are tailor-made for the big moment, broadcasting not just the words, but also the images of a candidate in full fight, swinging big rhetorical fists from behind the podium or taking one on the chin.
Today’s big debaters — Canadian party leaders and Republican presidential hopefuls in the U.S. — are therefore nervous about joining a rich tradition. From Lloyd Bentsen’s withering put-down of Dan Quayle, “You’re no Jack Kennedy,” to Brian Mulroney’s devastating riposte to John Turner’s excuses for patronage, “You had an option, sir,” the stories are so famous candidates rehearse as much for fear as for optimism.
Just as shifting attitudes and technological advancements made the 1960 debates possible, so do new attitudes and technologies have the power to shape the debates of the future. ALAN SCHROEDER AUTHOR OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: 50 YEARS OF HIGH RISK TV
But this is changing. As more and more video clips are held up like chalices of political victory, their power is diminished. Ennui has settled in over the very idea of the knockout blow.
Now that the U.S. and Canada are run by two long-serving incumbents — “No Drama Obama,” with his collegiate swagger, and the strategically camera-shy Stephen Harper — a new ideal debate strategy is emerging: defence is valued over offence and opponents are tired out, rather than knocked out. In this fight, winning is survival of the chillest.
“They both have benefited from a desire not to rock the boat,” said Gil Troy, a political historian at McGill University and a longtime campaign watcher.
Evidence for the shift is building slowly but steadily. One revealing episode came in 2008, when Jack Layton went for the prime minister’s jugular, saying his lack of a public platform meant he is either incompetent or does not care.
“Where’s your platform? Under the sweater?” he said, having evidently rehearsed the joke about Harper’s awkward dress sense in a campaign ad. Harper, of course, went on to win.
It is a slow shift, though. This week’s Republican debate, which coincides with Canada’s first leaders’ debate, is sure to offer some outrageous line by the front-runner Donald Trump, memorably described in The New York Times as the first “post-policy candidate,” whose campaign is widely expected to collapse once people start paying serious attention.
And because candidates don’t know if they’ll face a wall of ice or a barrage of fire, debates have lost none of their terror.
“Choreographed and unscripted, contrived and authentic, debates straddle the fault line between artifice and reality — like everything else on TV, only more so,” wrote Alan Schroeder in Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High Risk TV. “The institution seems fully entrenched.”
Of course, the importance of campaign debates has been Politics 101 for decades. And every time the medium for them changes, so do strategies to win over voters.
Canadian party leaders have done televised debates without exception since 1984, following American tradition.
When radio debates gave way to TV debates, verbose fire-and-brimstone oratory gave way to image control. The near-mythic image of Richard Nixon sweating and pasty in front of 85 million people in 1960 is surely burned into every politician’s mind. As Troy said of that famous encounter, “Kennedy did not have a knockout line, he had a knockout tan.”
There are unique challenges as TV gives way to the age of the Internet as well. Debates still matter, because they are watched on all kinds of devices. But the audience is far more splintered, better informed and more cynical about political authority. As a British satire website reported during the recent British election, the leaders’ debate “was won by the person you’ve already decided to vote for. … This result was backed up by the newspaper and websites you usually read, and about 80 per cent of the people you choose to be connected to on social media.”
That can lead some politicians, said Troy, to follow the Hippocratic ideal of first doing no harm. There is a lot of damage control, defensive posturing and a reluctance to speak as forcefully as one might feel, for fear of seeming irrational or angry.
And for those who do decide to attack, the knockout must be unquestionable or it invites brutal mockery. It is not enough to swing heavy. The punch must land hard.
Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke seemed to be baiting at least one opponent to lash out on stage, with all the danger that entails. When asked about Liberal leader Justin Trudeau this week he said, “I think if he comes on stage with his pants on, he will probably exceed expectations.”
As Troy put it in a baseball analogy, the Conservative goal is to let Harper try for consistent singles and doubles, and invite the other candidates to take the riskier swings for the fences. Now they just have to hope the others don’t catch on to the same strategy.
“Just as shifting attitudes and technological advancements made the 1960 debates possible, so do new attitudes and technologies have the power to shape the debates of the future,” Schroeder wrote.
For today’s debates, that does not mean candidates will not try to put down their opponents in the most direct, funny, clever, even glib way possible. But it does mean the deliberate attempt at the knockout blow might go the way of the old-time radio campaign.