Please, Be Presidential

We are now less than 36 hours from the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. I have heard and read many opinions about what each should do to win, but I think I have narrowed it down.

First and foremost, I think, the voters want to hear what the candidates want to do about the issues confronting this nation. We know there are some pretty serious problems — and pointing fingers at the other guy won't solve them. There will be time to assign blame later.

I've used this analogy before, but it is still appropriate. If a house is burning, your first priority is not to determine why the fire began or how it was started. Your first priority is to put out the fire. The frustration that so many voters feel is rooted in this.

The voters don't agree on what should be done. We usually turn to our leaders to guide us through uncharted waters, but we need to know where would–be leaders stand on the issues before we can decide which one we wish to follow.

We've lived through plenty of mud–slinging campaigns in recent decades, and this one is already shaping up to be the dirtiest of all. I have made my peace with that, but I think I speak for nearly all voters when I say, please, leave it at the doorstep when the debates are in progress. She can go back to calling him a racist and a sexist in her TV commercials and campaign speeches, and he can go back to calling her a shrew when the debates are over.

But, please, be presidential in the presidential debates.

Everything else I am going to say is merely a subhead to that. That is your lead paragraph (when I worked on newspapers it was sometimes spelled lede).

Clinton's huge lead in advertising spending in recent weeks has yielded no gain in the polls. In fact, she has been losing altitude. Why? Because every advertisement I have seen — and we usually don't see too many presidential advertisements in Texas because the outcomes of presidential elections here have been foregone conclusions for 40 years — has been negative.

We have seen some ads here this time, and they have all been negative, telling the voters why they should not vote for the opposition, not why they should vote for the candidate sponsoring the ad.

Why, you may ask, are independents now the largest voting bloc in the United States? As a group, we share little. We don't agree on everything, but I think most of us would agree on this: We're tired of choosing which candidate to vote against. We want a candidate we can vote for. (That's not as grammatically correct as I would like, but it gets the message across, doesn't it? Are the candidates listening?)

Yes, being presidential would help.

Besides that, there are some things both candidates can do to make listeners more receptive to their messages.

Hillary has been in the national spotlight for nearly a quarter of a century (longer than that for me, but I lived in Arkansas when her husband was governor). That is far more than long enough for attitudes about her to harden except among the youngest of voters. To win the debate she needs to demonstrate to people that the experience of which she boasts has taught her things that make her more trustworthy and that she is more honest than she has been. Voters need to believe she will tell them the truth in a crisis. Speaking in lawyerspeak (i.e., "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is.") or effecting a faux Southern drawl (having grown up in the South, I can spot one of those at least a mile away) won't do it.

Trump has been in a spotlight, too, but not a political one until recently. Attitudes about him in that regard are still fairly fluid, at least in comparison to Clinton.

But in Trump's relatively brief time on the national stage, he has made some truly awful remarks. He has made some intriguing policy suggestions, but he is viewed by many as something of a loose cannon, a nationalistic bully. In all honesty, it reminds me more and more of 1980, when Democrats constantly warned voters that Ronald Reagan would start a nuclear war if he won the presidency. Then, in a single debate, Reagan reassured viewers that he wasn't such a bad guy, that he would be responsible if elected, and he beat President Carter by 10 percentage points.

It is unlikely to the point of being impossible that either Trump or Hillary can win by the kind of landslide margins that Reagan received in either of his two elections.

But Trump's challenge is similar. He must reassure voters that his image is inaccurate, that he isn't crazy or trigger happy.

It won't be easy for either one. Both must give us things we haven't seen from them before.

Whichever one can do it will get the upper hand in the campaign.

Back in the Saddle Again

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For two weeks, the pundits of 1984 spoke of little else but whether Ronald Reagan, at nearly 74, was too old to be president.

They did so primarily because of his performance in the first presidential debate with former Vice President Walter Mondale. What little traction Mondale did get following that debate was more or less halted a few days later when Vice President George H.W. Bush and Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro spent 90 minutes debating each other, and then neither was perceived to be the winner.

That meant that, to beat the already longshot odds against him, Mondale would have to beat Reagan decisively in the second debate, held 30 years ago tonight in Kansas City.

The debate was intended to be about foreign policy, and it started out that way with questions about Central America, the Soviet Union and regions that were crucial to American interests. The age issue didn't come up right away. It was the elephant in the room, though, that Henry Trewhitt of the Baltimore Sun finally confronted.

It was kind of hard to work in. Trewhitt tried to "cast it specifically in national security terms." Nice try. It served only as a straight line for Reagan.

"You already are the oldest president in history," Trewhitt said to Reagan. "And some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall yet that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?"

It took maybe 25 or 30 minutes to get to it, but, when it did, Reagan had a disarming response that he obviously had been holding for just the right moment.

"I want you to know that I will not make age an issue of this campaign," Reagan asserted. "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Everyone laughed, including Mondale, who must have realized that his last opportunity to seize the momentum was gone. Trewhitt gave Mondale an opportunity to speak about Reagan's age, and he did so, prefacing his remarks with his insistence that Reagan's age had not been made into an issue — which, of course, it had.

"What's at issue here," Mondale said, "is the president's application of his authority to understand what a president must know to lead this nation, secure our defense and make the decisions and the judgments that are necessary."

His argument wasn't terribly persuasive. I got the impression he knew that as he was giving his response.

To his credit, Reagan was more on top of things when he gave his closing statement than he had been when he made his closing statement in the first debate. It wasn't a meandering mess like the last one; it was the folksy kind of anecdote for which Reagan was famous. He told a story of how he was asked to write a letter that would be placed in a time capsule that would not be opened for 100 years.

Reagan spoke of driving along the California coastline, trying to organize his thoughts. It was made more complex, he said, by the fact that those who read the letter would know all about Reagan's time and whether the people of that time had met the many challenges they faced. He transitioned into a plea for another four years "to complete the new beginning that we charted four years ago."

Reagan ran out of time and was cut off before finishing his closing statement, but it was a huge improvement over the statement he made at the end of the first debate.

When the debate was over, both sides claimed victory. But both sides knew the truth. In the first Gallup Poll following the debate, Reagan's approval rating stood at 58% — precisely the share of the vote he would receive on Election Day, Nov. 6, 1984.

Savoring a Short-Lived Triumph

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"I would rather lose a campaign about decency than win a campaign about self–interest."

Walter Mondale
Oct. 7, 1984

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On this night 30 years ago, Walter Mondale's presidential campaign seriously began to entertain thoughts of winning the election.

In hindsight, of course, such thoughts were ludicrous. On Election Day, Ronald Reagan won a 49–state landslide. No one has won the presidency with such a sweeping landslide since.

Mondale had struggled since the summer convention to be regarded as a plausible alternative to Reagan, but he hadn't gotten much traction. After their first debate on this night in 1984, though, it was said that Mondale's campaign staff had been "tap dancing down the aisle" of Mondale's campaign plane.

Why were they so enthused? Because Reagan, at the time the oldest man to be nominated by a major party for the presidency, had appeared confused and disoriented on that stage in Louisville with Mondale.

He had not been the sharp Reagan everyone had expected; instead, he more closely resembled the tired, disengaged old man his critics had said he was. But many people had dismissed that as political gamesmanship.

The first debate focused on domestic issues, an area where the Reagan campaign believed it had a clear advantage — as could be seen in the famous "Morning in America" advertisement that boasted of the economic progress that had been made in Reagan's first term.

When they saw with their own eyes, disbelief gave way to dismay for many, and, in the two weeks between debates, the Mondale campaign began to think and act like a campaign that might not lose after all. Mondale himself began to sound and act like a candidate whose fortunes were turning — who just might be able to achieve what had previously been thought to be impossible.

Nearly everyone who saw the debate 30 years ago tonight had to agree that Mondale was the winner. And that made news because Reagan was so far ahead in the national polls. Like Barack Obama in his first debate with Mitt Romney, Reagan didn't need to be perceived as the winner; his opponent did. And it gave his campaign a much–needed boost. The next day, when Mondale participated in New York's Columbus Day parade, thick crowds lined the street. When he had been there to kick off his campaign a month earlier, attendance was sparse.

At a rally, Mondale's running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, introduced Mondale as "the new heavyweight debater of the world, Fighting Fritz Mondale!" For his part, Mondale was eager to tell the voters, "Today we have a brand new race."

It was preferable to acknowledging the facts — it was the same old race with a new twist.

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Well, not exactly.

Reagan still had a big lead in the polls. All the debate did was give the shaky elements of Reagan's coalition reason to give Mondale a second look. The twist was temporary at best. All that was needed on the incumbent's end was a little tweaking, a little fine tuning.

A big part of Reagan's problem had been a rambling, incoherent closing statement. At a point in the debate when a candidate needs to be as warm and appealing and visionary as possible, Reagan didn't use his folksy approach that had served him so well in the past.

Mondale took advantage of his opportunity. "The question is our future," he said. "President Kennedy once said in response to similar arguments, 'We are great, but we can be greater.' We can be better if we face our future, rejoice in our strengths, face our problems and, by solving them, build a better society for our children."

And Reagan's campaign staffers were pointing fingers at each other. Reagan had been overprepared, some argued. He had been mismanaged. His head had been crammed with facts and figures — when he was at his best communicating with the viewers in his folksy way. Let Reagan be Reagan, many said.

Reagan and Mondale would meet again in their second and final debate two weeks later. Ferraro and Vice President George H.W. Bush would meet in the second–ever vice presidential debate in a few days, and the momentum Mondale had gained in his first debate with Reagan would begin to fade.

Failing to Seize the Momentum

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If Dan Quayle's debate with Lloyd Bentsen a week earlier was the low point of the 1988 campaign for the Republican ticket, what happened 25 years ago tonight may have been the low point — certainly, it was one of the low points — for the Democrats.

The presidential nominees, Vice President George H.W. Bush and former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, met in Los Angeles' Pauley Pavilion for their final debate 25 years ago tonight.

And CNN's Bernard Shaw started things with the only question that anyone would remember: "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"

No one would remember Dukakis' answer, only that it was delivered in a flat monotone that seemed to lack the emotion most people would have expected of someone who was speaking of the (hypothetical) rape and murder of a loved one.

For the record, Dukakis' answer focused on statistics that were relevant to capital punishment — and showed why, he believed, it was ineffective. There were no gaffes, no sound bites that could be played endlessly.

It was all a matter of perception.

Like Richard Nixon in his first debate encounter with John F. Kennedy nearly 30 years earlier, Dukakis came into the debate on the heels of an illness. Dukakis was sick with the flu and actually spent much of that day in bed. His debate performance was generally poor, and it reinforced the impression that many voters had of him as cold and distant.

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But, even though his performance was not particularly good — the consensus was that Dukakis simply failed to seize the momentum in the debate — there was nothing fundamentally wrong with his responses, no glaring faux pas. Read it for yourself:

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"No, I don't, Bernard. And I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime. We've done so in my own state. And it's one of the reasons why we have had the biggest drop in crime of any industrial state in America; why we have the lowest murder rate of any industrial state in America. But we have work to do in this nation. We have work to do to fight a real war, not a phony war, against drugs. And that's something I want to lead, something we haven't had over the course of the past many years, even though the vice president has been at least allegedly in charge of that war. We have much to do to step up that war, to double the number of drug enforcement agents, to fight both here and abroad, to work with our neighbors in this hemisphere. And I want to call a hemispheric summit just as soon after the 20th of January as possible to fight that war. But we also have to deal with drug education prevention here at home. And that's one of the things that I hope I can lead personally as the president of the United States. We've had great success in my own state. And we've reached out to young people and their families and been able to help them by beginning drug education and prevention in the early elementary grades. So we can fight this war, and we can win this war. And we can do so in a way that marshals our forces, that provides real support for state and local law enforcement officers who have not been getting that support, and do it in a way which will bring down violence in this nation, will help our youngsters to stay away from drugs, will stop this avalanche of drugs that's pouring into the country, and will make it possible for our kids and our families to grow up in safe and secure and decent neighborhoods."

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Bush, on the other hand, didn't perform particularly well that night. But that didn't matter. The post–debate conversation focused on Dukakis' passionless response to a question about the hypothetical rape and murder of his wife — and little else.

It is ironic that the fatal blow to the Dukakis candidacy came in the form of a fictional attack on his wife. Truly irresponsible — and false — stories were spread about Kitty Dukakis during the campaign, including one that held that Mrs. Dukakis had burned an American flag in a Vietnam War protest. That one supposedly was spread by a U.S. senator, but Republican strategist Lee Atwater reportedly started it.

The Dukakis campaign had survived it all — not always well or gracefully — including self–inflicted wounds like Dukakis' tank ride in September, but the question about Kitty Dukakis sealed the deal.

Before the debate, it was often said that Dukakis needed a dramatic debate performance to swing the momentum his way. His performance was decidedly not dramatic, at least not in a positive way, and the polls reflected it — not immediately, but within a week — and the momentum moved irreversibly away from the Massachusetts Democrat.

The Dawn of the Cuban Missile Crisis

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President Barack Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney will meet in their second debate tomorrow night.

It will follow a "town hall" format in which members of an audience made up entirely of undecided voters will ask the questions. I suppose the general idea is that the audience will ask the questions that are of the most concern for undecided voters, which should be instructive.

In fact, it should be interesting, but I kind of wish tomorrow night's debate was the one on foreign policy instead. It would be much more appropriate, given that half a century ago today, the Central Intelligence Agency's National Photographic Interpretation Center identified what it believed to be missiles in surveillance photos of Cuba.

The State department was notified that evening, as was Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. National Security adviser McGeorge Bundy decided not to inform President Kennedy until the next day.

Consequently, on the evening of Oct. 16, after confirming to his satisfaction that the photographs did indeed reveal the presence of missile sites in Cuba, Kennedy called the first meeting of what came to be known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM) — the nine members of the National Security Council and five other advisers.

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It is almost a cliche now to say that the Cuban Missile Crisis — which really can be said to have begun 50 years ago today because that is when the Photographic Interpretation Center first spotted missiles in Cuba although the president wasn't informed until the following day — is the closest the world has come to a nuclear war.

But there is certainly a lot of truth behind that assertion.

I suppose it seems anticlimactic to people who study that period in school today. Heck, it seemed anticlimactic to me when I studied it, and I can only imagine how it must seem to young people in 2012. When historic events are studied, it always seems the outcome was inevitable.

But the men who participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not know how the situation would play out, and it was in large part because of the lessons that were learned 50 years ago that the leaders of the larger governments of the world forged foreign policies that showed the proper respect for the truly awesome power that had been unleashed at the end of World War II.

They had stared into the abyss, to use language and imagery that became fashionable after the fact, and had resolved to do whatever was necessary to avoid a similar confrontation in the future.

It quickly became conventional wisdom that Harry Truman's decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of thousands of lives because Japan promptly surrendered, sparing the Americans and their allies from a possibly prolonged invasion of Japan.

And, if the reports that the Nazis were on the brink of developing nuclear weapons and the Americans beat them to it are correct, then perhaps it is a good thing that the genie was let out of the bottle.

It was not a good thing that tens of thousands of civilians were killed on both occasions — but perhaps those sacrifices were necessary to impress upon those who had unleashed the power exactly how mighty was the power they held in their hands.

But the issue was not resolved in 1945. After the end of the war, the United States, the world's only nuclear power, chose to disarm, naively believing that merely having the most destructive weapon known to mankind would be enough to prevent acts of aggression.

America, to put it mildly, was caught with its pants down when it was revealed that the Soviet Union had developed the technology for assembling nuclear weapons.

Although most nations appear to recognize and respect nuclear power — and, to be fair, the world has seen no nuclear attacks in more than 65 years — the threat is very much with us today — in the form of terrorists who only want enough nuclear material to spread fear from sea to shining sea.

Reducing cities to piles of rubble is not in their plans — as far as we know.

Perhaps the greatest problem EXCOMM faced when it met for the first time 50 years ago tomorrow was that American naivete had backfired again. In spite of the fact that we had been involved in a Cold War since before the revelation that the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons, the Americans foolishly believed the Russians would never put missiles in Cuba.

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So, when the Russians did put missiles in Cuba, EXCOMM and Kennedy had to decide how to respond. There was no plan in place for such a situation.

For awhile, some members of EXCOMM probably felt that an invasion of Cuba was inevitable. The advocates of an invasion told Kennedy — forcefully — they believed the Soviets would do nothing in retaliation. Kennedy disagreed.

"If [the Russians] don't take action in Cuba," Kennedy reportedly said, "they certainly will in Berlin."

Fifty years ago, cooler heads prevailed. While diplomatic discussions, both formal and informal, went on, the Americans opted for a blockade in which the Navy would block any more shipments of missiles to Cuba.

Thankfully, things worked out in 1962. And one of the biggest reasons why things did work out was because Kennedy trusted the people of America enough to be honest with them about what was happening and what the risks were.

His actions were not guided by his memories of failure at the Bay of Pigs the year before.

But here we are, more than a month after four Americans were slain in a clearly coordinated attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya — and it is hard to tell if America has any friends left in the Middle East.

It is hard to tell because we get so much conflicting information from the administration that was going to be the most transparent in our history.

Even after the whopper that a video allegedly sparked a spontaneous demonstration that (allegedly) got out of hand had been discredited, U.N. ambassador Susan Rice continued to insist that it was true, as did the president.

My guess is that political considerations have been key factors in deciding what the president will or will not tell the American people — but I don't know that for certain. I'm simply acting on the old "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ..." rule of thumb.

I do know that jobs and the economy make everything else pale in comparison in this campaign, but I'd like to think that someone from the audience of undecided voters will ask the candidates about Libya and the four Americans who died there on the 11th anniversary of 9–11.

Ford's Self-Inflicted Wound

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On this night in 1976, President Ford and Jimmy Carter met in the second of their three televised debates.

Ford had been making gains on Carter since their first debate. He still trailed Carter in the polls by a considerable margin, but that margin clearly was narrowing. And Carter, who was known to be a "born again" Christian, received negative publicity for an interview he gave to Playboy.

In early October 1976, things seemed to be moving in Ford's direction.

However, Ford himself froze his momentum in its tracks with what can only be called a self–inflicted wound.

When the candidates met in San Francisco 35 years ago tonight, the subject was foreign policy, which was generally regarded as a strength of Republican nominees during the Cold War.

Carter, perhaps feeling particularly vulnerable after surveys had indicated that more people thought Ford won the first debate than thought Carter did and his interview with Playboy drew a sharp response from feminist leaders and Christian evangelicals, went on the offensive from the start.

Ford retaliated gamely, and the tone of the second debate was established. This would be a bare–knuckles brawl.

In their first debate, Carter seemed intimidated by Ford's office. "[T]his time, the aura of the presidency was no shield for Ford," wrote Jules Witcover in "Marathon," his account of the '76 campaign.

Carter was not as timid as he had often appeared in the first debate. He was aggressive, hammering away at every opening, and I recall thinking, about 10 or 15 minutes into the debate, that Ford seemed almost shocked. This wasn't the Jimmy Carter he had expected.

But that hardly explained what happened next. Max Frankel of the New York Times, in a question about U.S.–Soviet relations, observed that "[w]e've virtually signed ... an agreement that the Russians have dominance in Eastern Europe" and proceeded to ask Ford, "Is that what you call a two–way street of traffic in Europe?"

Astonishingly, Ford replied — as he concluded a rather routine recitation of "several examples" in which his administration had negotiated with the Soviets "from a position of strength" — that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration."

The remark was patently ridiculous.

Some of Ford's defenders — and the president himself — later tried to put a positive spin on the remark. They would claim that Ford was really saying that his administration had never acknowledged Soviet domination of eastern Europe.

And that had a defiant, almost revolutionary, sound to it — except that wasn't precisely what he said.

When NPR's Pauline Frederick, the moderator, tried to go to Carter for his rebuttal, Frankel interjected with a followup for Ford.

"[D]id I understand you to say, sir," he asked in disbelief, "that the Russians are not using eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it's a Communist zone?"

Given an opportunity to explain himself then, on the spot, Ford further muddied the waters, saying this instead:

"I don't believe ... that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Rumanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent, autonomous: it has its own territorial integrity and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union."

The damage had been done.

James Naughton of the New York Times observed an "audible intake of air" in the theater that night, Witcover wrote. Even more tellingly, Ford committee director Stuart Spencer, who was watching the debate with security adviser Brent Scowcroft, remembered that "Scowcroft went white. Right then I knew we had problems."

In hindsight, I suppose, Ford's remarks could almost be regarded as prophetic, considering the events that unfolded in the decade to come. But, on this night in 1976, it was nothing less than ludicrous to suggest that Poland and the other countries in eastern Europe were not dominated by the Soviet Union.

But Carter, sensing a vulnerability that he could exploit, said that Ford must have known about the presence of Soviet troops in eastern Europe. If he did not, he was incompetent. If he did and ignored them, pretended they did not exist, he had been dishonest. That was about as blunt as the choice could be. The president of the United States was stupid or a liar. There was no third alternative.

Asked later by Witcover about his reply, Ford admitted he had been "a little careless" but doggedly continued to stand by what he had said.

But it was no temporary storm that had to be ridden out. For Gerald Ford, it was much worse than that. Even before he became president, Ford had been ridiculed by Lyndon Johnson, who suggested that Ford, a star football player at Michigan, had played football too often without a helmet in the years before he was elected to the House.

(LBJ also once said that "Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time" — which reporters cleaned up to read "Ford can't walk and chew gum at the same time." I've never been sure which comparison was more damaging.)

In short, it was the resurrection of the ghost that Ford's staff feared the most — the impression that he was dumb. It had plagued him since his career in the House. It had been a national joke when he stumbled a couple of times in front of TV cameras, launching some of Chevy Chase's most memorable skits on Saturday Night Live.

Ford never recovered.

Some people thought at the time — and some people still believe — that Ford's gaffe in the second debate kept him from winning the election, but I disagree.

I believed then — and I still believe today — that Ford was going to lose, anyway, because of the pardon of Richard Nixon. He needed everything to go his way from the time of the Republican convention to Election Day if he was to have even the slightest chance of winning. What happened 35 years ago tonight didn't help his cause.

My personal view of that decision has evolved over the years, and I have reached the point where I am partially inclined to agree with Ford, who argued that issuing a pardon was the only way to put Watergate behind us and refocus on the issues the nation faced in the mid–1970s.

But, in 1974, the majority of Americans were so angry at Nixon that, when Ford pardoned the former president, he sealed his fate with them.

The Role of Government

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An important intangible in the presidency is what George H.W. Bush once breezily dismissed as the "vision thing."

That is the sort of attitude that presidents who lack such a vision — and their supporters — tend to have about it. They treat it as if it isn't important, as if competence alone is all that is necessary.

(But the voters don't see it that way. Competence is kind of a relative thing, don't you think? What strikes one person as competent may well strike another as incompetent.)

I have heard defenders of Barack Obama saying much the same thing. Vision — and leadership — aren't so important, they will say. Ah, but they are important. Ask the first President Bush how important he now thinks those qualities are. Or ask President Carter.

Or ask Barack Obama in about 13 months (although my sense is that, if Obama loses — as I expect — he and his supporters will blame it on everything but his performance in office).

Based on what I have seen so far, I expect the 2012 presidential campaign to be about the weaknesses of the other side, not the strengths or achievements of a particular candidate or his vision for the future.

It will be like most of the presidential campaigns in my lifetime — voters will be easily distracted from truly pressing issues by irrelevant ones, and once again America will be deprived of the frank discussion it so desperately needs as its people decide who should lead them for the next four years.

For most voters, the choice will be which candidate to vote against, not which candidate to vote for. Not terribly inspiring.

Someone will win the election because somebody must, but the voters will be no more united than they have been after most presidential elections in my life and the direction will be no clearer.

It isn't always that way, though. Fifteen years ago tomorrow night, when President Clinton and Bob Dole squared off in Hartford, Conn., in the first of their two debates, the president opened his remarks by pledging "to make this campaign and this debate one of ideas, not insults."

And the debate began with a question that went to the heart of the candidates' visions for the nation — what they saw as the role of the federal government.

It was a question that was designed to explore the candidates' ideas in depth, and it succeeded.

"[T]he federal government should give people the tools and try to establish the conditions in which they can make the most of their own lives," Clinton said. "That, to me, is the key."

"I trust the people," Dole said. "The president trusts the government. ... Where possible, I want to give power back to the states and back to the people."

It was the start of a mature and rational discussion about issues that were important. It wasn't resolved on that night — or in the election the next month. In fact, Americans debate it still. But the discussion of the role of government was a welcome change from what had come before and the kind of thing we haven't seen since.

Those were the days.

Presidential Debates

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It may seem, at times, that presidential debates are a given, but they are really a recent phenomenon in American politics. Forty–nine years ago today, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon met in the first televised presidential debate in Chicago.

Television was still somewhat primitive in 1960, and the Kennedy–Nixon debates proved to be a split decision. Voters who watched on television thought Kennedy won while those who listened on radio thought Nixon won. The debates received credit, perhaps unfairly, for tipping the balance in what was the closest presidential election of the 20th century.

I have been studying the presidency most of my life, and I recall reading very little about the Kennedy–Nixon debates, except for the conclusion that Kennedy appeared rested and robust while Nixon — who, to be fair, had been hospitalized prior to the first debate — came across as haggard.

Historian Robert Dallek writes, in "An Unfinished Life," that Kennedy was eager to debate Nixon. He wanted to persuade voters that he was not too young or inexperienced, and direct competition with Nixon was the best way to achieve that. On the other hand, President Eisenhower advised Nixon not to debate, reasoning that Nixon already was better known and had eight years of executive experience as Ike's vice president.

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"But Nixon relished confrontations with adversaries and, remembering his successful appearance before the TV cameras in the 1952 campaign (his Checkers speech — in response to allegations of accepting illegal gifts — was the most successful use of television by an American politician to that date), he agreed to four debates."

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Nixon was elected president twice, in 1968 and 1972, but he never debated his opponents again. The memory of the experience of 1960 remained fresh in his mind, perhaps because the image of him that viewers took was not so fresh. Dallek writes that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said of Nixon, "They've embalmed him before he even died."

Sometimes I wonder if either Kennedy or Nixon had any idea, on that September night in 1960, of the Pandora's box they had opened.

It didn't open completely for awhile. Presidential candidates did not debate again for 16 years. Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford resumed the practice on Sept. 24, 1976, and their first debate was noteworthy for an audio problem that interrupted things for nearly half an hour.

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In their next encounter, President Ford uttered a gaffe that dominated news reports and may have helped Carter win the election. If nothing else, the Carter–Ford debates inspired a tradition on the nascent, one–year–old Saturday Night Live of satirical skits based on the debates, and presidential candidates have obliged SNL's writers with plenty of material ever since.

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Four years later, Carter had only one debate with his challenger, Ronald Reagan, about a week before the election, but the most memorable moments were Reagan's, and he ultimately won the election.

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In 1984, many of the most memorable moments in the debates between Reagan and former Vice President Walter Mondale belonged to Mondale. But that didn't help him in the election, in which Reagan carried 49 states.

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When George H.W. Bush ran against Michael Dukakis in 1988, Dukakis came across as unemotional when asked if he would favor the death penalty for a hypothetical assailant who was convicted of raping and murdering his wife.

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But the most memorable moment from the 1988 debates came when the vice presidential candidates, Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle, had their only encounter.

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The 1992 debates provided a new twist on the theme. For the first time, a third–party candidate, Ross Perot, was allowed to participate. But the most memorable moment came in a "town hall format" — the first of its kind in presidential debates — when the candidates were asked how the economy had affected them.

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I can't really say there were any particularly memorable moments from Bill Clinton's debates with Bob Dole in 1996. Clinton's victory almost seemed a foregone conclusion. But Dole's age (he was 73) was always an issue in the campaign, even if it wasn't mentioned.

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In 2000, there were many jokes made about Al Gore's audible sighing and frequent references to "lockbox," just as there were jokes made about George W. Bush's references to "fuzzy math." In the end, though, I wonder if many votes were swayed by the televised encounters.

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The same could be wondered about the Bush–Kerry debates in 2004 or the Obama–McCain debates last year. But both provided more than their share of humorous moments for SNL and MadTV.

As technology has become more sophisticated, presidential debates have become more entertainment than anything else. Viewers watch, hoping to see one of the candidates stumble, not unlike those who watch hockey games hoping to see a fight break out on the ice.

Are presidential debates still relevant? Do voters learn anything from seeing the major candidates discuss the issues?

The Power of That 'Charisma Machine'

Noemie Emery writes in Weekly Standard that there are some problems with the media-fueled frenzy that claims that Barack Obama and the "Charisma Machine" are going to roll to victory over John McCain in November.

"Anything can happen, in the Belmont Stakes and in politics," Emery writes, so it may be correct that "McCain underestimates Obama's pizzazz, and the desire of the press to promote it."

But Emery goes on to assert that there are some "warning signs" the media seem to have missed.

1. "The enthusiasm Obama arouses is surely amazing, but it is also contained and confined," Emery says.
   
   Emery cites political expert Michael Barone, a co-author of the biennially published "Almanac of American Politics" since 1972.
   
   Barone may be the nation's foremost authority on voting trends in every state and every district. He studied the numbers from this year's primaries and concluded that Obama carried the white vote in only two places -- "state capitals and university towns."
   
   Obama's support in university towns, Emery notes, included "huge followings among students, teachers, and employees of the government, most of whom (a) tend to lean left; (b) live in a world of words and abstractions; and (c) due to tenure, unions, and parental support, find themselves outside of the world of the marketplace."
   
   These voters, Emery writes, "are pushovers for ego-massaging and vacuous maunderings. They tend not to notice that his frame of reference is always himself and his feelings, and that his appeals to racial healing, bipartisanship, government reform and sweet reason do not connect to his acts in real life."


2. There's that age thing. "McCain does look old, and this is a problem," admits Emery.
   
   "On the other hand, he looks like a rock, or an oak tree, while Obama looks more like a reed or a sapling, if not like a twig. He looks attractive, but not too substantial, not someone to look to in trouble."
   
   I guess that's in the way you look at it.


3. "Perhaps Obama will 'forcefully move to the center,'" Emery says, "but it's not very clear what he (or the media) believe the word 'center' implies."
   
   And, in an interesting point about the impression Obama makes in seemingly innocuous situations, Emery says, "[h]e also seems prone to let his wits lapse when unscripted, such as claiming that Illinois is farther away from Kentucky than Arkansas, and that the union mysteriously has annexed seven new states.
   
   "In a similar lapse, Gerald Ford prematurely freed Poland, and the results were not pretty."
   
   Well, that may be true, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to blame Ford's loss in the 1976 election on his debate faux pas on eastern Europe.


4. Finally, Emery writes, "there's the matter of media power, or lack thereof."
   
   Emery points out that, the more frequently the media insisted that Hillary Clinton should end her campaign, the more the voters insisted on supporting her.
   
   Obama eventually claimed the majority in delegates, says Emery, securing the nomination, but the Obama campaign was "saved by the delegates he piled up in caucuses and in small states when no one was looking, before the press had the chance to weigh in with its magic."
   
   I'm not sure if that is more a criticism of the media in this country or the people who are easily persuaded by its party line.
   
   But, Emery says, "The press may love itself -- and Obama -- just a little too much."

Perhaps we have our answer.

Seems to me that both candidates have their work cut out for them between now and November.

Presidential Debates -- the 2008 Schedule

The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced the lineup and format for the 2008 presidential debates -- once the Democrats and Republicans have settled on their tickets.

The first debate will be held in about 10 months, on Friday, Sept. 26, 2008, on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, Miss.

Other sites for the debates include Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008; Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008; and Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008.

St. Louis will host the vice presidential debate. The other cities will host the second and third presidential debates.

Noteworthy for its omission is New Orleans, which has hosted conventions since being devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but was rejected as a presidential debate site because it hasn't sufficiently recovered from the storm and the flooding.

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who is expected to face a tough fight for re-election next year, says the commission has “lost sight of the public interest it was chartered to serve.”

Landrieu, of course, is free to say and believe what she wants about how New Orleans was "slighted" in the selection of debate sites, but I can see both sides.

Democratic co-chairman Paul Kirk reportedly claimed the city wasn't ready to host a high-profile event like one of the debates, and Republican co-chairman Frank Fahrenkopf reportedly said sites were selected based on technical factors and geographical balance and that politics played little or no role.

But, in the words of Forrest Gump, I think both are going on at the same time.

(Besides, the "geographical balance" bit doesn't really hold up for me. St. Louis, Nashville and Oxford, Miss., are from generally the same part of the country, and St. Louis is the only one [but just barely] that is west of the Mississippi River. Those three cities are even in the same time zone. Only Hempstead, N.Y., is in the Eastern time zone.)

Fahrenkopf is wrong if he thinks politics didn't influence the decision. Politics influences everything.

On the other hand, everyone saw how New Orleans was hammered by the hurricane, and we all know how difficult it has been for the city to bounce back. It's plausible to believe that it isn't ready to provide food and lodging for the thousands of people who come to a city hosting a debate. Including the candidates and the Secret Service agents who are assigned to them.

So, if the commission was simply latching on to a convenient excuse not to select New Orleans, it has one that is practically bullet-proof.

It would be nice to hold a debate in New Orleans. It reminds me of the talk six years ago of holding the next Super Bowl in New York in support of that city following the 9-11 attacks.

In both instances, the suggestions represent a desire for supportive gestures that are or were easier to achieve as abstract recommendations. In reality, there are too many obstacles.

For example, playing the Super Bowl in the Meadowlands in February 2002 would have meant traffic and a large crowd at an outdoor arena on what may have been a cold, possibly snowy, evening -- which would have made great TV but would have been a logistical nightmare for a city still on edge after the collapse of the Twin Towers less than five months earlier.

The presidential and vice presidential nominees won't be debating in New Orleans, but both parties need to define what the federal role will be in New Orleans in the next administration.

A country that is willing to spend $1 billion a week to capture, then lose, then re-capture, then re-lose much of the same territory in Iraq over and over and over again should be willing to invest money and manpower into rebuilding a city that has been made to suffer for more than two years.

And hopefully allow many of its displaced citizens to return.

That's the battle Landrieu needs to fight in defense of her Senate seat.