Columnists

Must avoid mistakes

In the 2004 presidential debates, most critics declared John Kerry the winner over President George W. Bush--and by Oxford debating rules, they were right. But the truth is Kerry lost the debates because he was the only candidate on stage who made a damaging gaffe--declaring any U.S. decision on the use of force must pass a "global test"--that haunted him going into the final weeks of the campaign.

Bush quickly turned the Democratic nominee's comment into an ad, and the "global test" immediately became a staple of Bush's stump speech. Kerry was put on the defensive, trying to explain his comment. ("The test I was talking about is a test of legitimacy--not just in the globe, but elsewhere," he said during a town hall meeting in New Hampshire.) As the saying goes, if you're explaining, you are losing--and lose Kerry did.

The lesson is that the candidate who "wins" a presidential debate is not necessarily the better debater--it's the one who avoids saying something their opponent can seize on to make voters question their fitness for the Oval Office.

Whenever presidential debate season comes around, we love to recall the memorable lines--such as Ronald Reagan's famous declaration that he would not make age and issue in this campaign and "exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." But in truth the zingers are few and far between, while devastating debate gaffes are plentiful.

President Ford looked completely out of his depth when he declared during a debate with Jimmy Carter that Poland was "independent, autonomous" of the Soviet Union (which was news to Poles trapped behind the Iron Curtain).

Then in 1980 it was President Carter's turn to cede national security to his opponent when he declared, "I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry--and the control of nuclear arms." Consulting his 12-year-old daughter on nuclear weapons made Carter look weak, and Reagan exploited that weakness.

The challenge is for candidates to avoid disqualifying mistakes. Donald Trump's advantage going into the debates is that he has already made a number of gaffes that might have destroyed other candidates but have left him relatively unscarred. So the threshold for what can hurt him is relatively high.

Editorial on 09/27/2016

Upcoming Events