The result was an evening without jagged edges, an evening in which Dole did himself good without doing Clinton much harm. Dole’s combination of wit and gravitas had not hitherto been apparent in his campaign, which after Hartford may have something it had lacked in recent weeks: a pulse.
But how did Dole do at moving the daunting poll numbers? Let’s put it this way. A few years ago, before Atlanta’s Braves became mighty, attendance at one home game was just 6,000 and the Braves’ droll broadcaster, Skip Carey, declared the event ““a partial sellout.’’ Dole hit a partial home run.
He carried the fight as a challenger should. At times he was, in his dusty way, eloquent. However, these curious occasions we persist in characterizing as debates are inherently weak levers for moving the political world. So it was unreasonable to think that in 90 minutes Dole could–without an assist from a Clinton blunder–undo the damage he has been doing to his presidential prospects in months of misfocused campaigning. Besides, who thinks such a development would be desirable? That is, who wants this nation to be so flighty that a so-called ““debate’’ can induce tremendous volatility late in an election season?
The two candidates could have got intellectual whiplash from the tossed salad of questions from their interlocutor, Jim Lehrer, with whom they conducted a 90-minute conversation, with one eye cocked on the country. Well, what did you expect, an actual debate? This is not the 19th century, when the better politicians could be put on platforms for hours of argument. Today candidates who are thoroughly, not to say oppressively familiar figures by the final weeks of a long campaign are placed side by side for what amount to simultaneous press conferences.
The brevity of the answers they are required to give, and multiplicity of questions they are required to answer, are accommodations to this fact: such is the shrinkage of the electorate’s attention span and the decay of the political class’s rhetorical skills, today’s presidential candidates could not do what two Illinois Senate candidates did in 1858. They gave coherent and nuanced expositions of various facets of a complicated topic (the Dred Scott decision, popular sovereignty concerning slavery in the territories), speaking long enough to reveal something germane to governing–the caliber of their minds confronting complexity. (The opening speaker, who alternated during the seven debates, had an hour, his opponent then had an hour and a half, then the first speaker had half an hour for rebuttal.)
Today’s ““debaters’’ are permitted to make brief comments on each other’s statements. But the statements consist largely of recyclings of basic campaign boilerplate, and the comments are often well-rehearsed ““impromptu’’ remarks. To label such events ““debates’’ is to palter with the truth in a way that would not be tolerated in labeling a loaf of bread.
In 1960 the first of these circuses enhanced democratic deliberation by concentrating the electorate’s mind on… Richard Nixon’s lousy makeup. (The radio audience thought Nixon won, the television audience thought he lost. Does that tell you something about the substantive importance of these confrontations?) There have been faux debates in every election since 1976. (Remember Ford and Carter standing there as immobile as stumps for 26 minutes during an audio failure?) It is unlikely that the nation will ever again be allowed to enjoy a presidential election like the nation’s first 43 elections–one without these net subtractions from seriousness.
The political setting Sunday night resembled 1984, with Dole in the role of Mondale, a challenger far behind an incumbent. After Reagan’s faltering performance in the first debate (remember his unfinished story about driving along the Pacific coast?) the question was, would he stumble in the second debate and resuscitate Mondale’s campaign. He did not. Last Sunday the question was whether Dole could revive his own campaign, there being slight chance that Clinton would falter at his life’s work, which is chatting up the nation. By showing spark and fight, Dole probably did inspirit Republicans, although it is rather late in this game to be doing something that should not need doing at all. And if he can keep on keeping on for four more weeks, he can at least hope that the country–only about half of which even knows he was wounded in the Second World War–has at last noticed the campaign.
But in baseball a tie goes to the runner, and in presidential politics a tie in a big event goes to the candidate who is ahead and content (let’s scramble our sports metaphors) to run out the clock by running the ball into the line, three yards and a cloud of dust. What could Dole have done differently? Well, he could have not been less nice. His ““dark side’’ was supposed to be his problem, but when Lehrer served up to Dole a hanging curve ball, inviting comment on Clinton’s character, Dole kept the bat on his shoulder, declining to talk about ““personal things.’’ But, then, he was in a bind: to have carried that particular fight to Clinton would have obviated his solid success in Hartford, his indication to voters that he would be an amiable, even amusing presidential presence in their living rooms.
Debates are called the Super Bowls of presidential politics. How true. Super Bowls are huge portions of folderol smothering small portions of football. Now the remainder of the real political game resumes. It is a national blessing that, quadrennially, there are fewer debates than Super Bowls.
