Krugman on The Debates

Swagger vs. Substance
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: September 28, 2004


Let's face it: whatever happens in Thursday's debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.

But what will the print media do? Let's hope they don't do what they did four years ago.

Interviews with focus groups just after the first 2000 debate showed Al Gore with a slight edge. Post-debate analysis should have widened that edge. After all, during the debate, Mr. Bush told one whopper after another - about his budget plans, about his prescription drug proposal and more. The fact-checking in the next day's papers should have been devastating.

But as Adam Clymer pointed out yesterday on the Op-Ed page of The Times, front-page coverage of the 2000 debates emphasized not what the candidates said but their "body language." After the debate, the lead stories said a lot about Mr. Gore's sighs, but nothing about Mr. Bush's lies. And even the fact-checking pieces "buried inside the newspaper" were, as Mr. Clymer delicately puts it, "constrained by an effort to balance one candidate's big mistakes" - that is, Mr. Bush's lies - "against the other's minor errors."

The result of this emphasis on the candidates' acting skills rather than their substance was that after a few days, Mr. Bush's defeat in the debate had been spun into a victory.

More..

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/opinion/28krugman.html


It get's a little hopeful toward the end!

The polls showing chimp ahead, and pre debate chimp bluster. All this is meant to obscure the fact that Oil is at all the time high price, Iraq is going badly, and hyper-inflation and a draft are just around the corner.

The Kerry camp MUST insert as many friendly talking heads on the post-debate discussion shows as possible. If at all possible the talking heads' should have a couple of pre-arranged talking points. They should beat the points into the ground with repetition.

In particular, some talking points MUST be backhanded slaps of Bush. "Well, the President was iron-clad determined to avoid the reality on the ground in Iraq in that question."

Those two just don't take the bait on talk shows -- they stay right on message.

I saw Howard Dean on Charley Rose tonight. Charley's starting to irritate me, the way he talks over some of his guests with his own preconceived ideas of what he thinks the answer should be; but Dean calmly said what he intended to say and refused to speculate where he didn't intend to no matter how many times Charley tried.

Clinton did the same when I caught him on another show: when asked what advice he would give to Kerry about such and such, he said he would only give advice if asked and wouldn't do it via the media. When asked again in a different way, he gave the same answer. And again, very affably.

The two men have very different personas: Dean always seems somewhat tightly-wound (and I say this as a Deanite), and Clinton -- well, let's just say I've come to understand how he could charm the pants off so many, both literally and figuratively. But both of them are extremely bright, well-informed, and above all focused.

I hope they are both out and about on the talk-show circuit after each debate.

Hekate

Dean doesn't seem to appeal to bookers on the news channels.

I saw Dean on Hardball last night. He was outstanding--- calm, collected and on-message. I wish that he'd stump for Kerry.

Kerry REALLY needs AT LEAST a dozen surrogate/spinners with poise and media savvy to frequent the talk shows. Most of them shouldn't be formally affiliated with the campaign so that they could maintain the fiction that they're just "political commentators."

So Far. Thats 74 American brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers - all killed in the name of Bu$h's lie for oil and power. 27 days of Sept. Mr. Bush's gift to the American people... 74 dead troops so far. The 4th highest month in US deaths since the war began.

<http://icasualties.org/oif/>

debates

CNN and FOX have not jump the gun for the 3rd debate....

send our praise for Kerry to the pundits right after the debate. If they get enough letters, they will have to show some.