The New York Times: The Little Secret I Learned from 30 Years of Watching Debates with Voters
The New York Times published an article by Frank Luntz under the headline, “The Little Secret I Learned from 30 Years of Watching Debates with Voters”.
I sat down with small groups of voters chosen from groups of thousands of voters, watched more than twenty presidential debates, and I still was struck that small moments, verbal errors, and misremembering small details can be of great importance to in-debate journalists and party critics.
To be fair, some of the debates I’ve seen with voters, such as the Bill Clinton and Bob Dole debate in 1996, didn’t have much impact on voter mood, and another debate — like the tripartite town hall debate with Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ross Perrot in 1992, the first debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000, and the three clashes between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — arguably changed history.
As the first debate between President Biden and Trump kicks off this Thursday, where is the key moments that will have the greatest impact on the remaining undecided voters are those when the two candidates attack each other to define or undermine the political cause that each wants to present to Americans.
Trump entered the debate just a few points behind Biden, but his dubious strategy of insulting, annoying, and bullying Biden was well received by women in one group.
There was one moment in the Trump-Clinton debates when voters really shocked me, Trump’s improvised comment that Clinton deserved to be imprisoned, many pundits and political experts hated him, and other groups loved him.
To be sure, many political experts have focused on this moment as a stark example of a presidential candidate threatening to use the justice system as a weapon against his opponent.
This week holds one of the most important debates since the Kennedy-Richard Nixon debate, expectations are already high for Trump, who has challenged Biden to hold a debate at any time or place of his choice, and it’s possible that Trump will regret issuing such a public challenge, and Biden may regret accepting the offer.
Because viewers are accustomed to seeing debates as a combination of television entertainment and a war for America’s future, they will want to see passion, energy and even anger serving the country’s interests.
