Nothing But Words

I’m having fun with the predictions I’ve been making recently, so here’s another one: short of a major blunder by either candidate, the media will call tonight’s Presidential debate a tie. Here are my reasons for making this call:

1. I was cutoff from cable TV and the Internet after the first debate, but the coverage I saw on PBS and NBC, and what I read in the newspapers the next morning, all said something along the lines of “it’s a debate who won the debate.” It was only later, once it was obvious what everyone really thought, that the major media outlets started calling it a clear Kerry victory. It’s unlikely Bush will turn in such a poor performance twice in a row (ata minimum, I’m sure he’ll improve his body language this time), so it won’t take much improvement on his part for the media to get too skittish to call it anything but a tie.

2. Bush’s “likability” will come across better in the town hall setting. It can be hard to show charm when you’re standing behind a podium – it’s much easier to show when you can walk around the stage while speaking directly to voters.

3. Bush will once again benefit from the “low expections” game. After doing better than expected in the debates against Ann Richards in Texas, and again against Al Gore, Bush did not benefit from low expections in his first debate against Kerry. But this time around I’m sure he’ll get huge kudos from the media just for not rolling his eyes. Meanwhile, Kerry has set very high expections for himself after last week’s debate, and simply doing as well as he did last time won’t get him as much praise this time around.

4. The media loves a tight race, since it brings in viewers, so they’ll be inclined to play up the importance of the 3rd debate. But the 3rd debate can only be important if this one isn’t definitive. They also love the drama of momentum shifts. So, anything that can make this look like a Bush comeback (even a relatively weak one), is good for ratings.

Having said all that, some don’t expect Kerry’s Senatorial style to play well in the town hall setting. But I think he’ll handle it fine. He’s been doing a lot of town hall-style campaign stops, and unlike Bush’s, you don’t have to take a loyalty oath to get in. So Kerry has been getting practice handling tough and sometimes unexpected questions from the audience, whereas Bush gets nothing but softballs in his town hall meetings. Also, I recall some of the audience Q&A that happened in the primary debates, and I was surprised at how well Kerry handled them. He would often follow-up with the questioner, asking him or her additional questions about their circumstances, and what concerns lie behind their questions. It was a very effective way of establishing a rapport, and is much more memorable than a canned, memorized response.

Kerry has spent the past few days preparing for the debate. I was very surprised to learn that Bush hasn’t been doing the same. Instead he’s been making the rounds with a new stump speech, featuring ever-harsher, ever-more-baseless attacks against Kerry. He even managed to hoodwink CNN and MSNBC into broadcasting one of his performances in its entirety. By warming up for tonight with these stump speeches, I’m puzzled as to what his strategy is. Harsh attacks can be effective when you’re on the stump, but a town-hall setting calls more for personal interaction, and that sort of repetitive, personal put-down rhetoric will play poorly. Maybe Bush is just counting on access to real-time “lifelines” from Karl Rove.