Washington.- It can be a well-rehearsed joke or a sigh that is too loud.
Notable moments from past presidential debates demonstrate how candidates’ words and body language can make them seem especially close or desperately far from reality. They may also show candidates at the top of their politics or suggest they are dizzy.
Will past be prologue when President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump debate Thursday in Atlanta?
“Debates, being live television events, with no script, no way of knowing how they will evolve… anything can happen,” says Alan Schroeder, author of “Presidential Debates: 50 years of High-Risk TV.”
Here are some of the highlights, the lowlights and the most unexpected moments from past presidential debates.
The question of old age (again)
“When everyone knows you’re going to ask a sensitive question and yet you make the answer sound spontaneous, you’re having a good debate.” Republican President Ronald Reagan delivered a memorable line in the second presidential debate. 1984, after a disappointing first meeting.
Reagan was 73 years old and seeking a second term in his race against Democratic challenger Walter Mondale, who was then 56 years old. In the first debate, Reagan had difficulty remembering the facts and at times seemed bewildered.
One of his top advisers, Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, later suggested that his aides “filled his head with so many facts and figures that he lost his spontaneity.”
So Reagan’s team took a more distant approach in its second confrontation with Mondale. And, when Reagan received a question about his mental and physical stamina that he had to know he was coming, he was prepared enough for the answer to seem unexpected.
“You’re already the oldest president in history,” moderator Henry Trewhitt said before asking whether Reagan wouldn’t be able to handle a challenge like the Cuban missile crisis.
“Not at all,” Reagan responded in defense of his astute crisis management. And he continued softly: “I want you to know that, furthermore, I am not going to make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, the youth and inexperience of my opponent.”
Then, taking advantage of his years of comedy training in Hollywood, the president took a sip of water, giving the audience and even Mondale, who laughed, more time to laugh. Finally, he smiled and left no doubt that he had rehearsed a response, adding: “It was Seneca, or Cicero, I don’t know which, who said: ‘If it were not for the elderly correcting the errors of the young, there would be no State.’ “.
Years later, Mondale said that although viewers saw him laughing, “I think if you look closer, you’ll see some tears, because I knew he got me there. That was really the end of my campaign that night.”
Reagan thus demonstrated that, even at his age, a candidate could improve over time. And with this year’s race pitting Biden, 81, against Trump, 78, 73 no longer seems so old.
Reagan is also remembered for using a light touch to neutralize criticism from Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a 1980 debate.
When Carter accused him of wanting to cut Medicare, Reagan rebuked him: “There you go again.” The phrase worked so well that Reagan made it something of a stock retort.
Gaffes galore
In 1976, Republican President Gerald Ford had a notable moment during his second debate against Carter, and not in a good way. The president declared that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.”
With Moscow controlling much of that part of the world, moderator Max Frankel responded: “I’m sorry, what…?” and he asked if he had understood correctly. Ford stood by his response and spent several days on the campaign trail trying to explain it. In November he lost.
“The closer the election, the more important jokes and punchlines can become in the debate,” says Aaron Kall, director of the debate program at the University of Michigan. “It’s not just about who won or who lost, but how it affects fundraising and the media cycle in the coming days and weeks.”
Not all lip slips have a devastating impact.
Then-Senator Barack Obama, in a 2008 Democratic presidential primary debate, disparagingly said to Hillary Clinton, “You’re pretty nice, Hillary.” That haughty response sparked a backlash, but Obama recovered.
The same cannot be said for then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s short-lived 2012 Republican run for the White House. Despite repeated attempts and excruciatingly long pauses, Perry could not remember the third of the three federal agencies he had promised to close if he was elected.
Finally, he sheepishly murmured, “Oops.”
The Department of Energy forgot.
Getting personal
Another damaging moment opened the second presidential debate of 1988, when CNN anchor Bernard Shaw pressed Democrat Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, on his opposition to capital punishment with a question that evoked the candidate’s wife.
“If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death sentence for the murderer?” Shaw asked. Dukakis showed little emotion as he responded: “I don’t see any evidence that she is a deterrent.”
Dukakis later said he wished he had said that his wife “is the most precious thing, her and my family, that I have in this world.”
That year’s vice presidential debate featured one of the most memorable and pre-planned phrases.
When Dan Quayle, the Republican vice presidential candidate and Senator from Indiana, compared himself to John F. Kennedy while debating Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the Democrat was prepared. He had studied Quayle’s campaign and had seen him invoke Kennedy in the past.
“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen began slowly and deliberately, drawing out the moment. “Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are not Jack Kennedy.”
The audience burst into applause and laughter. Quayle stared ahead.
Errors without words
Still, Quayle and George HW Bush easily won the 1988 election. But they lost in 1992 after then-President Bush was recorded looking at his watch while Democrat Bill Clinton spoke to a member of the public during a town hall debate. Some thought Bush seemed bored and distant.
In another case of a nonverbal mistake in a debate, then-Democratic Vice President Al Gore was criticized for his performance in the first 2000 debate with Republican George W. Bush, in which he sighed repeatedly and very audibly.
During the second debate, Gore got so close to Bush while the Republican was answering a question that Bush finally looked at him and nodded confidently, prompting laughter from the audience.
A similar moment occurred in 2016, when Hillary Clinton faced the audience to answer questions during her second debate with Trump. The Republican candidate walked up behind her, narrowed his eyes and frowned at her.
Clinton offered no visible reaction then, but later wrote of the incident: “I was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”
Biden-Trump
Thursday’s will be the first debate between a sitting president and a former president.
Historically, sitting presidents often have difficulty in early debates. They are used to being surrounded by White House advisers who offer little resistance. In 2012, then-President Obama’s seemingly distant performance in the first debate against Mitt Romney allowed the Republican to gain momentum.
Romney, however, had an awkward moment during the second debate.
In response to a question about equal pay between men and women, the former Massachusetts governor said he turned to women’s groups to help him find qualified candidates for high state offices.
“They brought us folders full of women,” he declared. Obama turned that into a line of attack at later rallies, blithely saying, “We don’t have to put together a bunch of portfolios to find qualified, talented, driven young women.”
If Biden’s debate skills are rusty this time, his opponent’s might be too. Trump skipped all GOP primary debates this time, meaning he hasn’t done one since he faced Biden twice in 2020.
Trump interrupted so often when they first debated four years ago that Biden ended up yelling, “Will you shut up?” – a visceral moment if ever there was one. Trump is remembered that night for ordering members of the far-right Proud Boys group from the stage to “stand back and stand aside.” Some members of the extremist group took it as a sign of encouragement.
In the second Biden-Trump debate of 2020, producers cut the microphones to discourage interruptions and make it less chaotic. In it, Biden wistfully declared, “I’m looking forward to this race. I’m looking forward to this happening.”
So it was. And now it happens again.
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