Maybe Debates Do Matter

One of my strongest beliefs in politics is that debates, particularly debates during presidential contests, are meaningless unless one candidate makes a big blunder. I have been fairly unshakable in my view that because presidential debates in America are too stunted, dry, scripted, and staged, it is impossible for voters to glean anything useful about the candidates, and in the end, only big mistakes are played over and over on the news and used by candidates in their commercials and attacks to great impact.

An article in Saturday's Washington Post makes the reverse argument, and specifically contends that the debates in this year's presidential contest helped push Obama over the top. I recommend you give it a look to see if the author makes a good case.

Here's a key part of the piece:

There is now a lot of evidence from polls and focus groups suggesting that Sen. Obama has significantly improved his standing with a great many Americans since the first debate on Sept. 26, exactly five weeks ago. Americans find Obama more empathetic, stronger, better prepared to be president and just more sympathetic a figure than they did before the debates.

Most important, Obama has moved into the lead. In early September, the race was tied. In the Washington Post-ABC News poll on Sept. 9, soon after the Republican convention, McCain had a two-point lead among likely voters, 49 to 47 percent. By the poll taken just after the second Obama-McCain debate, released Oct. 13, Obama led 53 to 43. In the three weeks since, the race has been utterly stable. Yesterday, the Post-ABC tracking poll had Obama ahead 52 to 44 percent. (The margin of error in all of these polls is plus or minus 3 percent.)

Were the debates responsible for these developments? Probably. They attracted many more Americans than any other event or aspect of the campaign. According to Nielsen, the four debates this fall attracted a total audience of 242 million (of course, many people watched all four). "The debates had a big impact," says Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the dean of American pollsters. "Obama won all three by huge margins."

I have to be completely honest. Despite my continued belief that we do national race debates very poorly here -- mostly because we give the candidates and the two major parties too much control for how they are structured and carried out -- I agree with the article: the debates did matter this year. A lot.

In my opinion, while both candidates were pretty mediocre in their first face-off, collectively Obama did much better than McCain in the three debates. Perhaps more importantly, I think that he came across as presidential in each of them. This was exactly what Obama needed to accomplish going in, and from that perspective the debates had a big effect this year.

We all know that this election is more of a referendum on Barack Obama than on John McCain. Barack Obama is something unusual (as well as unprecedented) for a major-party nominee. He is black. He has a strange name. He does not have a great deal of serious government experience. Consequently, Obama's mission throughout this campaign has been to make voters feel comfortable in his leadership, and in turn ultimately feel comfortable voting for him. To that end, the national debates were crucial events for the Democrat, and through his showings in all three he was able to solidify the case he has been making for himself throughout the entire election process.

The more I think about all of this, the more I am able to recognize that not only did Obama do well in the debates, but also that they had the large impact on the contest that I have long denied national debates have on presidential races.

Maybe I am being inconsistent, but I still subscribe to the belief that presidential debates in this country are generally awful, meaningless affairs. That being said, there is no question that the debates this year had a big impact in bolstering Obama's case to Americans.

Though, to add one other point, I think this year's debates were so important because of the unique circumstance present this year that one of the two candidates had to pass the basic threshold to voters that he was competent, qualified, and ready to assume the presidential mantle. I am not sure we can safely say that this condition was present in recent past contests (Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and even George Bush had long enough records of service in government to deflect this basic charge which has plagued the 2004-elected Obama).