Changing Political Campaigns

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, in WNYC. The two nominating conventions get underway next week. First up, the Democrats. Then the following week, the Republicans, and, of course, these are the candidates' big chances to energize their campaigns and their supporters as we head into fall in a long push to election day. Now for most voters, it's just a television spectacle. For party insiders, they're like any other industry conventions, right? Chances to schmooze and party and have balloons, a lot of balloons rain down on you from the rafters after that last speech by the nominee.

This year, the pandemic has, of course, up-ended a lot of that. No crowds, no applause, travel is out, and Zoom is in for the conventions, and probably the rest of the campaign season. How are the candidates reaching voters, and does this crisis present an opportunity to change the way we conduct campaigns? We saw some of it yesterday when Joe Biden formally introduced Kamala Harris as his running mate, with no applause or crowd energy to feed off of.

To explore this further, I'm joined by two reporters with some experience on the campaign trail. Elizabeth Drew, Washington-based journalist and author of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall, which was reissued in 2014. She recently wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times saying, "Let's scrap the presidential debates." Also with us is Molly Ball, Time magazine's national political correspondent, whose biography of the House Speaker came out this year titled, Pelosi. Her article in this week's issue of Time is called, "How COVID-19 Changed Everything About the 2020 Election". Molly and Elizabeth, welcome back to WNYC. Hi.

Elizabeth Drew: Hi.

Molly Ball: Hi. Great to be here.

Brian: You've both covered national politics extensively, but Elizabeth Drew, your first campaign, I see, was 1968. Let me mention that listeners will be able to hear you talk about that campaign on tomorrow's show, that summer Friday special I was talking about when we revisit our series, The Eights. You were our guest, along with the now late, great Cokie Roberts as we trace the developments in the culture wars through Nixon's election that year. Maybe you remember coming on with us two years ago for that.

Nixon is tied to one big change in campaigning, television when he was seen to have lost the televised debates or debate, one in particular in 1960 against JFK, because of how they compare it on TV screens. While Molly Ball, your first appearance on CSPAN, anyway, was in 2008, and Obama's campaign was seen as a game-changer in the way use social media. Let's talk about entering this in 1968, and entering this in 2008, and compare notes. Elizabeth, how different is it today? What should we take away from what they did in 1968?

Elizabeth: Well, I'm interested in your point that this is another opportunity to pause and rethink these processes. Full disclosure, Molly and I are friends and mutual admirers, so I'm delighted to be on with her today. The campaigns themselves, this is from what candidates had to run around to the various cities. It was exhausting. It probably led to illnesses, and it took an awful lot of time and expense. That needs to be rethought. I definitely, think, as I wrote in the Times that the debates, I think they are debates, that we can get into that later.

It's certainly, the conventions, you call the nominating conventions. It's true, but the nominations are settled, the platforms are settled. We need to rethink, what are these about? What are they for? Then it's a lot of speeches, but the television audience doesn't really want to see very many of them. I think the whole thing is open now. We now have Zoom, we have all sorts of other ways to communicate. The whole thing, to me, is open for a rethink.

Brian: Molly, I was struck, actually, yesterday watching the Biden-Harris event, how the TV correspondents on various networks who were at the scene or outside the scene were talking about how different this was for the reasons that I mentioned in the intro, not having the crowds, not having the applause. To me as a TV viewer, I wouldn't notice that, I don't think, if the correspondents weren't telling it to me. Maybe we're going to have the same experience as viewers next week, and the following week with the conventions. As far as people are concerned anyway, most people around the country, these are just a series of primetime televised speeches.

Molly: I think that's right. It's great to be on with my dear friend and mentor, Elizabeth, who I disagree with about the debates, but agree with on most other things. I do agree with her that this an opportunity to rethink a lot of things including things like mass-audience events and conventions. It didn't feel all that different watching that speech on TV when what you're used to as a viewer is watching this on TV. I think the comparison, Brian, that you drew to industry conventions is a good one. I think that the conventions, their main benefit is for the insiders, is for the people who attend them. It isn't necessarily a great informational event versus just sort of an infomercial for the rest of the country that's sitting home trying to decide what candidate to vote for.

I think the proof of that is that they don't have that much of an impact, right? We have seen, if you look at polling, this idea that candidates get a sort of convention bounce because that's their big introduction to the country, that's been less and less true in recent years. The campaigns are so well covered, and people who are curious about the candidates have so many ways to find that information, that the conventions don't move the needle all that much.

I was thinking about four years ago when the Republican convention was widely agreed to be a disaster. The speeches were weird or dark, there were all kinds of logistical problems. There was a divided party that was on display, with Ted Cruz being booed off the stage, and so forth. Yet, of course, Donald Trump won the election. It doesn't really seem to matter whether you put on a good show for the nation, or maybe that show itself was informative to people who wanted that. It is mainly a spectacle and I think that we should calibrate our expectations accordingly.

I'm not against spectacle in and of itself but I think just like a lot of things that this pandemic has sort of highlighted, whether it's people's ability to work remotely or various challenges with education, this is an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and think about the ways we can use, particularly technology, to revamp a lot of these old processes.

Brian: Let me skip ahead of the conventions, Elizabeth, because the conventions may make a lot of people shrug and say, "Oh, we already know who the nominee is. Yes, I watch ed some of the speeches." and to your point of your oped which is a much more radical idea, let's scrap the presidential debates, the televised debates. Why?

Elizabeth: Because they test the wrong thing. They test who does the best one-liner, the best put down. They don't test the things that we really look for or should be looking for in a president. Biden doesn't spend a whole lot of time putting down a member of congress or a foreign leader. What we want is to know what they think or what they would do. If we could revise the debates, make them debates, then I'd be fine with it, but they aren't debates. I'm afraid that too many of the questions are press conference questions. They really are aimed at one particular candidate and not a debate question. I just think they've gone off the rails.

The Kennedy-Nixon debate, the first one, was a much more substantive debate. They've declined since then.

Brian: Molly, you said you disagree with Elizabeth on this. How come?

Molly: I think we do agree that the debates could be done better. I think, debates, like any political happening, can be done well or poorly. I think it ended up being 1.2 million Democratic primary debates this year. Is that the correct number? There were some of them that were very good and enlightening and informative, and others that were not. That depends, to some degree, on the moderators and their skill. I also agree with Elizabeth that the ways we think of what the debates are for could be improved because there is a lot of this sort of angels on the head of a pin dissecting of people's positions, in ways that have no relation to the actual job of the president, which is not to take finely-calibrated policy positions but to govern. I do think a reorientation of the debate, towards those questions of practical governance, could make them more informative.

That being said, you started this conversation by asking, "What's changed since we started covering politics?" My experience is quite a bit shorter than Elizabeth's but the main thing that's changed is just we have so fewer opportunities in the media to actually ask the candidates questions. Campaigns have become more and more controlled, more and more hermetically sealed. It is certainly true that the candidates can use debates to get off a canned one-liner, but they do on some level, have to think on their feet and have to perform in a non-controlled environment. I am for as many of those types of experiences for us the media and for the public as we can possibly get.

Brian: Do you want to keep going, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth: A number of people got a big reaction to the piece of- I was accused of shilling for Biden. The fantasy on the right that Biden is afraid of debating-- What's his name? His name is Trump. I was really--

Brian: Used to be Trumps but now it's Trump.

Elizabeth: I think so, still Trump. That was shilling for Biden and Biden was so afraid to debate Trump. I had nothing to do with it. I had nothing to do with who the candidates are. I've felt this way for some time. I've moderated some debates. I did one where I assisted on debate questions, and I got a lot of grief in the press who are always too polite because they want the mud wrestling. They want the crowd at the coliseum. I think Molly and I agree more that we disagree. The debates value the wrong thing.

I take Molly's point completely, but the questions you ask a candidate aren't necessarily debate questions. Some people suggested having a series of town halls, which might be a good idea. I'm all for exposing the candidates, but I don't think these debates test the right qualities in what we should be looking for in a president. It's no accident that even though, last time Mrs. Clinton was seen to, on assumptions win, Trump was a better showman. It's really about putting on a show.

Brian: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls for political reporters Molly Ball and Elizabeth Drew. You can address Elizabeth's proposition directly. Maybe you saw her New York Times op-ed called, "Let's scrap the presidential debates." Do you think yes or no? Can they be modified in some way to make them more meaningful to what really matters or should matter to the electorate and what makes a good president? Or anything else you want to say about changing the way the campaigns are run. Maybe taking the opportunity of the limitations of this year of COVID-19 to change some things permanently that might be for the better.

646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, and let's take a phone call right now. Alan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alan.

Alan: Good morning. Thank you, and keep up all the good work. I have two comments on the suggestion that the conventions are no longer needed. First of all, the President has commanded hundreds of hours of unscripted, totally contentless airtime since COVID began, supposedly to inform the public about the disease and steps being taken to control it. He's turned them into campaign rallies with very little substance. If the networks have time to broadcast those empty hours, they certainly have time every four years to broadcast something that's been organized by the parties to make the best case for each candidate's election for President.

Secondly, on the question of the substance of what's being said. When you have less of the kind of audience that creates a backdrop like an Emperor's New Clothes crowd where people are encouraged to believe something because the crowd says, "There are a lot of us. You must agree with us." Having an audience absence from the stage of the convention means that people have to focus on the words and decide if they agree to the words themselves, and not be convinced because they see a mob of people who must be right. In a way, it's a better format.

Trump has maximized the exploitation of wallpapers of faces behind him at rallies, not because what he's saying is worthwhile, but because he thinks that people seeing a lot of faces behind him will convince ordinary viewers who think in a lazy way that he must be right because all those people agree with him.

Brian: Alan, I'm going to leave it there and get a response. Molly, you want to take any of that?

Molly: I think I mostly agree. I think this question of whether or not to have an audience is a really interesting one. We are, as humans, social creatures, and politics is, at its core, an act of communication between candidates and voters as they try to persuade them. I think that's why it is so surreal to watch these speeches in an empty room where you can hear a pin drop, and why you sometimes see people saying, "Can't we have a laugh track? Like a sitcom style?" because we do. We want to not just take in information in a vacuum, but see how others are responding to that information in real-time. It does become a surreal experience. Maybe we'll get used to it if that becomes the norm, but it definitely strikes me as disorienting. It'll be interesting to see, as the parties figure out their presentations this year, what if anything they do to try to address that creepiness that is inherent when you're just giving a speech to an empty room?

Brian: I think the caller makes a good point about all the TV time that the President has been able to commandeer during COVID on cable TV by holding news conferences which are half the time not COVID information, but really campaign events. The other side, whoever the other side turns out to be, and of course, in this case, it's Joe Biden, doesn't have that advantage. They get a little meaningful exposure in a televised convention speech, so that out of a sense of fairness might be in the long run a good thing.

You know what's interesting? We're getting a number of phone calls from people who are involved in form of debate societies of one kind or another. The president of something called sciencedebate.org, which does it in a certain way. I want to take Tom in New Jersey who says he's a college debater and wants to compare his experience to what the televised presidential debates are. Tom, you're on WNYC. Thanks so much for calling in.

Tom: Thanks, Brian. My point is quick. I was a college debater. I am not now. I have been saying for years, watching these things very closely, I'm a political junkie, that these are nothing more than dual press conferences. There's nothing that remotely resembles a debate between two people, from my experience. I debated all four years of college. It just doesn't resemble it at all. That was the only point I really wanted to make. Thanks so much.

Brian: Tom, thank you very much. Let's go to Sheila in Westchester. Sheila, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Sheila: Hi. Good morning, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I think that conventions matter for three reasons. One, 2004 Democratic National Convention catapulted Barack Obama onto the national stage. I had chills when I heard that speech. It's an opportunity not just for the candidates running for president, but for rising stars in the party and future stars of the party. Secondly, it's an opportunity for voters who don't have time to go on to the campaign events to watch, to take time and watch something on the news. Third

Brian: I think Sheila is breaking up too bad to keep going, but her main point is very clear. Elizabeth, I was going to push back on your, "Let's cancel the debates." idea with pretty much the same thing that Sheila is arguing here, which is just that it's an opportunity. She's talking about the conventions even as an opportunity when people's attention is galvanized, because it's television, because it's primetime television, just to get people engaged with the political process. In the case, she points out from 2004 to let a rising star like Barack Obama have a national platform that helps people see what he can do, at least, what he can say.

I was thinking that even with the debates, or especially with the debates, compared to say, if both of the candidates just had more news conferences or CNN style town halls, there are plenty of those, and they don't get the viewership that the televised- the three big presidential debates, the official ones get. A lot of people, if we have a problem in this country of people not being engaged enough with the political process, to be informed enough at a decent level of detail, at least there are those big tentpole kind of events of the three televised presidential debates, and maybe they could be improved substantially.

Maybe that's what we should be talking about, how to make the televised debate something more and better than parallel talking sound bites, rather than scrapping them.

Elizabeth: Well, here's the dirty little secret, Brian. The campaigns have the thumbs on what are going to be the procedures on the debates. In other words, the debates we have are the ones the candidates want. They like the one-liners. They don't want to have to do the substantive back and forth.

Your first caller, he said these aren't debates. He's absolutely right. If we could have college-style debates, if we could have ones that are real, and if we could also prevail upon the people who ask the questions to ask debate questions, then they'd be much more worthwhile. What I'm concerned about is they have descended into who does the best one-liner, and it has its effects on the campaigns. That's not what we should be looking for in a president. They distorted the process. It's not just that they aren't debates, they have a bad effect, unfortunate effect on the elections themselves, because of what the values are.

Of course, people like to see the mud wrestling. They like the fights in the coliseum, but that isn't what we should be looking for. We're looking for the wrong things in these debates.

Brian: Molly, as we run out of time, can you give us one piece of reporting as a followup on something that Elizabeth said before. She talked about the myth or the fiction that the Trump campaign is putting out, that Biden doesn't want to debate. Is there any serious discussion about scrapping any of the three presidential debates that are scheduled for September and October?

They come out of this official debate commission, which has existed for a long time. As Elizabeth says, accurately, is run by the two parties. They set up the debate rules, they set up the debate dates, all of that stuff. The President, I know is asking for more debates. I think that's, A, because he's behind in the polls and usually whoever is losing wants more debates. B, because he thinks he will do a better job than Joe Biden at these. Is there any serious talk about not having the three that are scheduled?

Molly: The short answer is no. The longer answer is no, the Biden campaign has not suggested that it might pull out of the debates even though as you suggest, that is a relatively common thing for people who are ahead in the polls, to do is to not create new opportunities for errors or gaps as long as they are ahead. I think the Trump campaign is also not insane to want more opportunities to debate. They've particularly cited the availability of early voting that people could be casting votes before they'd had an opportunity to hear from the candidates.

That wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing in the world, but it's been received as a trollish suggestion for the reasons that you cite, that they do seem to be trying to draw Biden into a circumstance where they're suggesting that he won't be up to. As Elizabeth said earlier, we don't actually have any reason to believe that, so we shall see.

Brian: We shall see. Yes, I guess maybe there is a point to starting the debates earlier, given when early voting starts in a number of States, but we will leave it there. Elizabeth Drew, Washington-based journalist and author of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall, which was reissued in 2014, and Molly Ball, Time magazine's national political correspondent and author of the recently released book, Pelosi.

Listeners, remember to tune in tomorrow for our summer Friday special rebroadcast of highlights from the culture war series that we did, a history series on this show called, The Eights, to hear Elizabeth Drew and Cokie Roberts in what turned out to be Cokie's final appearance on the show, with a fascinating conversation with the echoes of 1968's presidential election. Thank you both very much for coming on, Molly and Elizabeth. We appreciate it.

 

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