What to expect from the presidential debates

Salon asked three experts, all of whom have helped presidential candidates prep for past contests, what it will take for McCain or Obama to emerge as the winner.

By Thomas Schaller

Read more: Politics, News, Thomas F. Schaller

Sept. 25, 2008 | The key moments of every presidential campaign are, in order, the selection of the vice-presidential candidates, followed by the national party conventions, and then, finally, the four televised presidential and vice-presidential debates. Over the next three weeks, the Commission on Presidential Debates had scheduled three debates between John McCain and Barack Obama and one encounter between their running mates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. With John McCain's decision on Wednesday to "suspend" his campaign, the first debate, scheduled for Friday night in Oxford, Miss., may not occur. As of press time, Barack Obama was still planning to show up, but if he does, he may have the stage to himself. Should there be no debate in Oxford, the first face-off between McCain and Obama will take place on Oct. 7 in Nashville.

The task for any presidential candidate in a debate is to exceed expectations, meaning both the expectations of the media and the public and the expectations carefully calibrated by the competing campaigns. We asked three experts, one journalist and two veteran political operatives, what Obama and McCain will have to do in the upcoming debates in order to be perceived as winners. All of them have firsthand experience prepping presidential candidates for debates.

Mark Fabiani is co-principal of the consulting firm Fabiani-Lehane. A former collegiate champion debater, Fabiani was the deputy campaign manager for communications and strategy on Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, and before that served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton during the 1996 presidential campaign. Jim Fallows is National Correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, a former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, and a past winner of the American Book Award for nonfiction. He is completing a new book about China, due in early 2009, titled "Postcards From Tomorrow Square." Russ Schriefer, a founding partner in the Stevens & Schriefer Group, has been a Republican political strategist and media consultant for more than 20 years, helping elect governors, senators and dozens of members of Congress. In addition, Russ has worked at the national level for four presidential campaigns, including the Bush-Cheney campaigns of 2000 and 2004. Salon spoke with Fabiani, Fallows and Schriefer by phone.

Schaller: Gentlemen, welcome to you all and thanks for being here. So let's get right down to it. With John McCain and Barack Obama going through their final paces, my first question is very straightforward: How much of the debate prep is really about issue briefing and preparing answers for all possible questions, and how much of it is really coaching candidates on intangibles, like their stage presence and delivery, the use of comedy, nonverbals, and just in general dealing with their opponent? Let's start with Jim Fallows. Jim Fallows: My personal background here: I was a minor participant in the actual preparation for Jimmy Carter way back in the prehistoric era when he was going against Gerald Ford and I have been observing things since then. I think that preparation on the facts is a necessary but not sufficient part of debate. Three of the four candidates who are going to be in these debates, the ones other than Gov. Palin, have answered questions multiple times and should know enough about what to say on the country of Colombia or what to say about Pakistan or whatever. What tends to matter in debates is all the things other than rote factual knowledge -- how you hold up against the opponent, whether you sound witty or defensive or whatever. In Gov. Palin's case it's different because that is her area of perceived vulnerability. I bet she is boning up on the facts, while I think the rest of them probably should just be figuring out how they can carry themselves correctly onstage. Mark Fabiani: The debate prep that I've been involved in was during the Gore 2000 presidential campaign. And perhaps we spent too much time on issues and not enough on the intangibles, because people look at these and don't judge them as Harvard-Yale debates. They look at them and they're trying to connect with a candidate. And a candidate could have a moment that's a good moment, such as we've seen in some of the primary debates, or they could have a bad moment, where Michael Dukakis mis-answers the question about his wife being raped or George Bush looked at his watch, or in the instance that I was involved in, when Al Gore was sighing into a mike that was supposed to be turned off but wasn't. And those are the type of things that will tell the tale of these debates, not how much someone knows about Colombia or Pakistan. Russ Schriefer: I agree with both Jim and Mark. I would also add that I think the most important thing is to decide early on what your debate strategy is going to be. What do you want to accomplish with this debate? Do you need to prove that you know more than your opponent on issues? Do you need to make a central point on messaging? I imagine going into the first debate, particularly since it's about foreign policy and foreign affairs, that John McCain is going to want to play up his role or how he is perceived as being better as commander in chief than Barack Obama. So I think a lot of time, particularly in this first debate for both these candidates, will be devising overall debate strategy. What do they want to accomplish and what do they see as the headlines coming out of this debates? Fallows: If I could just follow up on that. As you look back through all the big presidential debates there's only been one where actual factual knowledge seemed to make a difference in the debate outcome. That's one, actually, that I was involved in, when Gerald Ford misclassified Poland and that connected to some perception of him. And that's why the factual knowledge question matters only for Gov. Palin where that's the perception about her. Schaller: I was curious about the debate prep, just how it operates. We now know that Greg Craig, who has done this in the past -- he's on old counselor and advisor to Obama -- is standing in as McCain in Obama's debate prep. And former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is standing in as Obama against McCain. Is this person an important choice? Is this important as a function, as a sparring partner or does it not really matter? Fabiani: I think it's important but it's not all that important when you compare it to some of the other things that candidates have to get ready for. It's important to re-create the atmosphere of the debate. It's important to re-create things in real time, to practice, for example, at the time in the evening when the debate is actually going to happen. But far more important than that is avoiding mistakes and trying to figure out the one moment you want to create for yourself and the one bad moment you want to create for the other side. Fallows: I think Greg Craig is a very wise choice for Obama to have because he is very good at this. I actually have known him and seen him as an orator for a very long time, starting in college, and he knows how to produce the effect which will probably be the most difficult for Obama, mainly, the needling and the dismissiveness that McCain will probably try to use against Obama. So Greg Craig will be good in that way. It sounds silly to say that John McCain needs to find a black person to be Obama's surrogate, but I think that's actually wise because every bit of the intangibles in the real debate you want to re-create in debate preparation and it's a significant fact that since there's a young black man who is going to be John McCain's opponent on the real stage, it's important to have a youngish black man there in the practice. Schriefer: I think someone who is very good at studying up and understanding and getting into the head of the person they're playing can actually be very, very helpful. And I know that particularly Judd Greg and Rob Portman, who filled these roles for the Bush campaign in 2000 and 2004, were very good at doing that and really kind of understanding what they were going to do, studying the tapes, and not just talking about the policy positions but, as Jim said, getting their gestures and their sense of who they are.

Next page: Weirdly, both Obama and McCain come into the debates with some perceived weakness