A Viewer’s Guide to the First Debate of 2020
What to watch for when Donald Trump and Joe Biden take the stage
Because I wrote a book on presidential campaign rhetoric, and because I’ve taught a rhetoric class for nearly 20 years, when the Super Bowl of presidential rhetoric arrives every four years, my phone starts to ring with people who have questions.
While I love the chance to reconnect with people I haven’t spoken with in years, it seems like there might be a more efficient process than an unbroken series of half-hour phone calls. Below, I have included the kind of information I provide to students about tonight’s debate: It starts with some general observations about debates, followed by a more specific discussion of this year’s debate, followed by some relevant historical precedents.
Ten General Considerations for Presidential Debates
1. A presidential debate isn’t a “debate” in the sense that formal academic debates are debates. Candidates seeking to make a strong showing should focus more on characterizing themselves, and their opponents, and using the debate as a chance to create moments and scenes that dramatize the candidates’ contrast in personality, values, and vision for the country. The important question following a debate isn’t “Who won?” but “Who are you?” Voters are trying to understand who the candidates are, and they’re interested in the format of a debate because debates are unscripted and conflictual — a format that is more likely to yield authentic revelations of character than a choreographed campaign event or a thirty second tv ad.
2. Debates do affect voter behavior, but they probably affect primary elections more than general elections. There are many examples of debate performances appearing to act as the prime mover in shaping or reshaping primary elections, but this is much more rare in the case of general elections. In 1980, Reagan’s debate performance appeared to trigger a seismic shift in the race, but Carter was already in trouble. Reagan might have won without a debate, but his margin may have been reduced. In 1960, the debates probably tipped the race to Kennedy, but that race was among the closest races in American history, and it’s hard to make causal arguments about complex events.
3. Hyper-partisanship is probably reducing the electoral impact of general election debates. The debates are probably most impactful on uncommitted and non-ideological voters. In the current political climate, there are fewer and fewer of these voters available for persuasion in each election.
4. Presidencies don’t begin on inauguration day — they begin during the campaign, and the debates are the single most-watched event of the campaign. In this sense, debates are actually linked to governance and not just campaigning. For the candidates, the debates are an opportunity to rally the public around their leadership, vision of the country, and key policy priorities. Given that the debates often generate viewership in the area of 50–80 million viewers, the debate stage is an invaluable opportunity for candidates or presidents to clarify to the voters who they are, and what their vision is for the future. Those candidates who have used the campaign to create a majoritarian consensus surrounding their vision and key policies are much more likely to be successful in the actual tasks of governance once they are in office.
5. American culture contains profoundly anti-intellectual dispositions amongst the general public. And voters who declare to a pollster that a candidate “won” the debate may also declare, over a few beers, that they think the “winner” sort of reminds them of the annoying “smart kids” at school. The average IQ is 100 points, and displays of advanced intelligence are almost definitionally alienating. Some candidates — notably John Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — have demonstrated that candidates can “win” the arguments while also winning over the hearts and minds of voters on a personal level. Being smart and verbally agile isn’t incompatible with creating a strongly defined and charismatic public character and forging powerful connections with voters, but being intelligent and informed isn’t sufficient in and of itself. For obvious reasons, a truly “intelligent” candidate wouldn’t make “intelligence” their dominant personality trait, and wouldn’t assume that you “win” a debate by appearing more intellectually capable than your opponent.
6. A campaign is a series of many events, and these events allow candidates to make progress towards a series of sub-goals related to the main goal of winning the election. Progress towards these goals is often incremental, and the debates provide an opportunity for the candidates to make incremental progress towards their sub-goals. Because this is extremely complicated, the media tends to focus on the drama of topline victories in instant polls. However, in a campaign of many events, the debates are among the most important, and if they weren’t important, the campaigns probably wouldn’t devote as much time, money, and staff resources to preparing for them.
7. Apart from affecting voter behavior, debates serve the extremely useful function of educating voters. Especially for voters who don’t normally follow politics, the debates are a chance to learn about the visions, policies, and personality traits of the candidates. There are a variety of academic studies devoted to this subject, and they usually indicate that voters do indeed learn useful information from watching the debates. For voters who choose to saturate themselves habitually with political news, this effect is lessened, but for low information voters, the effect can be substantial.
8. Debates force the candidates to be accountable for their actions and statements. Apart from any effect they may have on the election, the debates are a healthy civic ritual. Forcing the incumbent President to stand on a stage in front of 60 million viewers, in an uncontrolled environment, while normal citizens and hostile journalists demand answers to tough questions is a healthy aspect of our democracy, and should be generally encouraged and celebrated regardless of its effect on voter behavior in specific elections. Candidates and presidents are endlessly seeking to control their encounters with the media and the public. Debates are one of the only situations in which they are mostly out of control, and it would seem wise to nurture this aspect of our civic life. If we look to debates as encounters producing a binary outcome with a singular and decisive effect on the election, we are perhaps overlooking their higher value as a ritual that dramatizes the democratic principle of accountability.
9. Debates are one of the only remaining shared events in our national culture. In an era of hyper partisanship, narrow-casting, and ideological burrows, the debates are a chance for all Americans to watch the same thing at the same time. Just as it’s healthy for families to eat dinner together, or for church communities and organizations to gather together in the same place and time, it seems wise to encourage an event in which the whole nation is gathering together for an event that ought to be considered more as a civic ritual of democracy than a verbal equivalent of American Gladiators. Even if one half of America is rooting against the other half of America, it’s still a shared experience in a time when such experiences are increasingly scarce. As a coda to this point, it’s worth noting that the growing trend of “two-screening” debates should be actively discouraged. Both members of the public and the members of the media who watch the debate should be encouraged to actually watch the entire debate and give Twitter a rest for 90 minutes, just as they would presumably and hopefully leave Twitter alone during church or a wedding. People who are attempting to distract their fellow citizens by commenting on a debate that is still happening should be viewed with a gimlet eye and told to please be quiet while other people are speaking.
10. Post-debate spin is an activity that makes sense to some members of the media and to the campaigns, but not to anyone else. Following a debate, the news organizations want viewers to keep watching, and so they give surrogates of the campaigns free time to offer tedious, predictable, and tendentious interpretations of an event that the voters just saw for themselves. If your debate performance doesn’t speak for itself, then it probably wasn’t a very effective performance. The news networks shouldn’t encourage this behavior by asking the hacks to spin, and the public shouldn’t encourage the networks by watching it. If the sound of grunting is bothersome to everyone and contains no useful information, then why point microphones into the pig sty?
Specific Considerations for the First Presidential Debate
1. More than any other debate in the history of presidential debating, this debate has a high likelihood of becoming an extremely hot mess. Both performers are infamous for their spontaneity. Donald Trump is the most spontaneous and wild performer in the history of presidential debates. Compared to every other nominee of the Democratic Party since the advent of televised debating, Joe Biden has an especially vivid history of unpredictable and uneven performances. Both are experienced debaters who have successfully used debates to bolster their prospects, but they are also jointly responsible for some of the strangest moments in the history of debating, including Trump’s bizarre stalking of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden’s suggestion to parents in 2019 that they should play more records for their children.
2. Trump is a unique incumbent and I wouldn’t automatically assume that most precedents apply to him. On the other hand, some of the factors leading to unsuccessful debate performances for incumbent presidents might apply to him, and may even be magnified. It has been four years since Trump debated anyone, while Biden had to run the gauntlet of Democratic debates in the primary. Trump has been living in the same psychological bubble that all incumbent presidents live in, and isn’t accustomed to being challenged in a context in which his opponents or questioners are allowed to ask follow up questions or maintain focus on the same topic for an extended period of time.
3. Although Biden has incredibly high name recognition, his public character still isn’t clearly defined. Biden hasn’t been campaigning assertively, and his campaign has chosen to frame the race as a referendum on Trump rather than a choice between Trump and Biden. Instead of focusing on characterizing Biden positively, the Biden campaign has focused on characterizing Trump negatively. This creates an opportunity in the debate for Biden to raise his numbers if he succeeds in making a good showing, but also creates an enormous opportunity for Trump to negatively characterize Biden.
4. While the debates are highly unpredictable and may give rise to some especially vivid moments of political theater, it’s quite possible that these moments won’t impact the race. In the modern history of presidential campaigns, it’s difficult to find a single race that seems as impervious to events as this one. Since the arrival of COVID and the subsequent collapse of the economy, this race has taken on a fairly durable and rigid shape. It’s entirely possible that the debates will come and go, as so many other events have came and went, and the race will be almost wholly unchanged.
5. The stated strategy of the Biden campaign to ignore Trump’s vitriol and attacks isn’t a coherent strategy. In all likelihood, it probably won’t be followed by Biden anyway. Donald Trump is the most successful troll in the history of the internet, and it seems unlikely that in 270 minutes of face-to-face debating, Biden will calmly discuss health care and economic issues while Trump insults his family and accuses him of treason and corruption.
6. While the Biden campaign isn’t sure who Joe Biden is, the Trump campaign doesn’t seem to know who Joe Biden is, either. In 2016, the Trump campaign constructed a reasonably effective personality contrast between Trump as a change-making outsider vs Clinton as a corrupt insider. This was the framework the Trump campaign clearly wanted to pursue in the current election — it worked last time, so why change it? But after Trump was impeached while trying to develop this framework via the Ukrainian government, the Trump campaign and its surrogates were forced to change tack, and the current epithet of “Sleepy Joe” seems less robust and visceral than “Crooked Hillary.” Personality contrasts are most effective when they are consistently applied and connected to a plausible underlying reality. “Sleepy” is perhaps an oblique attempt to frame Biden as a man in cognitive decline, but he isn’t actually a “sleepy” man — comparatively, he’s actually quite a bit more animated and exuberant than any Democratic nominee since Bill Clinton. Also, the argument about cognitive decline would be a stronger argument if Trump were youthful and/or ostentatiously sane. If this were a race between a candidate like Marco Rubio and Joe Biden, the “Sleepy Joe” approach might be more salient because it would have a generational valence in the same way that Kennedy and Clinton positioned themselves as youthful, energetic candidates of generational change. But when you’re the oldest president to ever seek re-election, the “cognitive decline” angle seems to have less cutting power.
7. Trump can “win by losing,” but Biden can’t. Trump’s strongest strategy is probably to take Biden off his pedestal and make him wrestle in the mud until both candidates seem equally negative. This has worked for him before, and it would be astonishing and headline-worthy if he pursues any other strategy. The primary debates were critical to Trump’s ascent in 2015 and 2016, and his strategy and approach to debates has been remarkably consistent. As a performer, Trump thrives on chaos and confusion, and it should be assumed that these debates could devolve into chaos very quickly. In the midst of this chaos, there may be chances for Trump to force an error of considerable magnitude from Biden, who has a history of overheating. In this sense, it’s entirely possible that Trump will “win by losing” — he can technically “lose” every encounter as measured by instant polls following the debate, but the wounds he inflicts on Biden’s reputation will still fester. Trump is unique among all Presidents in the extent to which most of the public and even a broad swath of his own supporters indicate extreme displeasure at both the style and content of his communication, and yet his much-disdained communication is often remarkably effective in producing its intended effects.
8. Biden’s best strategy is probably to parry Trump’s attacks with humor and condescension instead of meeting rage with rage. He can also use the debate to do what the press corps and the general public aren’t allowed to do: focus on one particular line of inquiry and attack following Trump’s initial deflections. Trump has a talent for blowing up the linear trajectory of discussions but the debates are a venue in which there’s opportunity to move beyond the initial back and forth into a focused inquiry. Of course, no one has actually had any success in doing this in a debate against Trump, and it seems more likely that the moderator would have more success with this than Biden, who hardly has a reputation for rhetorical discipline and focus. If I were coaching Biden, I would think about the debate in terms of forcing Trump to answer questions he doesn’t want to answer, and I would enter each debate with one simple question, and be willing to ask that question 20 times in 90 minutes until the headline of the debate is either “Trump refuses to answer question” or “Trump gives bad answer to question.” In some ways, the key for Biden might be to incite the moderators to assist him in pursuing certain lines of inquiry, in the same way Obama in 2012 incited Candy Crowley to fact-check Romney in real time. Biden should be challenging the moderators to weigh in on the veracity of the President’s statements.
9. It seems unlikely that either Biden or Trump will actually pursue any particular strategy in these debates. Neither candidate seems to enter debates with strong or clear plans, and neither seems terribly open to advice about their performances, or willing to follow that advice.
10. Because 2020 is possibly the most hyper-partisan election in the nation’s history (competing, perhaps, only with 1860), it may be wise to view this debate in terms of both mobilization and persuasion. While the recent pet theory of extremists on both the left and right is that “there are no undecided voters,” this isn’t empirically correct. There are still millions of undecided or weakly committed voters. With that caveat stated, however, it is increasingly true that the rewards for mobilizing supporters are often equalling or exceeding the rewards of allocating scarce rhetorical resources to persuading the undecided. In this sense, in terms of the number of votes produced by the performance, the candidates would be wise to view these debates as an opportunity to inspire or inflame the faithful, and not simply to woo the unconvinced. Trump, obviously, understands this. The Biden campaign, much of the media, and the general public are starting to catch on, but don’t seem to entirely grasp the point.
Historical Context for the First Presidential Debate
The September 29th debate is the initial debate between an incumbent president (Trump) and his challenger (Biden). In the history of presidential debates, this is a situation that has occurred in the following elections: 1976 (incumbent Gerald Ford defending against challenger Jimmy Carter); 1980 (incumbent Jimmy Carter defending against challenger Ronald Reagan); 1984 (incumbent Ronald Reagan defending against challenger Walter Mondale); 1992 (incumbent George HW Bush defending against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot); 1996 (President Bill Clinton defending against challenger Bob Dole); 2004 (incumbent President George W Bush defending against challenger John Kerry); 2012 (incumbent Barack Obama defending against challenger Mitt Romney).
When we look at these precedents, perhaps the most salient trend is that incumbent presidents often under-perform in their first debate. Probably, this is due, in part, to the psychological bubble that presidents live in. By the time a President is running for reelection, they have lived in the White House for four years, surrounded by people who don’t often question what the President says, which is hardly good training for the debate stage. Combined with the fact that incumbent presidents don’t do any debating during their time in office or during primary elections, there is often a psychological mismatch in which an ambitious and focused challenger who has recently completed a dozen primary debates has an opportunity to catch the incumbent president off-guard. Of the precedents included below, we see one draw (1976), one clear victory for an incumbent (Clinton in 1996), and a large pile of incumbent losses (1980, 1984, 1992, 2004, and 2012).
1976: Ford vs Carter. First debate: 69.7 million viewers. This debate is generally regarded as having little impact on the state of the race, but is notable for the most famous technological malfunction during a debate: the audio failed towards the end of the debate, and the candidates stood quietly on stage for thirty minutes, staring straight ahead at their podiums, while technicians corrected the equipment. To some extent, this isn’t a true precedent because Ford wasn’t a true incumbent: he had only been in office since August of 1974, and had never stood for national election.
1980: Carter vs Reagan. 80.6 million viewers. The first and only debate between incumbent President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, this debate occurred a week before the 1980 general election, and is generally regarded as a success for Reagan. As analysts at the Gallup Poll summarized: “Reagan’s late-breaking surge that year is generally attributed to the only presidential debate between Carter and Reagan — held one week before the election, on Oct. 28 — which seemed to move voter preferences in Reagan’s direction, as well as the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, which reached its one-year anniversary on Election Day. After trailing Carter by 8 points among registered voters (and by 3 points among likely voters) right before their debate, Reagan moved into a 3-point lead among likely voters immediately afterward, and he won the Nov. 4 election by 10 points.”
1984: Reagan vs Mondale. 67.3 million viewers. Reagan entered this debate against former Vice-President Mondale with an approval rating in the mid-50s, but the consensus view was that Mondale got the upper hand in the exchange. Often a bit unfocused and lacking precision in policy details, Reagan himself viewed the debate as a failure, and this opinion was supported by post-debate polling which showed a decisive victory for Mondale. For the Mondale campaign, which eventually lost 49 states to Reagan on election day, the debate created a temporary and incorrect impression that Reagan was vulnerable. As Howell Raines reported for the New York Times, “For much of the debate, Mr. Reagan appeared less confident than he customarily does on television. Later, as Mr. Mondale’s advisers, clearly pleased, asserted that the former Vice President had rejuvenated his candidacy, Reagan aides were noticeably subdued. A senior White House official, speaking on condition that he not be named, said the President had been ‘more tentative’ in his closing statements than he was in the 1980 campaign debates.”
1992: H.W. Bush vs. Clinton vs. Perot. The first 3-person debate in a general election, this debate confirmed the appropriateness of the decision to include Independent candidate H Ross Perot in the debate, with voters giving him higher marks on his debate performance than either incumbent President George H.W. Bush or his challenger, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. As the New York Times noted shortly after the first debate: “The Sunday debate, which Republicans had hoped would begin a Bush comeback in the polls, was another missed opportunity for Mr. Bush, the poll indicates. Thirty-seven percent of the voters who watched the debate said Mr. Perot ‘did the best job or won,’ while 33 percent said Mr. Clinton did. Only 17 percent said Mr. Bush won the debate.”
1996: Clinton vs Dole. With Bob Dole’s campaign lagging considerably in the polls behind incumbent President Bill Clinton, this debate was a chance for the Dole campaign to shake up the race, but the consensus view among both debate experts and the viewing public was that Dole failed to capitalize on the opportunity. By a margin of 51% to 32%, the public viewed Clinton as the winner of the October 6th debate, with Clinton expanding his margin of victory to 59% to 29% in the second and final debate on October 16th. This is the summary offered by the Gallup Poll: “There wasn’t much surprise or mystery regarding the two 1996 debates. Incumbent President Bill Clinton was leading in the polls throughout the fall campaign, and he comfortably won both debates with Republican nominee Bob Dole by wide margins. Clinton, of course, went on to win the election handily.” Clinton’s success is a reminder that incumbents are capable of having strong first debates — especially if the incumbent is Bill Clinton.
2004: G.W. Bush vs Kerry. 63 million viewers. Unlike the Clinton-Dole debate, this debate exemplifies the trend towards incumbent Presidents stumbling in their first debate. John Kerry’s focused and disciplined performance was a sharp contrast to Bush’s apparent lack of preparation or verbal focus. Even the staunchly pro-Bush New York Post reported that Bush was “unusually off his game,” and the instant polls following the debate showed that viewers were more impressed with Kerry’s performance by a margin of 53% to 37%. In retrospect, the Kerry campaign should have perhaps been less elated in Kerry’s topline number of the instant polls, and more focused on the poll’s crosstabs, where viewers still viewed Bush as the leader more capable of handling the Iraq War by a margin of 54% to 43%. While the media and the campaigns often obsess over the easy-to-digest topline of the instant polls following the debate, it isn’t clear that “winning” a debate translates into winning an election. John Kerry would go on to “win” the second and third debates (though the third debate was closer to a statistical tie than a clear victory), but came up short on election day. Kerry was a smart, confident, and focused debater, but his focus was on scoring “debater’s points” about specific policies rather than creating a characterization contrast between himself and President Bush. Even when pressed to do so by the debate’s moderator, Kerry declined to use the word “liar” in describing President Bush, even though he clearly believed Bush to be a liar, and in fact had delivered substantial evidence during the debate that demonstrated Bush’s lack of candor about Iraq. Meanwhile, the Bush campaign pursued a relentless characterization contrast of Kerry as a “flip-flopper” and Bush as a steadfast leader. Kerry’s string of “victories” are a cautionary tale to candidates: a presidential debate isn’t actually an academic debate. The argument you’re making is ultimately about the personal contrast between yourself and your opponent, and not just about policy.
2012: Obama vs Romney. 67 million viewers. Even Barack Obama, widely regarded as a strong debater and public performer, wasn’t immune to the trend of incumbent presidents stumbling in their first debate. Facing off against a well-prepared and assertive Mitt Romney, Obama was widely perceived as unprepared and diffident. In a poll of 500 uncommitted voters immediately following the debate, Romney was seen as the winner by a margin of 46% to 22%. However, as with his fellow Massachusettsan John Kerry in 2004, Romney “won” the first debate without constructing a clear character contrast between himself and the incumbent President. It’s also worth noting that Obama, like Reagan in 1984, rebounded strongly in his subsequent debate performances. While Romney’s performance gave his campaign an injection of confidence and positive media coverage, Romney’s performance ultimately had the effect of raising expectations about his performance that he couldn’t meet in the second and third exchanges, while lowering expectations about Obama’s performance, which he easily exceeded. Because media coverage and public response to debates is often profoundly affected by expectations, Obama’s performance in 2012 against Romney represents a conundrum for challengers. If your first debate succeeds in taking advantage of the incumbent’s rustiness on the debate stage and you score a stunning victory, this has the effect of lowering the incumbent’s expectations, which helps set the table for successful incumbent performances in the later debates. If a candidate is going to win any of the debates, the debate you’d probably most want to win is the debate closest to the election, not the one furthest from the election. But if a challenger posts a weak performance in the first debate, they’ve introduced themselves poorly to those voters who were perhaps paying attention to them closely for the first time. In this sense, Ronald Reagan was quite lucky in 1980: he only had one debate with Carter, and it was a week before the election.
