Richard Nixon would never forget his first presidential debate against John F. Kennedy in 1960. Nixon appeared sweaty and stubbly during the televised debate, and unlike Kennedy, he refused to wear makeup. Afterward, Nixon’s mother was among thousands who called CBS to ask if he was sick. Kennedy emerged from the debate with a small lead in public polls, and went on to win the election that November.
During the 1966 midterm elections, Nixon was interviewed alongside Newton Minow, a Democrat, on the same CBS stage where the first presidential debate had been held. Before the camera went on, Minow asked Nixon if he remembered the studio. Nixon grabbed Minow’s arm. “How could I ever forget?” he asked.
Minow, Communication ’49 and Law ’50, recalled that moment to laughter from a graying crowd of approximately 80, which included a handful of Northwestern students, at the McCormick Tribune Center Forum Monday. He and journalism Prof. Craig LaMay, co-authors of a new book, “Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future,” took turns speaking and answering audience questions.
The hour-long Crain Lecture functioned a bit like a debate without the disagreements, as the two men addressed the global implications of American presidential debates, whether third-party candidates deserve to participate and how the debates should adapt to a changing media environment.
“You see instances in which many other countries now try to emulate what’s been done here by the Commission on Presidential Debates in terms of format, using a single moderator,” LaMay said.
Still, incumbents and those leading in the polls try to avoid debating because it elevates their opponents’ stature, he said. In 2002, French president Jacques Chirac refused to debate his right-wing opponent Jean-Marie Le Pen because he didn’t want to “dignify” Le Pen’s candidacy. But the public clamor for debates remains, LaMay said, noting a Spanish television broadcast in 2004 when leading parliamentarians refused to debate.
“With the TV time already scheduled, Canal Plus held a debate anyway, substituting sock puppets for the two candidates,” LaMay said. “Each sock puppet was equipped with a Spanish flag, which each used to stabbed the other repeatedly.”
Even as the American format becomes more popular abroad, it faces criticism at home, Minow and LaMay said, for being overly scripted affairs rife with “gotcha” questions rather than substantive inquiries.
“There is no perfect system,” LaMay said. “Among the criticisms of generic presidential debates is that they exclude third parties unnecessarily, or perhaps unfairly. A major part of our book is about the 15-percent rule – which is to say a candidate, to qualify for participation in a presidential debate, must show 15 percent public support in an average of five national polls.”
The book, which was the second the two co-authored, came out of a series of conversations they had about the history of presidential debates. LaMay spent hours interviewing Minow, who first proposed the presidential debates in 1960. LaMay said he’s listened to so many of Minow’s anecdotes that he now keeps them in a book called “The Sayings of Chairman Minow.”
“Inside the Presidential Debates” is part history, part suggestions for fixing the debates with an eye toward the future. Minow said a good debate should be like a job interview with voters.
“These ‘gotcha’ questions are terrible,” Minow said. “But I think most of the presidential debates have been pretty good because the voters have had a chance to see and hear the candidates and form a judgment about them.”
As the session ended, Minow thanked former NU president Arnold Weber for attending, who later said his reasons for coming were twofold.
“I like hearing about the structure of the (Commission on Presidential Debates),” Weber said. “Secondly, we all have a capacity for gossip, so some of those stories were really interesting.”
