The History of Presidential Debates

In the United States, the presidential debate is a time-honored institution. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to as our staff writers trace the fact and fiction surrounding presidential debates.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson. Joints Day as Usual by staff
writer Joshua m clark. Hi. Hi, I had to use

(00:20):
your formal byline because you have on this John T
little reporter's hat and it's a typewriter in your lab,
and you're just like a throwback to the days of
your when when politics were good and pure and dirty,
but not as dirty. I've gone on Walter Winchell. In
other words, I'm getting very excited. I'm not going to
be in any of the presidential debates, but believe me,

(00:41):
I'm going to be watching them, especially especially the vice
presidential debate. I'm really looking forward to that one. Yeah,
I'm very interested to see what happens, because you know,
earlier this year in the in the presidential primaries, they
held a debate and Mr Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolis hosted,
and they were widely criticized for spending like the first

(01:03):
hour and a half asking just stupid pop culture questions
of the candidates. So, um, I'm kind of hoping that
the actual presidential debates are a little more refined, the
questions are a little more insightful, a little media. You're sure,
you know, I'm kind of hoping that Mr Jeremy Piven hosts,

(01:25):
or at the very least does the Ryan Seacrest thing
of like awe snap or that kind of thing like
in and out of commercials. I know you're a big
Jeremy Piven f I'm a huge Jeremy Piven fan. For me,
no one but the PIVI will do well in my fiance.
But as a matter of fact, Mr Piven, if you're listening,
Candice has expressed several times that she would love to
receive an email from you, So I would strongly recommend

(01:48):
you do that. It would make her day. But for
all of you listening who were curious about presidential debates,
we'll move from Piven to Palin and other things more
a h Jermaine to that particular topic. I've actually got
a little legend I want to confirm with you. Okay,
so I have heard, and I think this is kind

(02:09):
of a condensed version of it, but basically I heard
that Richard Nixon lost the nineteen sixty presidential election because
of a knee injury and it had something to do
with the debates. Is that is that fact or fiction?
That's fact? Well, it's sort of a long breadcrumb trail
of a story. But I think that most of you

(02:30):
guys know about the very famous televised debates between Nixon
and Kennedy. Essentially, Nixon went on TV looking like death
warmed over. He looked under weight and sallow, and he
wore the same color suit as the backdrop, and it
was nothing was working for him, nothing, nothing, nothing. And
then there's JFK who looks amazing as always, as always, tan, fit, smiling, charming,

(02:55):
the usual. But Nixon went on to lose a presidential
debate by all accounts of people watching it on TV,
but people who were listening on the radio to the
debate thought that he was the winner. What did the
knee have to do with this? Though? Knee? He had
banged Disney into a car door a little while before,
and he'd gotten a staff infection as a result, and

(03:15):
that's why he felt like death warmed over. Yeah, hence
the the underweight, underweight body and the salary skin and
just nothing going right for him. And this was like
one of the first televised debates, right, the first between
two party nominated candidates. So you have the Democrat Canada
and the Republican candidate. And it was on TV nineteen sixties, septembery.

(03:38):
History in the making. Yeah, they call it the Great Debates.
Now there are three of them, I believe something like that. So, um,
you know, presidential debates, as far as I know, um,
actually were born out of a senatorial debate. They're not
that old. It was I think Abraham Lincoln who was
debating a guy named Stephen Douglas for the senatorial seat

(03:58):
in Illinois, right, And the best part of that is
that he wasn't even debating him at first. He was
following Stephen Douglas round on the campaign trail and heckling
him from the audience. And eventually this sort of mounted
into what became debates, right, right, They had like a
three hour debate over the slavery right. And Uh, the

(04:21):
weird thing is, as I understand, Lincoln didn't debate two
years later he lost that seat to Douglas. Um, he
didn't debate two years later at all when he was
running for president in eighteen sixty, which he won obviously.
So I guess presidential debates had that first, you know,
beginning that flash on stage, but didn't really catch on

(04:42):
until what like the thirties or forties, right, Yeah, back
in nineteen thirty four, I think is when they sort
of came into the limelight again and people liked the
idea of presidential debates because it was it was a
new concept. You know, people knew a lot about the
candidates with the idea of hearing them square off against
each other. There there's something really revelatory about hearing someone

(05:04):
respond to what a colleague is saying, or a political
foe or ally. You know, it really brings out your
true thoughts and your true feelings on a topic when
you're having to speak off the cuff to what someone
is saying or what someone is asking you. And and
that was the great thing about debate is that people
got to see the real truth behind what the candidate said.

(05:26):
It wasn't just a rehearsed speech. Yeah, it's it's pretty
much a public service. I mean, if you think about it,
everything else you know about a candidate is coming out
of that candidate's mouth. It's rehearsed or it's a press release. Yeah,
there's a big pr machine behind Canada. Sure, and and
at that moment when they're debating their their arrival or
being asked to follow up question or something, they're having

(05:47):
to think on their feet and you can really see,
you know, is this person actually smart? Do they really
know what they're talking about? It's uh, it's kind of necessary.
But the thing is, as far as I understand, um,
that kind of spontaneity is not found in presidential debates anymore.
Apparently there's this group called the Commission on Presidential Debates

(06:09):
and they controlled um, not the not the ones in
the primary anything like that, but the three main presidential
and vice presidential debates held right before the elections. Um,
they control those with an iron fist, you know about
the CPD. Yeah, and you're right, iron fist is the
right term for it. Everything from the height of the
podium to the temperature of the room, to which cities

(06:30):
even get considered to be site for these debates. And
it's a pretty big deal to be the site of
a presidential debate. I think there's like a seven thousand
plus dollar application fee. You have to have enough hotel
rooms available for a certain thousand number of galass three
hotel rooms. Yeah, so you have to really petition essentially

(06:51):
to become a site for one of these, and it
is a great honor. But I mean the town, you know,
is just the backdrop to what goes on, and what
goes on is essentially a very well oiled pr presentation
of Some people would argue, well, it's all very staged
and what's more, um originally, uh well, let me back up.
There's this thing called the communications After nineteen thirty four,

(07:14):
you've heard of this. There's this thing called the Equal
Time Provision, which is a clause in this law that
says that any candidate running for um, you know, the
presidency or something like that, has to have equal time
in the media. And this actually came up. Do you
remember when Fred Thompson was running in the O eight primaries.

(07:35):
Everybody was a little worried that he may get more
exposure UM through Law and Order reruns and they were
talking about having to to not run ones that featured
him while he was on the campaign trail. He dropped
out before it got resolved, but that was because of
the Equal Time Provision, and that used to govern all
of the debates UM until I think nineteen seventy four

(07:58):
or something like that. Uh, the ce CE, the Federal
Communications Commission, came out and said, Okay, we're going to
We're gonna make a loophole here. We're gonna call presidential
debates bona fide news events as long as they're hosted
by a third party. Uh, the equal time provision doesn't

(08:18):
doesn't hold water any longer for just for debates, you
know bout that. Yeah, and Nix and I think was
pretty active and vetoing the equal time provision too. Yeah,
I think he had pretty sour feelings about his televised
debates days. Um, he actually did make it to the
White House in the end, not during the Kennedy debates,
if he, uh not, just Nixon, Johnson, Jimmy Carter that

(08:41):
these politicians used to um keep debates from going on
because of the equal time provision. They said no, then
they just couldn't hold a debate because the other candidates
would get more exposure, right and in their eyes, you know,
saying no to debate, Yeah, you came across looking sort
of badly, but how being I guess a bad rap

(09:01):
was better than going on TV and looking like a
fool or allowing your opponent to look really good, right. Yeah,
So so this was kind of manipulated. And then the
FEC came out and created this loophole so politicians couldn't
crippled debates or keep debates from going on without them
any longer. Um. And that third party caveat that they

(09:22):
introduced was actually filled by the League of Women Voters.
And these women were serious and you know, women fought
really hard for suffrage. A lot of lives were lost,
a lot of people went to prison, and they were
dead said and determined that they were going to turn
around this sort of chaotic scene that had become the
presidential debate and talk about ruling something with an iron fist.

(09:44):
They were even more stringent than the CPD is today. No,
definitely they can. They controlled the format, the questions, they
chose the moderator. I believe they chose the site. But
the thing is with the League of Women Voters, fairness
was pairing amount to them, and they actually carried it
out really well. They were very fair. Um. Anybody who

(10:05):
was a viable presidential candidate was was invited. Uh, if
you didn't want to show up, they still held the debate.
Jimmy Carter found that out the hard way, and Ronald Reagan,
who was then governor of California, shows up and just
blows the television audience away and gets carried into the
White House. I mean, that wasn't the only factor, but
that was a big one. So the league um just

(10:27):
kind of said, you know what, this is about the
political process. It's not about the parties. Uh, if you
guys want to join in, bring your best, you know,
and if if not, then the other guys are gonna
bring their best and we'll go on without you. And
that actually kind of irked them, I think, kind of
irk maybe an understatement, but the Democratic and Republican parties

(10:49):
eventually took control of debates because they become so powerful, right,
they drafted a memoranum of understanding between them. This is
when Ducakas and George H. Bu Bush we're running for office,
and between the two parties, they decided, we can take
power back, and we can run debates our way, and
we can make it that the debates are just between

(11:10):
the two parties. It just comes down to the Democrats
and Republicans. And essentially what they were clamoring for was
a press conference relay where candidates could have questions ahead
of time to rehearse, and they knew exactly what was
going to be asked of them, they knew what format
would be used, and essentially they overtook the l WV

(11:30):
and they were not happy. They actually called it a
a fraud on the American voter falling down. They stepped
back and said, you know, we're not going to have
any part of this, and I guess the Democrats are
Republicans were all too happy. That's when the Commissioned Presidential
Debates was created because they needed that third party still
to keep debates bona fide, new to the news events.

(11:51):
But since they were controlling the CPD, they also controlled
who showed up. Like uh in ross Pero Member ross Pero,
he uh he had a great showing at a presidential debate,
so much so that in n the the Democrats and
Republicans didn't let him come on to the presidential debates.

(12:11):
He was excluded, and later he tried to sue, but
he ended up losing that case because the equal time
provision loophole was there. He he really had no basis
in in the case, but he's still he wasn't allowed
to debate in these supposedly fair and open debates because
the CPD said no, because the Democrats and Republicans told
it not to. And that's the other thing about the

(12:34):
CPD that that kind of makes it so nefarious. It
acts as a shield, a publicity shield, between the American
voter and the two parties. I think that when Ross
Perot was not allowed to participate, people were actually pulled
to see who they blame for that, and only a
very small number blamed Bush, a very small number blamed Clinton.
Most of them blamed the CPD has something like or

(12:56):
something like that. Yeah, So basically you've got this entity
created did by the two parties to enforce the two
party system. And this is what we're seeing today, uh
at presidential debates. And I mean, like the follow up
question format completely thrown out. Um. The questions are prepared
for ahead of time. It's like you said, well oiled,
well rehearsed. I think in a two thousand John Kerry,

(13:19):
who is just a senator back then, UM complained that
that the questions that were asked were a little um
below par. I think he said, you could have grabbed
ten people off the street who don't know the difference
between Jerusalem and Georgia, and they would have asked better questions. So,
I mean, you know these are not I guess the
point is is public or presidential debates are no longer

(13:42):
a public service. It's just like one big, televised, expensive
press release. But people demand it. You know, they still
want to see the debate. People still like to watch
them and see what's going on. And you know, you
could read a newspaper summary the next day and probably
glean the same information. But there's something still to be
fount owned in a candidate's facial expressions or the way

(14:03):
that the audience responding to the candidate. And another issue
with presidential debates that's come up is the polls that
are taken afterward. How accurate are these polls that say, oh,
I think so and so one the debate, so and
so is going to win the election. You know, they're
not always accurate. And now in our modern era, when
a lot of these are conducted by computer, for instance,

(14:25):
you have a younger segment of the population casting votes
in these polls, so you're not having the older segments
of the population represented. So there's a grave disparity there,
especially in snap polls, you know, those very quick, immediate
online polls where you know, they're the people who are
going to fill them out are a little more web
savvy than than the people who aren't. So yeah, and

(14:47):
the other problem is that these polls are so widely
broadcast they actually influence UM voter impressions of things, you know,
like who who? Who won the presidential debate. I could
really say I thought it was a tie, but this
poll says that this candidate one, So I guess that
candidate one. So I mean, what's what's the point of polls? Anyway?

(15:07):
It's a good question, but you know, it's funny. We
talked about how the web is influencing certain aspects of polls.
It's also influencing aspects of the debates themselves. Back in
the nineteen sixties, the big thing was TV, and now
the big thing is Internet essentially, and all this other
media things like Twitter, YouTube, even MTV, they've all played parts.

(15:28):
In the two thousand and eight, they held something with
my Space. Yeah, I think people could post questions and
then they were answered. Is that right? Yeah? It was
real time questions via instant message or email. UM and
the moderator chose the best ones and asked one candidate
at a time. It was pretty cool format. I think
I read and wired that as far as the tech

(15:49):
communities concerned, the MTV, MySpace UM town hall meetings, they
weren't actually debate since there's just one candidate there one
the new Technology UH award I guess for the presidential
debate so far, The one that fascinated me was the
one via Twitter. Because in Twitter you can only use
I think a hundred forty characters for a response, and

(16:10):
so that really really slims down what's usually a big
oratorical just cloud of of words and insinuations that candidates
had to give very direct responses to these questions. So
who knew Richard Nixon's knee had anything to do with Twitter?
You know who knew? Can? Oh god, you're so welcome?

(16:30):
And something else fun that I know. One of my
very favorite lines from a presidential debate ever dan Quayle
and Lloyd Benson. Dan Quel compared himself to John Kennedy.
This is what Lloyd Benson said, I knew Jack Kennedy.
Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, You're no
Jack Kennedy to the end of the debate. Yeah, and

(16:52):
that killed Quayle certainly did shot the dunk. There's a
whole lot mored of know presidential debates, and you can
find out and how president until debates work on how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let
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(17:12):
at how stuff works dot com.