Hullabaloo

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

 
Debate Performance Art: The Village Critics Society convenes

by digby

Politico helpfully prepares us for what's important in tonight's debate:

As political actors, Obama and Romney will be judged as much — if not more so — on their body language and demeanor as on the quality of their arguments.

The winning formula, political pros acknowledge with some regret, is style over substance.

Ever since Richard Nixon sweated through his infamous 1960 televised debate with John F. Kennedy that radio listeners thought Nixon won, presidential debates have served as much as political performance art as policy forums. What’s remembered are Al Gore’s sighs, George H.W. Bush’s frequent glances at his watch and John McCain’s failure to make eye contact.

And why is this important? Because the Village press corps insists it's important and will spend days deconstructing the "performances" as if they are auditions for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. And they have their script at the ready:

ROMNEY REBOUND? After weeks of taking a beating in the media and from Republicans, Mitt Romney is finally catching some breaks, and is poised for a surge in more positive coverage IF he exceeds expectationstonight. A number of things broke his way in the past 24 hours. None of them, alone, suggests anything profound. But in totality, they offer Republicans reason for hope coming out of tonight:

1) The Biden gaffe referring to "a middle class that has been buried the last four years." Voters seem aware of who was in charge during those years.

2) The 2007 videotape of then-Senator Obama that surfaced last night and rocketed through right-wing media. The N.Y. Times and WashPost ignored it on their homepages this morning, but conservatives will force the MSM and voters to reckon with it. No doubt, some of the quotes could be used against President Obama.

3) A new NBC-WSJ-Marist poll shows Virginia and Florida tightening, and there is evidence that Romney efforts to target Hispanics in swing states is blunting Obama's edge.

4) It all comes down to tonight. If Romney rocks, he will put concerns about message and his campaign team to rest for a few days -- and put tougher attention back on Obama.

I'm guessing that "rock" means resisting the impulse to drop his pants and start running around the stage throwing thousand dollar bills at the audience.

Remember, these Village scribes can be a very "active" audience:

POOLEY: [Gore’s attempt to connect with the audience] was unmistakable—and even touching—but the 300 media types watching in the press room at Dartmouth were, to use the appropriate technical term, totally grossed out by it. Whenever Gore came on too strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd.

Seven weeks after the Dartmouth debate, Salon’s Jake Tapper described the same conduct. Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, he replied to a question about “liberal bias:”

TAPPER: Well, I can tell you that the only media bias I have detected in terms of a group media bias was, at the first debate between Bill Bradley and Al Gore, there was hissing for Gore in the media room up at Dartmouth College. The reporters were hissing Gore, and that’s the only time I’ve ever heard the press room boo or hiss any candidate of any party at any event.

Why is this relevant? Paul Waldman explains:

As I've pointed out many times, what persists in our memory about presidential debates are only those moments reporters choose to keep reminding us about (I wrote about it in this book—still relevant eight years later!). But there's an important question to keep in mind when you consider the question of the media's influence: Does it matter?

If the question you're asking is, "Which candidate do voters perceive as having won the debate?" then yes, the media matter a great deal. But that's not a particularly important question. Similarly, a debate can "matter" without it actually changing the outcome of the race. It can inform people, or bring up a new issue we haven't much thought about in a while, or show us a side of one or both of the candidates we haven't seen before, and that can be good even if no one's vote gets changed. On the other hand, a debate full of stupid questions ("Mr. Romney, you're trailing in the polls. Why have you failed to connect with the voters?") and evasive answers can make people more cynical about politics, which matters too. And the media's influence can matter if they ignore everything that was interesting, edifying, and revealing about a debate and instead spend a week talking about whatever clever line one candidate or another tossed off. Which, if the past is any guide, is what we're most likely to get.

It's their wading pool. We just drown in it.

If you want to follow my inane tweeting of the debate, you can do so a @digby56.

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digby 10/03/2012 05:00:00 PM