Harvey
Wheeler was a professor of political science at Washington
and Lee University.
Everyone
sees what you seem to be, few experience what you really
are and those few do not dare to set themselves up against
the opinion of the majority…Where there is no court of
appeal the end is all that counts… for the mass of mankind
is always swayed by appearances and by the outcome of
an enterprise.
MACHIAVELLI,
The Prince
THE
Presidential election of 1960 was so close that many commentators,
including Robert Kennedy, stated that Senator Kennedy's
victory was "determined" by the television debates. But
an election as close as that one was can be said to have
been "determined" by almost everything that happened. Almost
any change-a change in weather, a change in economic conditions,
a change in American prestige abroad, a change in Khrushchev's
tactics, a change in the reactions of minority groups-any
change even though small might have brought different electoral
results.
Nonetheless,
the debates were important, not only because they did affect
the outcome of the election but primarily because they were
an innovation that seems certain to have a considerable
effect on the future of American politics and perhaps even
on the mechanics of American democracy. Already, as President,
Mr. Ken-nedy has relied heavily on this medium of communication
which seems so ideally suited to him, and he is sure to
exploit it further in any future crisis. And even if he
as President refuses to engage in television debates when
he runs for re-election, other campaigners for lesser offices
seem certain to explore the potentialities of the TV debate
in mass campaigning. In evaluating the politi-cal significance
of the 1960 television debates it is neces-sary first to
say something about the implications of this innovation
as a technique.
There
is no such thing as a "neutral" medium of com-munication
or exchange. Every different type of channel or conveyor
imparts its own peculiar form to the mate-rial it conveys.
The nineteenth century Chautauqua fa-vored the oratorical
elder statesman and was especially susceptible to emotional
and demagogic exploitation. Radio put a high premium on
a pleasing voice and accent and, moreover, could not communicate
any non-audible defects. It was the first truly mass, nation-wide
medium, and when used as such-rather than locally-it suppressed
local and parochial issues and communicated only issues
as broad in implication as the composition of the listen-ing
audience, but no more complex than the average comprehension
of that audience.
Television
is even more of a homogenizing mass me-dium. It has created
its own symbolic language: certain shorthand stereotypes
that carry a maximum audio-visual message at a minimum cost.
Television is for this reason most efficient as a medium
of communication when the material it is given has been
pre-translated into its own peculiar symbolic language.
The most deeply etched stereotypes of television are the
"good guys" and the "bad guys" -- the Jack Armstrong all-American
Boy versus the shady trickster. Television concentrates
these -expressions of these stereotypes on the face. What
one's face looks like-how one's face corresponds to television's
laboriously created stereotypes for good guys and bad guys-becomes
crucial.
This
first became apparent in the 1960 West Virginia -Presidential
primary. For the first great television debate was not between
Kennedy and Nixon but between Kennedy and Humphrey in West
Virginia. There it was Humphrey who adopted the offensive
and Kennedy who said "me too." But somehow Kennedy came
through with a stronger impression. Humphrey has the disadvantage
of looking like Cassius. He has a lean and hungry ambitious
look. But Kennedy happens to look like a composite picture
of all the good stereotypes television has created. Apparently
it was simply impossible for the citizens of West Virginia
to imagine the Pope being able to tell this clean-cut American
boy what to do or what to say.
The
moment the television viewer takes his place before his
set he brings with him a series of invisible visual values
which may have a strong political significance regardless
of the viewer's conscious desire. There is little doubt
that in his debate with Humphrey, and in his debates with
Nixon, Kennedy profited from his fortuitous facial correspondence
with television's pre-established model of the "good guy."
It seems likely that in the future one of the tests of a
candidate's "availability" for political nomination will
be his correspondence with the then current image of the
good guy.
TELEVIS1ON,
particularly night-time television, is a full-attention,
leisure, relaxation medium. If these conditions are not
satisfied, it doesn't reach you. This means that television
is intrinsically the medium of affluence and indolence.
Even the marginal worker becomes-figuratively-affluent and
indolent as he takes his place before his set. This is the
primary explanation the widespread conclusion that television
is a white-collar mass medium: it converts its viewers into
a white-collar audience, regardless of their non-television
status. -It is obvious that this feature will become of
increasing significance with the future development of television
as a medium for political organization.
One
of the most important social developments in contemporary
America is the rise of the white-collar (or bureaucratic)
classes. They are superseding the laboring classes as the
politicians crucial electoral target. Until 1952 it had
been a maxim in American politics that the middle-class
white-collar vote was unorganizable. Traditional boss politics
was founded on the assumption that "there are no votes in
the suburbs." One of the major explanations of the Republican
victories in the elections of 1952 and 1956 is that the
Democrats failed to do well among the white-collar voters
and Eisenhower did superbly well. It was with this group
that Nixon scored his great "Checkers" television victory.
It seemed as if Eisenhower applied to Nixon a simple TV
test. He would only believe Nixon to be "clean as a hound's
tooth" if Nixon could "appear" that way on television. From
this viewpoint Nixon had every reason to expect that a television
debate with Kennedy would be to his advantage; he had television's
built-in white-collar bias on his side in the beginning.
The
evidence from the polls indicates that the unusually high
number of "undecideds" were largely concentrated among the
white-collar groups. For all people, and for white-collar
people in particular, a conviction about who is going to
win has a major influence on the decision on whom to be
for. If Nixon had made a clearly superior impression in
the first debate, it is likely that would have reaped the
advantages of television's white-collar bias. But the fact
that he did not-the fact that he came through in the pre-established
image of television's "bad guy"-may have tended to randomize
the distribution of the white-collar vote between the two
candidates.
There
is a further political implication of night-time television
as a white-collar mass medium. Because television cannot
be psychically "tuned out" while still running, as radio
can be, the television viewer is typically a quick deserter.
If the program doesn't get hold of him early it will lose
him early. In the theatre or the movie the situation is
reversed. For the theatre or the movie there is a pre-established
reputation for each offering through reviews and word-of-mouth
commentary, and their audiences are prepared from the start
to persist to the end. In television this pre-established
commitment must be provided in other ways-through the established
reputation of the performer or through a familiarity with
the expected content of the program. This does not obtain
with "one-shot" programs or with political debates, where
a very high premium is placed on the opening message. Here,
the typical situation of the theatre is reversed. A foreshadowing
of the denouement must be apparent from the start.
This
reversal of developmental form is a major revolu-tion of
the dramatic form that has held sway since the birth of
Greek drama. A political debate on television "ideally"
should be "won" at the beginning. Everything that follows
the opening revelation should "ideally" exist merely to
confirm the initial promise of who is the good guy and who
is the bad guy. For this reason the format of the first
and the last debates must be judged to be more congruent
with the intrinsic nature of the medium than was the format
of the second and third debates. Applying this criterion,
it is possible to say that from a formal standpoint--considering
the "plot outlines" of the first and the fourth debates-Kennedy
must be judged to have "won" the first decisively and the
fourth ade-quately.
Television
also has a built-in situational bias regarding style of
delivery. The orator haranguing a partisan rally develops
a special technique for that situation. It is one that responds
to exaggeration and caricature. Exaggera-tion of dress,
of physique, of mannerism, of gesture, of diction, and of
content was characteristic of the tradi-tional orator. The
major arguments had to be developed with a special cadence
of thrust and pause until an organic revivalist response
could be elicited from the aroused partisans. In the hands
of a master like Alben Barkley it was possible in this way
to develop a powerful emotional dialectic between speaker
and audience. Par-tisans viewing such an event on television
figuratively transport themselves to the scene and become
emotion-ally involved with the actual audience. Used in
this way, television gives the viewer a ringside seat at
an event that has its own intrinsic developmental form.
But
when a television debate like that between Kennedy and Nixon
is staged, it is television's intrinsic bias that obtains.
Both candidates are present together. The audience has neither
organic nor political homogeneity. There is no direct or
immediate mass response to the speakers to provide the home
viewers with vicarious emotional involvement in the proceedings.
The viewer is isolated, atomized, and relaxed. He is in
intimate con-tact with each speaker by turns. It is the
setting of a living-room conversation, not a mass rally.
In such a set-ting all of the exaggerations that have a
positive effect on a mass rally have a negative effect on
the living-room viewer. This is the new setting in which
the processes of grass-roots democracy will be worked out,
and it carries novel implications for democratic theory.
WHEN
the founders of democratic theory-Locke, Jefferson, Paine,
and Mill-wrote about popular government, they assumed that
the people would exist in a state of immediate and direct
communication with each other and with their leaders. Under
such conditions it was possible to visualize organic political
communities in which the people had an intimate and personal
knowl-edge of their leaders, of their fellow-citizens, and
of the problems that confronted them all. It was possible
for an informed public opinion to exist, and it was possible
for the leader to know the "mind" of his people. The body
of democratic theory we have inherited depends for its validity
on the existence of this condition. But it is one that has
long since disappeared. Its disappearance and the changed
political environment of our times are made dramatically
clear to us by the television debates. The people are separated
from their leaders and from each other. The issues presented
to them are complex and universal rather than simple and
local. Every element in the new environment seems to be
the opposite of that necessary to make democracy work. The
new bureaucratic masses are like the people in Plato's cave.
They do not perceive political reality directly, they perceive
appearances.
In a
television campaign the candidates and their advisers concentrate
not on the projection of reality but on the projection of
images. What one perceives on televi-sion is not real persons,
but audio-visual "myths" of persons. The issues presented
are so watered down and so cleansed of vote-endangering
elements that they also tend to become the "myths" of the
real issues they refer to. And the "people" is not a real
people. The electorate becomes an apparent public, the "myth"
of a public.
Indeed,
communication has lost its traditional meaning, and what
now takes place is the "myth" of communication. For there
to be genuine communication there must be a mutual process
of intercourse. A tele-vised campaign is unilateral pseudo-communication.
The leader appears on television and acts as if he is in
communication with the people. The people sit in their living-rooms
and act as if they are a part of a decision-making process.
And then the leader, being as isolated as his followers,
sends out his corps of opinion pollsters to find out what
was the image, the appearance of poli-tics, that he projected.
Public-opinion polls are techno-logical substitutes for
the mutuality required in theory for democratic communication
to take place. But of course public-opinion polls are not
the real thing either. They are "myths" of mutuality.
Television,
in being large enough and extensive enough to cover the
mass of people, must necessarily be distant from every person.
The viewer consumes infor-mation only from "images," which
have questionable status as "persons." What is seen and
heard is "con-structed images." In addition, the projected
image is in contact with "mass images" rather than "people,"
for the only way to know about the effect on the masses
of a projected image is to construct an "image" of the audi-ence.
The result is that political communication, in the reciprocal
sense, has been lost. An entirely new relation-ship of image-to-image
has been created.
According
to early democratic theory, decision-mak-ing was supposed
to produce rational policies in much the same way that the
free market was supposed to pro-duce rational prices. Individuals
were to make judgments on the basis of intrinsic merits.
Many years ago Lord Keynes called attention to the fact
that economic be-havior in stock markets was no longer of
this sort. Indi-viduals made judgments on the basis of their
guesses about what investors in general would do rather
than on the basis of their conviction about the intrinsic
merits of the offerings. Something similar has occurred
in mass politics, and it has been accelerated by the television
debates. For the popular concern over who was winning the
debates was not so much a concern over who was right as
over who was presenting the better image. As individuals
discussed the images of the two candidates, the implication
was that one should be for the candidate with the better
image. Judgments about whom to be for were directly influenced
by judgments about who was going to win. Although this has
always been true to some degree in politics, it has become
a much more prominent feature of mass politics and surely
will be magnified as television debates become more widely
used in elections.
ANOTHER
factor directly related to the television de-bates is the
extensive campaign waged to increase the participation of
voters. At first thought it would seem that the greater
the degree of participation the more ef-fective the processes
of democracy, but this does not necessarily follow when
the condition of "myth-like" image-to-image politics obtains.
Under this condition the functioning of democratic procedure
actually may be inhibited. For what happens in the public-relations
drive to increase popular participation is that voting is
made to appear to be the proper thing to do. It is asso-ciated
with status symbols. It becomes an approved form of behavior
similar to attending the "right" church. Voting is sold
to people the same way a style of dress is sold to them.
To convert voting into an approved "style" can have some
very unfortunate consequences. For one thing it induces
large numbers of people to vote who would not otherwise
do so, and this means an increase in voting by people who
have given little or no considera-tion to the issues. This
is likely to increase the non-rational element in electoral
behavior and can hardly be viewed as an unmitigated good.
Furthermore,
the persons who are most likely to be influenced by public-relations
appeals to participate in politics will be those persons
who are most sensitive to style changes. If they go to the
voting booths largely for this reason, they are likely to
apply similar criteria in their selection of candidates
and issues. They are likely to vote on the basis of whom
and what it is proper to be for. Status-conscious voters
impelled to vote for style-centered reasons are likely to
make status-centered choices. To the extent this is true,
the Democratic Party's belief that its candidates will profit
from a large turn-out can no longer be true.
This
belief has been inherited from the depression days of the
Roosevelt coalition; today, it seems inapplic-able to the
special conditions facing the members of an affluent bureaucratic
culture. In such a culture it seems likely that the larger
the turn-out on Election Day the more non-rational, the
more status-centered, the more style-conscious, and the
more conservative will be the result. A similar occurrence
has been taking place in British elections. Voters who "should,"
according to the patterns of the Thirties, vote Labour are
voting Con-servative. British analysts refer to this as
the "deference vote." Deference, status-oriented voting,
stands to be magnified by the innovation of television debates.
There
is another implication of the myth-like political situation
confronting the organization man sitting before his living-room
television set. For such a man is in a novel situation.
He is no longer the traditional member of the large urban
political machine. He does not fit well into the traditional
methods of organizing voters. He is not like the man who
once attended mass political rallies. This lonely living-room
voter multiplied by 100,000,000-impelled to the polls by
a huge public-relations cam-paign-is terrifying to the political
organizer. New ele-ments of chance are thrown into a game
that was once simple and relatively easy to control. How
can a similar degree of control and predictability be assured
for these people? A new opinion-formation process will have
to be developed, and it is not hard to imagine what it will
be.
It seems
probable that the lessons of group dynamics will be quickly
employed by the new, more scientific practical politicians,
for they provide methods of "skew-ing" and controlling the
opinion-formation process in small groups. This would mean
that for future television debates "viewing parties" would
be organized by party workers. The politically active host
would be of slightly higher prestige than the group of "undecideds"
he asks to his home. Then, as the "plot" of the debate develops,
the host, together with one or two allies, would apply the
principles of group dynamics to the molding of a definite
attitude toward the debate as it takes place. This is the
way Paul Lazarsfeld's discovery of the process of voter
decision-making will adapt itself to the television cam-paign.
The
debates had only begun when it became apparent that the
styles of delivery of the two candidates were not equally
well adapted to the exploitation of television's built-in
situational bias. Vice-President Nixon had long ago developed
an effective oratorical technique for ad-dressing mass partisan
raffles. It held close to the tradi-tional model and aimed
at the emphasis and exaggeration of a few themes with large
emotional potential. Mr. Nixon was fond of saying that he
had studiously pat-terned his style after that of Harry
Truman. Nixon's great success with the "Checkers" speech
probably deceived him into assuming that the same style
was well adapted to a television debate. But the "Checkers"
speech was over a moral issue, not policy questions. And
in that speech he was by himself on television-unchallenged
by opponent or reporters. His audience was pre-structured
on the basis of individual reactions to him as a person.
As a result, in the first debate the Vice-President's style
of delivery conspired to give him the appearance of ineptness.
The gestures necessary in a mass rally ap-peared stagey
and artificial in the conversational atmos-phere of the
living-room. Emotional issues which can be drummed into
an organic audience of partisans seemed thin in an empty
studio face to face with a pleasant Ivy-Leaguer with a hair-trigger
mind. This un-expected failure of previously invincible
methods prob-ably accounts for the bewilderment and shock
that Nixon and his supporters displayed after the first
round. In the three following rounds, Nixon progressively
adjusted his style to the specific situational bias created
by the de-bates. But even at the end he was far from master
of the situation.
Kennedy,
on the other hand, was the fortuitous bene-ficiary of his
oratorical defects. He is not an orator. He seems temperamentally
unable to develop an emotional theme. He addresses a rally
gestureless, inflectionless, and at a rate of speech so
rapid as to render his arguments almost unintelligible.
A Kennedy speech, especially at the beginning of the campaign,
was the auditory counter-part of a page from the Appendix
of the Congressional Record. Reporters who followed him
were unanimous in their opinion that the masses who gathered
to hear him were at their highest pitch of enthusiasm before
he started to speak, with enthusiasm ebbing steadily to
the end. Though he improved, Kennedy remained a woefully
inept orator. However, the very characteristics that told
against him on the hustings worked to his advantage in his
debates with Nixon. His unadorned style of deliv-ery fitted
well into the viewer's living-room. And al-though his rapid
rate of speech prevented much of his content from being
assimilated, what did come through was the picture of a
bright, knowledgeable young man of great earnestness, energy,
and integrity.
ONE
of the gravest disappointments of the debates was their
effect on substantive issues. The chief issues of the campaign
were America's defense posture, her rate of economic growth,
her prestige in relation to Russia, and the accidental intrusion
of the significance of Quemoy and Matsu. All of these issues
were Democratic issues. That is, the campaign was waged
on Democratic terms. In politics, as in other areas, the
advantage accrues to the side able to maintain the offensive.
In politics this is compounded by the fact that the average
voter votes against rather than for a person or issue. The
Democrats were able to exploit these two advantages largely
because of the television debates. For without them it would
have been almost impossible to publicize the issues fully
and almost impossible to force the Republicans on the defen-sive.
As long as the Republicans were not directly chal-lenged,
they could ignore the Democratic issues and refuse to engage
in elaborate defensive tactics. But once the debates were
under way the Republicans had no other choice. In general,
the continuation of such debates will tend to favor the
party out of power. There can be little question but that
this is a good thing from the standpoint of democratic theory.
For the party in power now has a tremendous mass media advantage
in simply being able to command headlines and mass media
attention. To be able to counterbalance this and at the
same time to force the party in power to defend its actions
and policies can only be a net gain in a democracy.
On another
score, however, the effect of the debates on substantive
issues is of doubtful benefit. The two most instructive
examples concern Cuba on the one hand and Quemoy and Matsu
on the other. Cuba was a new issue in American politics;
Quemoy and Matsu, an old one. Concerning Cuba, we now know
that Kennedy had been given prior briefing about some general
prepara-tions for the overthrow of the Castro regime. We
also now know exactly what these preparations were and that
the precise form of American participation had not yet been
decided. In the television debates, Kennedy com-mitted himself
to an attempt to do in Cuba what had been achieved by the
C.I.A. before in Guatemala. He outlined in advance the precise
mode of operations that was later followed in the Cuban
invasion. He is the man who really "planned" the venture.
It is not surprising, therefore, that when President Kennedy
asked for advice on Cuba he got back mirror-versions of
his own position. A gratuitous television reference to a
serious policy mat-ter seems to have played a crucial role
in shaping one of the most grievous diplomatic blunders
in American history.
But
it is important to recognize that the Cuban issue was a
novel one. Today, now that it has produced an opinion stereotype
of its own, any future television debates about it by candidates
for President are unlikely to produce such novel or forthright
proposals as were offered by Kennedy in the 1960 debates.
For old issues with firm stereotypes it is the Quemoy-Matsu
pattern that seems most likely to be followed.
On established
political issues such as this one the competitive process
tends to force the two candidates into essential agreement,
similar to that which forces the competing producers of
automobiles to offer virtually identical products to consumers.
When the Quemoy--Matsu issue first arose in the debates,
there was a sharp difference between the two candidates,
and it could have been magnified in the later development.
Kennedy could have developed a rational and diplomatically
responsible policy for withdrawing from the two islands;
Nixon could have developed a consistent policy for the defense
of the islands at all costs. However, for either man to
have done so would have required developing an explicit
policy for relations with Communist China or for the use
of nuclear weapons in the event of a Chinese inva-sion.
These are real issues. Neither man was willing to broach
them. As a result, both retreated from their initial divergence
until they ended merely supporting the status quo. It seems
likely that this tendency to suppress major substantive
conflicts will be aggravated by television debates. The
candidates will dispute small quantitative distinctions,
not large qualitative differences.
Moreover,
the sobering experience over Cuba and the fact that Kennedy
was led accidentally into the Quemoy--Matsu issue are likely
to have a moderating effect on the future expression of
horseback opinions. A retreat into double-edged diplomatic
language seems indicated when such controversial issues
arise in the future. There are some excellent reasons for
this. No sitting President need ever be put in such a position.
He need never announce American policy on an important issue
without benefit of extensive staff consultation and departmental
re-search. The Presidential candidate of the future will
have to turn aside questions about explosive issues with
plausible but non-committal diplomatic language unless he
is prepared to move on to a full-scale attack with thorough
documentation. This makes it seem likely that television
debates will accelerate the recent trend toward eliminating
the substantive differences between the parties.
The
spread of homologous bipartisanship to all issues is rendered
especially serious by another factor asso-ciated with the
debates. In order to hold them at all it was necessary to
qualify the equal-time provision so that only the two major
parties would have access to tele-vision audiences. For
reasons of cost and discriminatory state legislation it
had already become almost impossible to start a nation-wide
third party. The precedent of the debates has now institutionalized
America's functional bias against all but the two major
parties. When this is coupled with the muting of substantive
disputes pro-duced by the debates there is serious cause
for concern. For from the standpoint of democratic theory
not only should there be differences between the contending
parties, those differences should be real. There should
be more than the appearance of politics. Today the gravest
issues facing America and the world is the issue of peace.
But peace, disarmament, and coexistence are precisely the
issues that were left out of the campaign.
ONE
topic remains, and this is whether television debates can
or should be held when one of the candidates is a sitting
President seeking re-election. Until President Kennedy said
he would do so in 1964, every commentator had stated that
it would be unwise. But what would have to be proved is
that the debates are not an improvement over previous methods
of informing and organizing masses of voters. This is a
case that is difficult, if not impossible, to prove. For
all of their defects the television debates drew a remarkably
large audience and were unusually successful at holding
them. And although in one sense they accentuate the "lonely
crowd," "organization man" aspects of our bureaucratic culture,
it is not true that these aspects of our culture could be
given reduced political effects in other ways. Given the
fact of our bureaucratic culture it is true that traditional
campaigning and electoral practices are ill-suited to the
conditions of our times.
This
discussion has attempted to foreclose a conclu-sion that
through this electronic miracle the difficulties besetting
mass participational democracy will be re-solved and the
rational decision-making individual can finally achieve
the political role envisioned for him in Jacksonian democratic
theory. This certainly is not true. Furthermore, it is apparent
that if campaigns do come to be organized around debates,
they will bring char-acteristic evils against which we will
all have to be on guard. Campaigning through televised debates
will not resolve the difficulties besetting democracy today,
but it does offer many improvements over campaign practices
of the past.
Perhaps
the most significant of these improvements are as follows:
1)
Debates will prevent any candidate from waging a campaign
that is blatantly organized on the basis of a series of
special-interest appeals. It will be harder than ever before
to say one thing when addressing labor, an-other when addressing
business, another when speaking in the South, and so on.
2)
They will tend to force the contestants to develop, present,
and explain an over-all rationalized program in which the
chief political difficulties facing the nation are included
and are related to each other in a systematic way. It will
be increasingly difficult to present a public welfare program
that is inconsistent with the program for finances and taxation.
3) Debates
will tend to make election issues out of problems for which
there is no organized special-interest group. The most dramatic
example is foreign policy. Political scientists have long
pointed out that in many recent Presidential campaigns the
most serious problem facing the country has been foreign
policy. Yet it was previously impossible to make this policy
into a potent election issue. The "practical" politician
(old-style) always answered that there were no votes in
foreign policy. Political scientists have worried over how
to organize "general-interest" groups with sufficient elec-toral
power to force candidates to campaign on such broad issues.
Although this still seems impossible to achieve on the organizational
level, it was achieved in the recent campaign primarily
through the television debates. This is a tremendous benefit,
and its significance should not be lost sight of as we count
up the demerits.
BUT
what of the situation when one of the candi-dates is a sitting
President?
The
real difficulty here is over the manner in which the political
responsibility of the President is to be enforced under
the novel conditions of the television debate. It is not
that we want the President to be able to avoid partisan
confrontation, but that we are hesitant to see him committed
to a "debate" that might take irre-sponsible turns. The
chief trouble is that we all insisted on calling the joint
appearances on television by Ken-nedy and Nixon "debates"
at the same time that we realized they were not "true" debates
and proceeded to criticize them for not being what we have
always under-stood debates to be. The joint appearances
were not true debates, and they should not have been. They
can be improved, but the direction of improvement should
not be toward making them more like true debates, but less
so.
What
we are after is not the spectacle of candidates for our
highest office wrangling with each other. What we require
is a mode of electoral competition through which the opposing
candidates are induced to develop competing over-all programs
for dealing with the prob-lems of our nation. Then each
candidate may point out what he believes are the fallacies
in the programs of his opponent and at the same time be
subjected to interroga-tion by knowledgeable experts about
his own programs. It is not really necessary to this process
that the compet-ing candidates ever actually interrogate
each other per-sonally or directly. What must be emphasized
is not the competition between personalities but the competition
between programs and policies. From this standpoint the
format that was developed by the networks-though it was
not a "debate" and though it was not perfect-offers a sound
basis on which to proceed in the future.
The
format requires only slight modification to fit the changed
situation that would exist if one of the candi-dates were
a sitting President. Assume that there were to be four programs
in the Presidential election of 1964. During the first and
the fourth programs the President and his challenger could
be situated in different studios with the same split-screen
arrangement that was em-ployed for the third confrontation
in 1960. On the first night each man could be allotted half
of the time and could use it to lay down the general outlines
of the program and the policies on which he was prepared
to stand. There would be no need to go through the rebuttal
form of the traditional debate. The second and third nights
could be devoted to interrogation as in 1960, but a few
changes modeled on a "press con-ference" rather than a debate
might be helpful. Each man in turn would submit to interrogations
similar to those at a press conference. However, greater
usefulness could be provided if, in addition to reporters,
an econo-mist and a political scientist were added. Our
leading political scientists and economists are at least
as respon-sible as our leading reporters. They would not
ask "unfair" questions of Presidential candidates. And the
voters should have the chance to find out the degree of
mastery of political and economic issues that the candi-dates
possess. In any case, the questions asked by both reporters
and professional interrogators would be re-stricted in scope
to the problems raised in the opening statements of both
candidates.
Each
of the two interrogation sessions would be con-ducted separately
in separate studios. There might be ten interrogators-five
for each candidate and on the second interrogation night
the questioners could ex-change candidates. Not only would
this help insure fair-ness of treatment, it would also permit
the interrogators to explore similar problems with each
candidate.
For
the final program the format could be the same as on the
first night. Each candidate in turn would give closing statements
devoted to a summary of his position and answers to the
criticisms that might have been made previously.
There
is nothing in this modified format that might diminish the
dignity of the office of President. No re-sponsible reporter,
economist, or political scientist would ask questions designed
to embarrass the United States internationally. The President
would have to be more guarded in such matters than his opponent,
but this is merely putting him once more in the same position
that he is in at each press conference. There is no reason
to suspect that suddenly, merely because he is campaign-ing,
the President of the United States will lose his head and
engage in rash statements harmful
to the interests of the nation.
It
is possible, however, that a future sitting President might
wish to draw on the full dignity of his office and attempt
to avoid a direct confrontation with his chal-lenger. This
is what gives force to the recommendations contained in
the paper by Malcolm Moos. For a series of television confrontations
on the model of those out-lined here would, by concentrating
everything on the competition between programs and issues
rather than on appearances and images, greatly facilitate
the expla-nation of political realities to the mass voter.
July
1962
