Face-Offs Proliferate : ’88 Race? It’s Highly Debatable

In Grovers Mill, N. J., the committee commemorating the 50th anniversary of the famous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast wants to sponsor a presidential debate next year.

In Georgia, the Republican Party of Catoosa County--where the Confederate Army at Chickamauga won one of its last major victories of the Civil War--would like to hold a debate by Republican presidential candidates.

Americans may be apathetic when it comes to voting, but the idea of being host to a debate has aroused people’s interest across the country.

Numerous Invitations

Well over a year before the 1988 presidential election, civic and political organizations, colleges and universities, groups of retired people, peace organizations, consumers’ groups and business associations all have submitted invitations to the candidates to come and debate.

Thirty-six cities, more than ever before, have applied to the League of Women Voters to be host to one of its planned series of televised general election debates in the fall of 1988, League President Nancy Neuman said.

“We must have received 70 invitations to debate already. They’re coming out of the woodwork,” Barbara Pardue, press secretary for Vice President George Bush, said.

This year, debates are replacing straw polls as the preferred early test of the feasibility of a candidacy.

For many in politics, it is a welcome change.

Criticism of Straw Polls

“Straw polls are essentially a test of organizational skills and not of voter preference. All too often, the winner of a straw poll was the candidate who could bus in the most supporters to a hotel ballroom on a Saturday night,” said Richard Moe, a Washington lawyer and member of the recently formed Commission on Presidential Debates, which was established by officials of the two major parties to sponsor four presidential debates in the fall of 1988.

For the candidates, the appeal of debating has a lot to do with new communications technology, which permits them to transmit their debates via satellite to television stations across the country comparatively cheaply without depending on the major networks.

“The debates are the most positive thing to come out of the age of television,” said Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked for former Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon.

Hess acknowledged that the audiences for early debates are comparatively small. For example, the League of Women Voters estimates that more than 100 million people saw President Reagan debate his Democratic opponent, Walter F. Mondale, in 1984, but the Public Broadcasting Service reported that about 7 million people saw this year’s first prime-time debate, a July 1 forum featuring seven Democratic candidates on PBS’s “Firing Line” program.

But Hess argues that the size of the audience belies its significance.

“Debates are useful even this early in the campaign,” he said. “The audiences tend to be small, but they are made up of the kind of political junkies, the activists, money people and insider types who help shape the campaigns.”

Nevertheless, the new trend is not universally welcomed. Critics complain that too much emphasis on debating could allow the slickest speakers to prevail over the ablest statesmen.

“Debates are a test of peripheral skills, clearly not trivial ones, but not the skills central to whether someone has the wisdom and ability to govern well,” said Nelson W. Polsby, a political science professor at UC Berkeley who has written extensively on campaign politics.

Old Tests Irrelevant

With candidates judged on their ability to project an appealing screen presence, Polsby said, the old tests of political readiness have become largely irrelevant.

“It used to be you’d look at a candidate’s record. You’d watch to see what the people around him had to say. It was a kind of peer review, and it provided valuable information,” Polsby said. “If a candidate had 40 congressmen working for him, that counted for something.”

On the other hand, political author Kathleen Jamieson of the University of Texas sees the televised debate as an instrument of democracy, giving lesser-known candidates an equal voice with the front-runners.

“In the past, it was an insiders’ game. Those without the money and the endorsements didn’t have much of a chance,” Jamieson said.

And Jamieson argues that debating skills are important leadership qualities in an age when presidents often must use television to mobilize public support for their policies.

Power of Persuasion Cited

“The ability to govern can hinge on a leader’s ability to persuade a mass audience,” she said.

With nothing to lose but their anonymity, many of the 14 presidential candidates this year are welcoming the invitations to enter the mine fields of televised debate, where the serious-minded can sound foolish and faux pas and 5 o’clock shadows can be fatal.

“It’s the best chance you’ve got to state your case and sharpen your image,” said former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV, a Republican, whose spirited Iowa debate with former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt in May helped both men broaden their appeal.

The Babbitt-Du Pont face-off and the one this week between Democratic Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Republican Rep. Jack Kemp of New York represent a new twist in campaign debating, pitting members of opposite parties against each other before the primaries.

So far, these confrontations have worked well as the participants--knowing that they won’t be running against each other any time soon--have felt free to tee off in ways that boldly contrast party differences and personal styles.

Lively Debate Finale

The Gephardt-Kemp debate at Drake University in Des Moines had an especially spirited finale.

“For eight years, you have preached productivity and you have cut aid to education, and you’re dead wrong,” Gephardt said. “ . . . For eight years, you have preached basic family values, but your policies have almost destroyed the family farm, and you’re dead wrong . . . . For eight years, you have preached the virtues of the marketplace but refused tough action to open up the foreign markets, and you’re wrong.”

Kemp replied: “Dick . . . shame on you. Shame on your party for telling us that isolationism, protectionism, pacifism with regard to what happens in our own hemisphere and neutralism with regard to the great East-West struggle is patriotism.”

The one-on-one debates, transmitted to television stations around the country via satellite, represent a quantum leap in the art of electronic campaigning. They allow the candidates to reach widely scattered audiences simultaneously at bargain prices.

Satellites Cut Costs

Using a satellite, it cost Gephardt and Kemp between $5,000 and $6,000 each to make their debate available to 1,000 stations. As part of that cost, the two candidates were able to beam interviews to selected cities to accompany the broadcast of the debate.

“We did interviews for stations in three cities in Iowa, in Minneapolis, Buffalo, Omaha, Atlanta and Dallas. If we had had to go to those cities for the interviews, the air fare, alone, would have cost three times as much as it did using the satellite,” John Buckley, Kemp’s press secretary, said.

The new technology will come in especially handy as the candidates get ready for Super Tuesday, March 8, when 16 Southern states hold primaries.

“If they want, the candidates will be able to reach people in 16 states without leaving Washington, D.C.,” Buckley said. “So, besides saving time and money, the candidates’ reach is enormously extended.”

There is no way to tell how many local stations are using the satellite link when debates are offered, or how much of the debates that stations are putting on the air. But what little the candidates are finding out is encouraging.

For example, two stations that did air parts of the Kemp-Gephardt debate in the Northeast reach 85% of the viewers in New Hampshire, where the nation’s first primary will be held on Feb 16.

Even when their audiences are relatively small, the politicians are taking them seriously, as evidenced by the candidates’ reactions to the “Firing Line” debate.

Prepped Hard for Debate

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, who won high marks for his “Firing Line” performance, prepped for six hours on the day of the debate, Patricia O’Brien, the candidate’s press secretary, said. At the same time, Dukakis’ air of unforced authority during the debate reflected his experience as a TV debate show host.

Former Gov. Babbitt, who was widely judged the loser on “Firing Line,” partly because of a distracting mannerism--he bobbed his head when he spoke--now is busy training for the next go-around, according to aides, who say he is spending 30 to 45 minutes every day in practice debates with members of his staff.

“Babbitt got hurt, and that’s why he is practicing a lot more in terms of television work,” campaign consultant Sergio Bendixen said.

In the meantime, a few of the better-known candidates are giving the debate circuit a wide berth. So far, Bush has accepted only four of the many debate invitations he has received, Pardue, his press secretary, said. The four he has agreed to are sponsored either by television networks or major newspapers and are scheduled to take place shortly before crucial primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and the South.

Bush will not participate in the Republican forum planned by “Firing Line” for Sept. 2, Pardue said, and he has not said whether he will take part in four pre-primary debates planned by the League of Women Voters.

Risks for Front-Runner

“The risks of debating obviously are higher for a front-runner. You’re just expected to do better,” Pardue said.

Republican Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas also is playing hard to get but lately has been showing signs of interest in a debate, originally proposed by Du Pont, on the issue of agriculture.

Spokesmen for Dole say he will propose a debate among Republican candidates on agricultural policy. But, when asked if he would go ahead with the debate without Bush, a spokesman hesitated. “We’ll have to decide that question if it arises,” Tim Archie, Bush’s deputy press secretary, said.

“We think it’s premature to get into debates unless Bush is going to show up,” campaign consultant David Keene said. But Keene added that there will be “a certain point this fall” when it will make sense for Dole to join the debates regardless of what Bush is doing.

When he does debate, Dole must be careful not to revive the mean-spirited image he acquired in the 1976 presidential debates, when he was former President Gerald R. Ford’s running mate.

In his debate with Democratic vice presidential candidate Mondale, Dole struck a memorably sour note with his comment that 1.6 million Americans were killed in “Democratic wars” in this century.

This year, Keene said, “we don’t want to get into a cutting, slashing debate with anyone.”

But Dole isn’t the only candidate known for a hair-trigger tongue.

Volcanic Oratory

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat, exacerbated his reputation for volcanic oratory when he turned on a New Hampshire resident who had asked Biden about his law school grades.

“I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do,” Biden snapped. Nor did he let it go at that, replying that he was graduated from law school in the top half of his class and suggesting that the questioner was “a heartless technocrat” for caring more about law school grade averages than about leadership abilities.

Biden made his remarks during one of those meet-the-candidate gatherings that do not rate extensive coverage. But a C-Span camera was there, homing in on Biden’s mirthless grin as he chewed out the hapless questioner.

Although Biden’s aides concede that their candidate may possess a rough edge or two, they point to his generally well-received “Firing Line” performance as an example of his debating poise.

“I’ve watched the guy for 14 years, and I don’t think anyone in America handles questions better,” said Ted Kaufman, Biden’s campaign treasurer and former chief of staff.

Advantages for Hosts

As the public’s appetite for political debate grows around the country, it is evident that the would-be hosts themselves have something to gain.

In Georgia, for example, the Catoosa County Republicans believe that a debate would help boost the image of a local party that has been struggling against Democratic domination for more than 100 years.

The citizens of Grovers Mill, N. J., envision a debate as the high point of a weeklong celebration of one the more bizarre moments in American history--the Halloween eve in 1938 when the late Orson Welles’ too realistic rendition of a Martian invasion of Grovers Mill set off a statewide panic.

In California, it looked for a while as if two sponsors might end up vying for the chance to put on a debate among the Republican candidates.

One sponsor is a political action committee, in business to promote the image of California Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, that wants to hold a debate in Orange County this fall. The other is “Firing Line,” which has now decided to hold its planned Republican debate elsewhere--Dallas, Atlanta or Houston, the site of the Democrats’ forum.

During the first “Firing Line” debate, the polite and earnest patter that went on among the seven Democrats fell far short of verbal combat in the tradition of Lincoln and Douglas or Kennedy and Nixon. Moreover, it led some critics to call for a forum that will encourage more give-and-take among the candidates.

“In Houston, there was little sense of the candidates’ working off each other. They were isolated from each other. The camera never let you see how the others were reacting when one was speaking,” said Janet Brown, the director of the recently formed Commission on Presidential Debates.

The commission was established by officials of the two major parties to sponsor four presidential debates in September and October of 1988, before the general election.

The parties hope to take over sponsorship of those debates from the League of Women Voters, which has held them since 1976 and which has been criticized for running dull debates. League President Neuman still believes that her organization can do a good job and said she is moving ahead with plans for a series of general election debates.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Efforts to make political debates more exciting date to 1858, when rival Illinois senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas held their famous debates on slavery, according to author Joel L. Swerdlow of the Annenberg School of Communications.

“Lincoln and Douglas started out referring to them as ‘joint discussions,’ ” Swerdlow said. “But the political managers of the times realized that the term was boring, and they dropped the term in favor of debate.”