Whether i was on the staff for a candidate. I am really excited to talk about this today. I want to give you a little bit of history. President ial and Vice President ial general election debates have become a highlight of the campaign season. It is something we expect to happen. When was the first debate . Here is a trivia question. Historical trivia. Does anyone know . I will give you a hint. No one recognizes those people . [laughter] this is a false hint. That is lincoln and douglas. Those debates were when they were running for the senate. Bid illinois in 1858 in 1858. Is and in they had numerous debates. Kind of an odd situation. Two years later, they were on a Major Party Ticket against each other. The real first president ial debate was between kennedy and nixon in 1960. Richard nixon had been Vice President for eight years. Much better known than kennedy. Nixon had taken advantage of television. Believe it or not. He was known as a fierce debater. The Television Networks decided television was mainstream and everyone had one. They decided to sponsor a series of debates. Nixon was confident and willing. He was the front runner. He knew so much more and was such a good debater. He should be able to put kennedy in his place. The consensus was, these debates helped cost nixon the election. Which was very close. It elevated kennedy immediately. Now they are on an even level. The senator and the Vice President. Also his appearance was much better. Much more handsome. More telegenic. There have been some studies on this. The people who listened to the debate, and they were very boring back then. They had very long answers. They were like two hours long. They are more interesting now. Those who listened to the first debate on radio thought nixon won. Those who watched on tv thought kennedy won. Appearances were really important. After that, there were no more president ial debates for a while. Part of it was something called the fairness doctrine. It said if a station licensed by the federal Communications Commission gives a candidate time on the air, they have to give their opponent equal time. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson was not anxious to debate. He had a huge lead. He did not want to debate with barry goldwater. You have all the minor party candidates. It is not practical. He was able to dodge it successfully. In 1968 when nixon was running again, he was not too anxious to debate. He learned his lesson. In 1968 and in 1972, nixon was at the top of the ticket for the republicans. This kind of stopped president ial debates. It looked like 1960 was a oneoff, it would never happen again but in 1976, gerald ford was president. Who took over for nixon when he resigned. He was trailing his opponent but he was trailing his opponent by as much as 30 points that summer. They found their way around the fairness doctrine. If a third party, in 1976, it was the leak of women voters, if a third party held an event and the networks decided to cover that, it was not the networks giving the candidates a forum. It was covering a news event. See how lawyers work they find a way around it. We can do these debates with people we want. Since 1976, we have had president ial and Vice President ial debates every election. Every election season. Threeis usually president ial and one Vice President ial debate. There used to be questions by a panel. Why a panel of reporters. Like four reporters asking questions. More recently they have gone to a single moderator. Encouraging a lot more interaction between the candidates. 1980s, the 1990s, answers from candidates were pretty much wellprepared and thoughtful answers without a lot of interaction. When therebeen times was quite a bit of interaction between candidates. By the time of the debates, most voters had made up their minds. What is the polling now how many are undecided . Does anyone know . Like 5 or 6 say they are undecided. There may be more than that because there may be more people who say one way or the other. But they are a little squishy. Do you have a number . 11 really . Im surprised. You have some voters up for grabs. Television tends to magnify their performance and the personality of the candidates. One observer gave this advice. Be liked. How a candidate comes across will make much more of an impression than the words they said, typically. There are always exceptions. Tv coverage magnifies mistakes or tryouts. When a mistake is made, what is or triumphs. When a mistake is made, what is happening on the news . It is one and done . It is replayed constantly. The comments were talking about, who did well . Who had a good night or a bad night . That can change public opinion. Polling Research Shows after mistakes have been replayed, the Public Perception of the debates as to who won or lost can actually change. Here are some examples. Abdomen 18 after the 1984 reaganmondale debate, an hour after negative reviews, the lead switched to mondale at one by one point. Two days later, polls showed that voters thought mondale had by a margin of 49 . It went from reagan winning to mondale winning. The challenge for reagan in that first debate, he was the oldest candidate. We are now breaking those records. Reagan seemed a little confused and muddled. Maybe he was getting too old for the job. His age became an issue. Another famous gaffe was in 1976. In the redo of debates between ford and carter. This was long before the fall of the iron curtain, if you remember that phrase from the cold war. The soviet union had puppet states in Eastern Europe. In the soviet union controlled Eastern Europe. Ford misspoke. He meant to say the people of Eastern Europe do not feel like they are dominated. They do not accept soviet domination. But clearly they were dominated. He misspoke when he declared Eastern Europe was not under soviet domination. At that point, ford had pulled up from 30 points behind to being even or even slightly ahead in the race. He stubbornly refused to correct this mistake for several days. Right after the debate, polls showed that ford won the debate by about 1 . After news reports carried on for several days, 62 said carter won the debate. This mistake was magnified. He could have gone right out that evening and said, what i meant was this. He could have eliminated a lot of that damage to himself. We will show a couple of clips. This first one is a little recap on president ial debates that cnn did before 2012. Debates can make history. 1960, the first televised debate signified a new era. Appearance mattered more than ever and gaffes are magnified. John kennedy facing off against richard nixon. On screen, kennedy looks cool and calm. Nixon looks uncomfortable, sweating profusely in the hot studio lights. Kennedy went on to win the election. In 1976, gerald ford makes this blunder in his debate with senator, jimmy carter. There is no soviet domination of Eastern Europe and their sovietill be under domination. It became a central theme in carters campaign. In 1980, reagan attacked carter. Reagan repeatedly attacked carter on his position on health care. He began his political career campaigning against medicare. But reagan wins fans and the election by staying cool. There you go again. Four years later he also used humor to handle attacks from mondale on his age. I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I will not exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience. [laughter] in the next election, Michael Dukakis was asked this question. If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable Death Penalty for the killer . The public sees his answer as cold and dispassionate. During the 1988 debate, dan quayle elicited this blistering response. Senator, you are no jack kennedy. Body language plays a part. George h w bush deliberately looks at his watch. People see it is disrespectful. Body language makes a difference in the debate between george bush and al gore. Sighed over and over again. Both president and obama and governor romney are seasoned debaters. If there is one thing that history taught us, expect the unexpected. Prof. Buhler we have one more. It is not advancing now. There we go. I thought we would show a little bit from 2016 just to remind us how we got here. This is a little clip from one of their debates. We will let it go maybe five minutes. In a speech you gave to a Brazilian Bank for which you were paid 225,000, we have learned that you said this. Hemispheric Common Market with open trade and open borders. Is that your dream . If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, i was talking about energy. We trade more energy with our neighbors. Then we trade with the rest of the world combined. I do want us to have an electric grid, an Energy System that would be a great benefit to us. You are clearly quoting from wikileaks. What is really important about wikileaks is the russian government has engaged in espionage against americans. They have hacked american websites. Americannts accounts of private people. Then they have given that information to wikileaks for the purpose of putting it on the internet. This has come from the highest level of the russian government. Putin himself. The most important question this evening is, finally, will donald trump admit and condemn that the russians are doing this. And make it clear that he will not have the help of putin in this election . That he rejects russian espionage against americans which he actually encouraged in the past. Those are the questions we need answered. We have never had anything like this happen. That was a great pivot off of the fact that she wants open borders. How did we get off to putin . Hold on. This will end up getting out of control. Let us try to keep it quiet for the candidates and the American People. She wants open borders. People will pour into our country. From syria. 550 more people than barack obama. He had thousands of thousands of people. We are going to stop radical islamic terrorism in this country. She wont even mention the words and neither will obama. I just want to tell you she wants open borders. She wants to talk about putin. I dont know putin. He says nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good. If russia and the u. S. Got along well and went after isis, that would be good. He has no respect for her, for our president. We are in very serious trouble. Because we have a country with tremendous numbers of Nuclear Warheads. 1800. They expanded and we did not. 1800 Nuclear Warheads and she is playing chicken. From everything i see, putin has no respect for this person. That is because he would rather have a puppet as president. No puppet. Youre the puppet. It is pretty clear that you wont admit that the russians have engaged in Cyber Attacks against american. You encouraged espionage against our people. You are willing to spout the putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up nato, do whatever he wants to do. And that you continue to get help from him because he has a clear favorite in this race. I think this is such an unprecedented situation. We never had a Foreign Government trying to interfere in our election. 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, have all concluded that these espionage attacks, the Cyber Attacks, come from the highest levels of the kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing. She has no idea. Whether it is russia or china. You have no idea. I am quoting 17 intelligence agencies. He would rather believe Vladimir Putin than the military and civilian intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect us. I find that absolutely putin has outsmarted her every step of the way. Putin has outsmarted her in syria. I would like to ask you this direct question. Top National Security officials of this country do believe russia has been behind the attacks. Even if you do not know for sure, do you condemn any interference by russia in the American Election . By russia or anybody else. You condemn . Of course i do. I dont know putin. Prof. Buhler i think we have a good flavor of it. They were very spirited. I dont think there was any breakout moment that really changed the race one way or another. Interesting to watch this four years later. Anyone want to make a comment . I promised isaac that we would show clips. Hopefully, you are happy that we did. And the rest of you. See if i can make this move again. Seems like the video all right. You take care of that let me get one. That out of the way. At these big debates, one of the traditions is that they have a spinner. And this is where you see how crowded it is. Each campaign will have surrogates lined up to talk to the media. And put their spin on what just happened. Is there any way to move that box . Do i need to do something . This has become sort of a joke. It is somewhat inevitable. Whatever bad things happen the , campaign will try to put the best face on it. Whereas if it is a good debate, they will tell it back. That reminds me of the president of mexico. Prof. Buhler i saw something similar in one of the other debates. How come i am not advancing now . That is weird. Im just going to do this. That is weird. Lets see whats going on here. There we go. Wellprepared candidate used a debate to present its argument, deflect attacks, and land blows on his or her opponent. Said ier of this thought this was a great quote they were like soldiers armed with hand grenades. The goal was staying on message. [indiscernible] that was from a book i read a while ago called 40 years of high risk tv. Talking about president ial debates. Lets talk about strategy. First is whether or not to debate. It depends on where the candidates are positioned. They are holding a strong are an if they incumbent, it is different if you are an underdog or a challenger. Your Main Objective is to avoid mistakes. Everything is going well. You just dont want to mess it up. Avoid mistakes. If you are the underdog, you will take more risks. Because what do you have to lose . You are already losing. You can switch things up and get your opponent to make a mistake. That is what you want to do. I saw this up close and personal. I have so many different stories. In 2007 i was running for mayor of Salt Lake City. We got to the primary with several candidates. I knew that ralph was quite a bit ahead of me. And i had about two months until the election. We had always gotten along well with each other. We served in the legislature together. And he was there long after i was. But we always got along fine. This debate fairly aggressive by making attacks on him. That continued in every debate. Very first one i read an article on it. He was like, what happened . I thought you were a nice guy. I thought we got along well and we were friends. At 1. I said to ralph backstage i have to do something. You are way ahead. I cant just lay down and die. I have to take the fight to you. I remember ralph being kind of shocked that his friend was being so aggressive. The other thing in the strategy of whether to debate or not was, how many debates . Which debates . The leading candidate may want to minimize the number of debates. While the challenger may want to expand the number of debates. A couple of examples i experienced. In 1982, i was working on a campaign for senator hatch, his first reelection campaign. Senator hatch was being wilson, the mayor of Salt Lake City. Or the former mayor. Anyway i am confusing it. ,you will see why. Anyway, hatch was the incumbent. Our Campaign Manager had an idea we went through all the different requests for debates. We picked out 10 that we wanted to do. We announced that is what we were doing. It was kind of rude in a way. We did not even talk to wilson. We said, he will show up. This is what we are doing. It made him a little mad. He showed up because we had the upper hand. Six years later, i was working for the governor. Ted wilson was our challenger and he was leading in the polls. We had the opposite strategy. We wanted to get them together to debate as much as possible. Any different audience we didnt , care who it was. Any request that came through, we would accept that. And the shoe was on the other foot. The Wilson Campaign was more picky, we want to limit the risks of making a mistake. How do you refuse to go . That worked out ok. Debate prep. Campaigns will want to prepare their candidates with answers to the most likely questions. You dont want to send a candidate in for a debate cold. You want to send down and spend time with them rehearsing. What are the most likely questions youre going to get . Especially those that will be negative. If there are things that the opponent has been attacking them on, you want to make sure they can respond to the attacks. The usual tactic is to fit it on negative questions. She was able to pivot it to a legitimate subject of wikileaks and russian involvement. It started out as a question open about open borders and immigration. She did that well. She got the subject changed. Prep research is used , quite a bit. You can use Opposition Research a couple of ways we havent really got into Opposition Research. You would use it to know what attack is coming. On issues, you want to make sure your candidate is wellinformed. And has answers to the questions that are going to be coming up. If the debate is televised, this is very important. Your candidate is going to be exposed to probably more people than he or she has seen throughout the campaign. In that 30 minutes. This is a huge opportunity. You want to make sure you maximize it. The conclusion here is that debates can matter. We have seen that through history. You need to be prepared for them and take them very seriously. Any questions on debate strategy or what we have talked about here today . I will pivot slightly. Move on to some other things. How much of a role do you think debates actually have any in a real numbers sense of anding people out to vote changing peoples minds . Prof. Buhler that is a good question. Thank you, ryan. It really depends. If both candidates are pretty evenly pretty even as far as debate skills and there are no big surprises are mistakes even in 2016, i havent seen anything that says the debates between trump and clinton moved anyone. I havent seen anything that quantifies that. There are two big things. One is a mistake can be very damaging. We have seen that through history. The things that i shared and those that were on the clip in some of these past trump president ial debates. They can make a difference. In a negative way or a positive way. They can help a candidate like kennedy or jimmy carter help solidify them. This person could be president and make people feel more comfortable with them. Does that help . Yes. Prof. Buhler it kind of depends. It can have an impact. A lot of the times it does not have that much impact. It certainly can. Any other comments or questions . Do you find debates are more influential in local or National Races . Prof. Buhler i think generally more in national. Because it gets so much more coverage. Whereas in a local race, it is , pretty rare. Even a statewide or congressional race where it would be televised at least in utah it is pretty rare that you ever hear anything about it once it is over. So for the people watching it may have an impact. Its not like on the National Stage where a mistake gets amplified so much. That it can sink their ship basically. By, but they can help. ,in 1988, putting them on the stage together really helped. He made some difficult decisions as governor raising taxes. People could understand why he did what he did. The contrast was good. And ted was very capable and he is a very fine person. It helped our side i think. Any other questions . We are heading into debate season. Here are the 2020 debates. Starting a week from tomorrow. You will have this on campus when i post this. The vp debate will be right here. Very close by. In the president s circle in kingsbury hall. Then two more president ial debates. I think they have the potential to be very important. Anyone want to give their opinion on that . I had a question. With mailin ballots going out earlier, there is a big push for people to turn them in immediately. Do you think specifically that third debate will even have much of an influence on undecided voters . Because people will have turned in mailin ballots . Or do you still think that there will be many people that have not voted . Prof. Buhler lets walk down history lane. In some states they are doing early voting right now. Virginia, north carolina. And maybe two other places. Clearly the undecided voters, if they still have not decided, he then it could have an impact. I think you will see with the early voters, most of them have already decided. It could still have an impact on those later deciders. The undecided. They may be watching for some clue on which way they should go. I think the early voters will be people who decided. I think it will still have an impact. It does change the dynamic, for sure. You could have people who vote early and there is some big kind of mistake. They cant take their vote back. They cant take it back, i dont think. They cannot change their minds. It is too late at that point. Any other thoughts or comments . On the state level, we have a lot of debates coming up. They will do a number of these on television. It will be interesting. Im sure there will be others. Maybe forums where one candidate speaks. And then they leave and another candidate speaks. Those are not as fun or exciting. We will have our own debate at our own class. On october 7, the same day as the vp debate, just to get us in the mood. We will host a debate. They are a candidate for a Salt Lake County council for the at large seat. One is the incumbent. This is really her first time on the ballot. This will be on zoom. There is an extra credit opportunity. Some of you have seen this. I posted it today. Let me talk about that a little bit. I have given them pretty strict rules on the debate. But im inviting your help. If you would like to help suggest questions to be asked. We will have about 22 minutes. This is all posted on campus. Maybe you have already seen this. I will cover this real quickly. Im inviting you to submit some questions. It needs to be the same for both candidates. Not slanted one way or the other. Just a straight up question on an issue. For every question you submit to that follows this rule that it can be asked of both candidates, i will give you 10 points. Whether or not your question is used. Up to a maximum of 50 points with five questions. If youre interested in earning extra credit, send me your questions in a word document by next sunday night. At 11 59. Our favorite day and time. If i decide to use one of your tostions, i will ask you offer them. I know i have some people working on one of these campaigns. In that case, you can still earn extra credit. I will not have you ask the question. Maybe i will ask it. Send me an email. I will go through them. Between the sunday and sometime before the seventh. I will decide which ones will be good. If there is one of you i will if there is one of years, if there is one of yours, i will ask you to follow up. We may not have time to get all of them. I thought this would be a fun way to involve the class. Im really a stickler i want this to be totally fair to both candidates. These days, even in the president ial debates, questions are much more personalized to a particular candidate. Those were never debate rules i would agree to. Iowas felt the question needed to be a question that is fair to both candidates. Rather than they will give me a zinger. That is how we will do it. Any questions on that . Something that will make it fun. We will be on zoom. That way they do not have to wear masks. That is a plus. Even though it would be fun to be here in person. The next 20 minutes we will start on chapter two. On political math. Some elections are very close. Decided by relatively few votes. We know that. A couple of famous examples. Let me give you a couple of my examples first. , he had been trailing in the polls by 30 . Eventually he won. Very close. 11,000 votes out of 65,000 votes. In 1991, when i first ran for Salt Lake City mayor, it was a five way race. Every poll had me in third or fourth place going into primary election night. I went to the victory meeting i had notes in my pocket to give a concession speech. I ended up squeaking through. 003 . Cond place by sometimes these races are very close. Nationally we have a famous example of bush versus gore. In bush carried florida by 537 2000. Votes. Collegethe electoral although he lost the popular vote. And similarly in our last , president ial election, trump won with a little bit of a bigger margin in the electoral college. 304 votes but lost the popular vote. 248. 2 46. 1 to 48. 2 he won in three states that were key. Pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan. That won him the election. Those were states that could have gone either way. The total margin of victory was 79,000 votes. 057 of all votes cast. Incredibly close. There have been other examples mentioned in the textbook. Such as Senate Elections in nevada, delaware, indiana, missouri, and alabama. The Virginia State assembly. Aretimes elections incredibly close. Virtually every Campaign Manager has been on both sides of this. Both the losing and winning side of some narrow elections. This convinces them that campaigns can make a difference. In whether they are won or lost because there are so many elections that are so close. Just one minor change here or there could make a difference. This contrasts with a number of Political Science fellows the notion that elections are primarily determined their notion is that elections are determined more by structural fundamentals. Determined more by fundamentals from the electorate rather than whatever the campaign does or doesnt do. Here are a few examples of that. Brookman they say they found no evidence that persuasive contact gets voters to turn out. I looked at their article. This is not quoted in the text but i share it with you. They Said Campaign persuasion is extremely rare in elections. It appears advertising can influence voters choices. What they concluded is that in a general election, they dont think campaigns make much difference. ,ut before the general election in the primary or when a candidate is not known, it could definitely have an impact. What do you think . Let me go back. If that is true, why are we here . That is what i think about it. If they make no difference we , should cancel this class. Call it good. But obviously we think they can matter and that is why we are here. Any comments or thoughts . Does that surprise anybody . I thought it was a little surprising. There is this scholarly skepticism. But the Campaign Managers that doe surveyed for this book not suggest that it is large. They agree that fundamentals matter but they also believe this leaves ample room for marginal effects. This is really what we are focused on. It is not that 50 of the voters could vote either way. It is more like 5 or 10 that could go either way. So the campaign is really focused on that as well as not losing the support they are ready half. Here are some questions to consider. Are they correct . What about those who say persuasion is the most important factor . Do campaigns matter . And if they do, do they matter by mobilizing their sides or by persuading swing voters . Any thoughts . While i get a drink of water. I have an opinion on this. This is just my thinking. I have not done a study. But i feel like a bad campaign can hurt more than a Good Campaign can help. I feel a part of Campaign Strategy is just avoiding the really bad things. A bad campaign can really derail a candidate. I dont know if i Good Campaign can really win in a place where they otherwise wouldnt be able to. Prof. Buhler that is interesting. I can see that. I think it can be both but that is an interesting point. Thanks for sharing that. Other thoughts or comments . On this controversy do campaigns matter or not . Charlie, please. I disagree with that. I think a Good Campaign can make a huge difference. You can look at races historically and some races have been in very red or blue places. With a Good Campaign, Campaign Manager, or candidate, they can sway that seat. There have been a lot of examples where campaigns have made a huge difference. Was it new yorker Jersey New York or jersey . Made a hugeve difference, there are a lot of different. I very much disagree with that point. Prof. Buhler ok. I think you could both be right. Im not just trying to be political. A Good Campaign can make a difference. Had a bad campaign can make a i also think a bad campaign can make a difference. There are other campaigns that really dont make much difference. The fundamentals are so strong there is no way to overcome them. I think it is all over the place. The point i want to get across here is that Many Political scientists do argue that the fundamentals such as the economy, the incumbent approval rating, the composition of the. Lectorate we have talked about this. Unless someone has something they really want to say i think they have a point but i dont think it can make no difference. Anyone disagree with that . Ok. I could give you a bunch of examples but i dont think we will take the time to go through each of these. You can see these examples of where the scholars have raised concerns or skepticism that campaigns make as much difference as the people in the Campaign Business believe. This scholarly doubt is rooted in several assumptions. All of these fundamentals can make a difference. And no amount of Campaign Spending or strategists can change those fundamentals. Also that scholars argue that even if campaigns have the potential to change entrenched , they need to be big differences. Campaigns kind of negate each other. One time one person runs an ad and the other person runs an ad. A lot of times the spending is fairly even. At least even enough to what makes a difference. They are skeptical that it makes that much of a difference. Campaign managers point out that much of the Scholarly Research is done on president ial candidates. Fundamentals are likely to matter most. What they are saying may be more true for president ial campaigns than most of the campaigns in america. We know there are thousands of nonpresident ial campaigns and elections whether for congress, legislature, governors. And so forth. One Campaign Manager stated maybe the notion has some validity on the president ial level. But on the state and local level, campaigns make all the difference. Down ballot races, they are sometimes called, are more susceptible to the effects of than highprofile races. Things are not always as even a Playing Field as you get down the ballot into these smaller races. There are a couple of arguments that talk about that. If you go down the ballot, it is lester a. For president ial, it may be somewhat true. Lets throw this out what do you think about this idea . Can campaigns make a difference . To make a choice, which side would you be on . Or somewhere in the middle . I agree that they are more important on a local level. [indiscernible] prof. Buhler ok. Being less partisan it could , have a bigger impact. Ok. Thanks. Other thoughts on this . Abby . I guess my main point would be, we are here for a reason. They can make a difference. It is also good to dig into that because one thing that is very true is those who are campaign consultants, maybe professional Campaign Managers, they may overstate the good they can do for a candidate. They may oversell. We can take anyone to make them president. There are a lot of other factors. And certainly the fundamentals. The partisan nature of the electorate, where they line up. What is going on in the economy. There are a lot of things going on that matter. Many elections are decided on the margins. They are won by less than 5 of the vote. That is where campaigns can make a difference. Thank you, we will see you on wednesday. Get ready for all of these debates coming up. Oh my goodness, it is my favorite time of the decade. You can watch lectures in history every weekend. On American History tv. We take you inside College Classrooms to learn about topics ranging from the American Revolution to 9 11. That is saturday at 8 00 p. M. And did night eastern on cspan3. Midnight eastern on cspan3. Inspired by conversations with noted historians about the leadership skills that make for a successful presidency. As americans go to the polls next month to decide who should lead our country, this collection offers prospective into the lives and events that forged the style of each president. To learn more about our president s, visit cspan. Org the president s and order your copy today were ever books are sold. Wherever books are sold. Fall, sunday we feature debates from the 1992 president ial Campaign Debate between clinton. Campaign between bill clinton and former Kansas Center bob dole. Here is a preview. When senator dole made that remark about all of the elitists in the administration, when of the young men that works for me grew up in a house trailer. And he said mr. President , i know how you grew up, who is he talking about . This is a record they think they can play that everyone loves to hear and i just dont think that dog will hunt this time. The American People should make up their own mind. Here is the record. Have template 5 million new jobs. We made every Small Business eligible for a tax cut. We have declining crime rates. In we have a 50 increase child support. The American People can make up their mind about whether that is a liberal record or a record that is good for america. You can put whatever label you want. Watch the full debate on sunday at 11 00 a. M. And 8 00 eastern. Weeknights this month on American History tv, we are looking at past president ial debates. Sunday night, we look at the debate of 1996 between gerald ford and jimmy carter which was the First Time Since 1960 major nominees participated in a debate. The first was on domestic issues. The second focused on Foreign Policy including u. S. Soviet relations and the credibility of the use in the wake of of the u. S. In the wake of vietnam and watergate. Every weekend on cspan3. Charles stewart, coauthor of fighting or the speakership, the house and the rise of party government, discusses the history of electing a speaker of the u. S. House. He examines how the process has changed since 1789 and the influence of partisanship on those changes. The archives hosted this event and provided the video