Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Presidential Debates 20240712

And that is like my favorite thing about a campaign, whether i was on a Campaign Staff or a candidate. So im really excited to talk about this today. Im going to give you a little bit of history here, so president ial and Vice President ial, general election debates have become really the highlight of the Campaign Season and something we just expect to happen. That has not always been the case. Its also common in other races, particularly highprofile races, so when was the first president ial debate . Heres a trivia question, historical trivia. Anyone know . Give you a hint . No one recognizes those people . This is a false hint. Thats lincoln and douglas. A lot of time people think, you hear the famous Lincoln Douglas debates and they ran against each other for president in 1860. Actually, their debates is when they were both running for the u. S. Senate in illinois in 1858 and had numerous debates around the state of illinois. And so quite an odd situation, they ran against each other for u. S. Senate. Douglas was elected by the legislature at that time, the legislature wanted them as senators and two years later they were on major part of campus against each other but the debates in 1858 were published and circulated a lot in 1816. The issues have not really changed a whole lot. The real first president ial debate was between john kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. And now at this point Richard Nixon had been Vice President for eight years, much better known than kennedy, who was a fairly junior u. S. Senator. So his family was somewhat well known and he wasnt totally unknown and he was not as well known. Nixon made a lot of his political career, had taken advantage of television in his career, believe it or not, and was also known as a very effective and fierce debater. So the Television Networks decided television was now kind of mainstream. Everyone had one and they decided to sponsor a series of debates. I think nixon was very confident and more than willing, even though he was the frontrunner, to engage in these debates because he knew so much more and was such a good debater. He could totally put kennedy in his place. The consensus was these debates helped cost nixon the election, which was a very close election. First of all, it elevated kennedy immediately because now theyre on an even level. The senator and Vice President , also his appearance was much better, much more handsome, better photogenic. There have been studies at the time, people who listened to the debates, especially the first four debates, they were really boring back then. Had really long answers. They were like two hours long. Theyre more interesting now, i believe. But those who listened to the first debate on radio thought nixon won. Those who watched it on tv, felt kennedy won. So the appearances were really important. So after that, there were no more president ial debates for a while. Part of it was something called the fairness doctrine that says if a station licensed by the federal Communications Commission gives a candidate time on the air, they have to give their opponent equal time. And so in 1964, Lyndon Johnson was not anxious to debating. He had a huge lead. He didnt really want to debate Barry Goldwater and they could rely on this fairness doctrine to say theres no way to do it. Theres ten people running for president. You have all of the Minor Party Candidates and so forth, and its just not practical. So he was able to dodge it successfully. In 1968 when nixon was running again from his experience in 1960, he was not too anxious to debate now. He kind of learned his lesson. In 68 and 72, nixon was on the top of the ticket for the republicans. And so this kind of stopped president ial debates. It looked like maybe 1960 was a oneoff, that it was never going to happen again. But 1976 gerry ford, gerald ford was the president , who took over for nixon when he resigned, he was trailing his opponent by as much as 30 points that summer. And found away around the fairness doctrine, which is if a third party i think any 76 it was the league of women voters, later became the commission on president ial debate, but if the third party held an event and the networks decided to cover it, it wasnt networks giving the candidates a form, they were just covering him, you see how lawyers work, they find a way around it we can do these debates the way we want, major party candidates, without having 20 people on the stage. So being behind, ward was like more than willing toic that the chance and to debate. And so since 1976 weve had president ial and Vice President ial debates every election season. Usually three president ial and one Vice President and one president ial debate. It used to be questions why a panel and panel of reporters, four reporters asking questions. More recently theyve gone to a single moderator asking questions. And encouraging a lot more interaction between the candidates. Up through the i would say at least 1980s, maybe even 1990s, answers from candidates were pretty much well prepared and pretty much stock answers and not a lot of interaction. But there have been some times when there was quite a bit of interaction between the candidates. Now, most of the time, by the time of the debates, most voters had made up their minds. I dont know, whats the polling now on trump versus biden . How many undecided are there . Anyone know . Somebody will hurry and look it up. I would guess 5 or 6 say theyre undecided. Now, it may be more than that because there may be people who say one way or another but theyre a little squishy, they can sort of go either way. 11 . Really, wow, surprised. But anyway, youve got 89 and made it to nine. Youve got some voters up for grabs. Television tends to magnify the performance and the personality of the candidates. One observer gave this advice. He said, he liked be liked, be liked. The emotion content of the debate will remain in the viewers memories for longer than the ideas being expressed. So how the candidates come across will make much more of an impression than the words they say typically. There are always exceptions. Tv coverage magnifies mistakes or triumphs. When a mistake is made, what happens on the news . 12 one and done . Its replayed constantly, so now 24hour news is constantly replayed. The comments of the commentators, who did well, who won, who lost, who had a big night, bad night, whatever, they actually can change public opinion. So Polling Research shows after mistakes have been replayed, the Public Perception of the debates as to who won or lost can actually change. Heres a few examples. After the first 1984 Reagan Mondale debate, a slight majority of viewers thought reagan had won about 3 , who won. And an hour after negative reviews, the lead switched to mondale by one point. Two days later polls showed voters thought mondale won the debate by a margin of 49 . So went from reagan winning to pretty even to within a couple of days mondale winning hugely. And the challenge for reagan in that first debate, who at that time was the oldest candidate. Year now breaking records this year, he seemed a little confused and muddled and maybe hes getting too old for the job. He was the incumbent president running for reelection but his age kind of became an issue. Another famous gaff was in 1976 in one of these first redo of debates in 1976 between ford and carter. Now, this was long before the fall of the iron curtain, if you remember that phrase. Its when the soviet union had puppet stakes in Eastern Europe and soviet union controlled Eastern Europe. And ford misspoke. He meant to say the people of Eastern Europe do not feel like they are dominated. They dont accept soviet domination in their hearts but clearly they were dominated. But anyway, he misspoke and he declared Eastern Europe was not under soviet domination. At that point ford had pulled up from 30 points behind to being even or maybe slightly ahead in the race. He stubbornly refused to correct this mistake for several days. And so right after the debate, polls showed ford won the debate by about 1 . After news reports of the debate carried on for several days, 62 said carter had won the debate. So it was this mistake in magnifying. He didnt help himself and would have gone out and said if thats what i said but meant this, he probably would have eliminated a lot of that damage to himself. Okay, so i will show a couple of clips. This first one is kind of a little recap on president ial debates that cnn did before 2012. Okay. Just make sure that doesnt feed back. September 26, 1960, the first televised president ial debate, signaling a new era where appearances matter more than ever and gaffs, however small, are magnified. John kennedy, a young senator from massachusetts, facing off against Vice President Richard Nixon, known to be a fierce debater. But on screen kennedy looks cool and calm, while nixon looks uncomfortable, sweating profusely under the hot studio lights. I think i better shave. Nixon clamors under television in all four debates and kennedy goes on to win the election. In 1976 gerald ford makes this line during the debate there was no soviet domination of Eastern Union and there never will be under a ford administration. The remark became a theme of carters campaign. In 1980 Ronald Reagan was repeatedly attacked by president carter for his stance on Public Health care. Governor reagan began your career stam speedipeding agains medicare. But reagan wins by staying cool. There you go. Four years ago president reagan again uses humor to handle the attacks on stage with his debates with walter mondale. I want to let you know also im not going to make age an issue for this campaign. Im going to exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience. In the next election democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was asked this controversial question during the debate with Vice President ial candidate george bush. Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable Death Penalty for the killer . No, i dont, bernard, and i think you know i opposed the Death Penalty during all of my life. The public sees his answer as cold and dispassionate and that very night the pool numbers drop. During the 1988 president ial debate, dan quayles comparison of joan f. Kennedy elicited this response from his opponent senator, youre no jack kennedy. Body language pays a lot too. When youre looked at and voters see it disrespectful. It had issues between al gore and george w. Bush as well. Gore sighs over and over again and bush, the underdog, surprised by winning the debate and election. Governor romney and senator obama are seasoned leaders and both prone to major gaffs but if there is one thing that history taught us, when it comes to president ial debates, expect the unexpected. All right. Well, there are a few more. They are not advancing now. There we go. I thought we ought to show a little bit from 2016, right, just to remind us how we got to where we are in this election today. So this is just a little clip. One of their debates. Let it go maybe five minutes. I want to talk about your position on this issue because the speech you gave in which you paid a Brazilian Bank 225,000, we learned from wikileaks you said this, and i quote, my brain is a hemispheric Common Market with open trade and open borders. So i thats the question, please, quiet, everybody, is that the open boarder . If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, i was talking about energy. We trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the recht of the world combined. And i do want us to have an electronic grid, an Energy System that crosses borders. I think that will be a great pen fit to us. But you are very clearly quoting from wikileaks. And whats really important about wikileaks is that the russian government has engaged in espionage against americans. They have hacked american websites, american accounts of private people, of institutions, and then they have given that information to wikileaks for the purpose of putting it on the internet. This has come from the highest levels of the russian government, clearly from putin himself, in an effort as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed he influenced our election. So i actually think the most important question of this evening, chris, is finally will donald trump admit and condemn 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 never had anything like this happen in any of our elections before. That was a great pivot off the fact she wants open borders, okay. How did we get to putin . Hold on, folks. This is going to end up getting out of control. Lets try to keep it quiet, so for the candidates and for the american people. Just to finish on the borders, she wants open borders. People are going to pour into our country. People are going to come in from syria. She wants 550 more people than barack obama, and he had thousands and thousands of people there, no idea where they come from. Youll see, were going to stop radical islamic terrorism in this country. She wont even mention the words, and neither will president obama. So i just want to tell you, she wants open borders. Now we can talk about putin. I dont know puten. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good. If russia and the United States got along well and went after isis, that would be good. He has no respect for her. He has no respect for our president. And ill tell you what, were in very serious trouble because we have a country with tremendous numbers of Nuclear Warheads, 1,800 by the way. They expanded and we didnt. 1,800 Nuclear Warheads and shes playing chicken. Look from everything i see has no respect for this person. This person. Thats because he would rather have a puppet as United States. No puppet. And its pretty clear youre the puppet. You wont admit that the russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of america, that you encourage espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the putin line, sign up for his wish list, wake up nato, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race. So i think that this is such an unprecedented situation. Weve never had a Foreign Government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing. I think its time that you take a stance russia, china, or anybody else. She has no idea. I am quoting 17 you have no idea. Do you doubt 17 military our county has no idea. I doubt it. I would rather believe Vladimir Putin than the military and civilian intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect us. I find that absolutely she doesnt like putin because putin has outsmarted her at every step of the way. Excuse me. Mr. Trump hes outsmarted her every step of the way. I do get to ask questions and i would like to ask you this direct question. The Top National Security officials of this country do believe that russia has been behind these hacks. Even if you dont know for sure whether they are, do you condemn any interference by russia in the American Election . By russia or anybody else. You condemn their interference . Of course i condemn. I dont know putin. I have no idea. Im not asking that. I think we have a good flavor on it there. Anyway, the 2016 debates, very skirted. I dont think there was any breakout moment that really changed the race one way or the other. Its interesting to watch this, i think, four years later, all the more information thats come out about that election. But anyway, anyone want to make a comment on this . I promised isaac, hopefully youre online, isaac, that i would show you clips. Hopefully youre happy i did, and the rest of you, too. Lets see if i can make this move again. It seems like the video can you take care of that one, seth . All right. So at these debates, the president ial and Vice President ial debates, one of the traditions is that they have a spin room, and this is where you see how crowded it is. This is during one of the primary debates. You see Amy Klobuchar there, where each campaign will have usually surrogates lined up to talk to the media and to put their spin, their take on what just happened. Is there any way to move that box, seth . Do i need to do something . So in a way this has become, i think, sort of a joke. Because its sort of inevitable, whatever bad things happens, the campaign will try to put the best face on it, versus if its a good debate, of course theyll tout that. It reminds me of when klobuchar [ inaudible ] i didnt remember that. Did something similar in one of the other debates. How come im not advancing now . Thats weird. Im going to just do this. Thats weird. Lets see whats going on here. There we go. All right, so a wellprepared candidate uses the debate to present their arguments and deflect attacks, perhaps to land a blow on his or her opponent. One observer of this, i thought this was a great quote, like soldiers armed with hand grenades, candidates march into televised debates bearing an arsenal of rhetorical ammunition. Whatever the question being asked, debaters are instructed to answer with the desired predetermined response. The goal of staying on message, borrowed from the world of advertising, ties debaters to a set of narrowly conceived themes that have been audience tested and painstakingly followed. This is from a book i read awhile ago called 40 years of high risk tv talking about president ial debates. Lets talk a little bit about debate strategy. The first strategy the campaigns deal with is whether or not to debate or how much to debate. How a campaign approaches the question of debates depends on where theyre positioned. If theyre holding a strong lead or an incumbent, its different than if an underdog or challenger. If youre in the lead, your Main Objective is avoid mistakes. Everything is going well, you just dont want to mess it up. So avoid mistakes. If youre the underdog, you then will take more risks, because what do you have to lose . Youre already losing, right . If you can maybe mix things up, get your opponent to make a mistake, thats what you want to do. So i saw this up close and personal ive got so many different stories. Im going to use this one. In 2007 when i was running for mayor of Salt Lake City, after we got through the primary, it was very versus ralph becker and our first debate was at the institute of politics back in the old days, not here in this beautiful new building. And i knew that ralph was quite a bit ahead of me and that i had about two months until the election. And ralph and i had always gotten along well. We knew each other, we both served in the legislature together and he was there long after i was, but we always got along fine. And so i went into this debate fairly aggressive on making attacks on him, and that continued in, you know, every debate. I remember one of them and even the very first one, i went back and read the utah chronicle article on it, ralph was kind of like what happened, dave, i thought you were a nice guy. I thought we got along well, i thought we were friends. At one point i said to ralph kind of backstage, i said, ralph, i have to do something. Youre way ahead, i have to do something. I cant just lay down and die. Ive got to take the fight to you. But i remember ralph being kind of shocked that his friend was being so aggressive. So the other thing in this kind of strategy of whether to debate or not is how many debates, and which debates. So the leading candidate may want to minimize or limit the number of debates, while the challenger may want to expand the number of debates. A couple of examples that i experienced on this. In 1982 when i was working on the campaign of senator hatch, his first reelection campaign, and he was being challenged by ted wilson over there at the institute of politics, at that time he was the mayor of Salt Lake City. I guess he was the former mayor. No, i guess he was still mayor. Im confusing it. Anyway, hatch is the leader as the incumbent, our campaign and this was not my idea, but our Campaign Manager, was we went through all the different requests for debates and then we picked out ten that we wanted to do. And then we Just Announced heres the debates were doing. It was kind of rude in a way because we didnt even talk to the wilson people. We just said hell show up, he wants to come after hatch. Well just say heres what were doing. And it did make them a little mad, but guess what, he showed up to them, right . Because we had the upper hand. Now, six years later this is why i was confused on what job ted had, i was working for the governor and ted wilson was our challenger, but he was leading in the polls. So 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, and so any requests that came through, if we could schedule it, we would accept it. Now the shoe was on the other foot, the Wilson Campaign was a little bit more like we want to be picky, we want to limit the risk of ted making a mistake. But how do you, when youre challenging a governor and the governor is accepted, how do you refuse to go, right . So that worked out okay, too. Debate prep. So campaigns will want to prepare their candidates with answers to the most likely questions. You do not want to send your candidate into a debate just cold, but you want to sit down and spend some time with them on really rehearsing, what are some of the likely questions youre going to get, and maybe especially those that are going to be negative. If theres things that your opponent is going to attack your candidate on, youll want to make sure that he or she can respond to those attacks. You kind of know whats coming, so you want to make sure youve got the right answers. With negative questions, the usual tactic is to pivot. We saw hillary do that. There was a question that was kind of negative to her and she was able to pivot it to a legitimate subject of wikileaks and russian involvement, where it started as a question about open borders and immigration. She did that well, she got the subject changed. In debate prep, Campaign Research is used quite a bit, both issues and opposition. So where you would use Opposition Research is a couple ways. And i know we havent really gone into Opposition Research yet like we will in the future, but you would use it to know what attacks might be coming or know what the opponent is going to be saying, so you can prepare your candidate. Of course on issues you want to make sure your candidate is wellinformed on the major issues and has answers to the questions that are going to be coming up. If the debate is televised, this is really important, because your candidate is going to be exposed probably to more people than he or she will have seen during the whole campaign in 30 minutes or 60 minutes on television. So this is a huge opportunity that you want to make sure you maximize. So i guess the conclusion here is the debates can matter, weve seen that through history. You need to be prepared for them and take them very seriously. Any questions on debate strategy or what weve talked about here today . Im going to pivot just slightly and move on a little bit to some other things. Anything from zoom . A quick question. Oh, yeah, please. So how much of a role do you think that debates actually have in like a real numbers sense as far as getting people out to vote and actually like changing peoples minds . Thats a good question. Who was that . Ryan. Thanks, ryan. It really depends. If both candidates are pretty even as far as their debating skills and theres no big surprises, no big maistakes, it probably does not have much impact. Even in 2016 i havent seen anything that said that the debates between trump and clinton really moved anybody. Do they motivate their supporters to go vote . Possibly. I havent seen anything that really quantifies that. I think the biggest thing there are really two big things. One is a mistake can be very damaging and weve certainly seen that through history, the things that i shared and that were on the clip from cnn and anderson copper and some of these president ial debates in the past, can make a difference in a negative way or positive for the other person. And the other is that it can help a candidate like with jack kennedy or with jimmy carter against president ford, kind of help solidify them like, yeah, this person could be president and sort of make people feel more comfortable with them. Does that help, ryan . Yeah, yeah, thanks. It kind of depends. But it can have an impact. A lot of times it doesnt have that much of an impact, but it certainly can. Any other comments or questions . I just have a quick question. Do you find that debates are more influential in local or national . And who is this . Sophie. Thanks, sophie. I think generally its probably more influential in national because it gets so much more coverage, where a local race its pretty rare even if its like a statewide or congressional race where its televised, at least in utah, its pretty rare that you ever hear anything about it again once its over. So the people watching it may have an impact, but its not like on the president ial stage where a mistake gets amplified so much it can sink their ship, basically. But it can help. I know in the wilson debates in 1988, where bangador was the underdog because of difficult decisions he had made as governor in raising taxes, that putting them on the stage together really helped, because well, it just really helped. People could understand where he did what he did, the contrast, i think, was good for norm, though ted was very capable and hes a very fine person. But it helped, helped their side, i think, ultimately. Any other questions on that . Were heading into debate season. Heres the 2020 debates. The president ial and Vice President ial debates are coming up starting a week from tomorrow, and then of course the vp debate right here, very close by, president s circle at kings bury hall, and then the two more president ial debates. So i think the debates this year have a potential will be really, really important. Anyone want to give their opinion on that before i give mine . Sierra. Thanks, sierra. So i just had a question. So with mailin ballots like going out like way earlier than like some of these like later debates, the 15th and the 22nd, and obviously like theres this big push for people to turn them in immediately this year, like do you think that like specifically like that third debate will even like have much of an influence on like undecided voters, because so many people will probably have turned in mailin ballots by then . Or do you still think there will be many people that havent voted . In most of these, lets walk down history lane, its when there was one election day. On election day that lasted for a month or six weeks, and some states are doing early voting right now. I think virginia and maybe north carolina, maybe a few other places. Clearly the undecided voters, if they still havent decided, then it could have an impact. I think youre going to see with the early voters, mostly those, you know, 80 , 90 of the voters who have already decided. So it could still have an impact on those later deciders, the undecided, that they may be watching for some clue or some cue of which way should they go. But i think the early voters will be people who have decided. So i think it will still have an impact. But it does change the dynamic, for sure, because you could have people who vote early and then theres some big mistake in one of these later debates, they cant take their vote back. I guess maybe literally they no, they cant take it back, i dont think. So if its been accepted, if it was you know, there were no mistakes, nothing to cure, they cant change their mind. Its too late by that point. Any other thoughts or comments . All right, so the state level we also have a lot of debates coming up, so ive given you the schedule for the utah debate commission, which is sort of like the state counterpart to the National Commission on president ial debates. And so they are going to do a number of these on television. It will be interesting. Im sure there will be others and others that are not exactly debates, but maybe forums where one candidate speaks and then they leave and the other candidate comes in and speaks. Those arent as fun or exciting in my opinion. Now, were going to have our own debate in our own class. Yay on october 7th, the same day as the vp debates, just to get us in the mood for the vp debate, were going to host a debate between gorbani and, and its her first time on the ballot for that race. This is going to be on zoom. Theres an extra credit opportunity. Some of you have already seen this, but i posted this today. Let me just talk about that a little bit. Ive given them pretty strict rules on the debate, but im inviting your help. If you would like to suggest questions to be asked. So basically well have about 22 minutes and this is all posted on campus. Maybe youve already seen this. Ill just cover it quickly. Im inviting you to submit one to five questions that could be asked. The ground rules are the question needs to be the same question for both candidates that they each could answer. So not slanted one way or the other, but just a straightup question on an issue. For every question you submit to me that follows this rule of being something that could be asked to both candidates, ill give you ten points, whether or not your question is used, up to a maximum of 50 points, or five questions. So im asking you, if youre interested in earning a little extra credit, send me your questions in a word document by next sunday night at 11 59, our favorite day and time, and if i decide to use one of your questions, i will ask you to offer them. Now, i know weve got some people working on at least one of these campaigns, so in that case i would still you can still earn extra credit, but i would not have you ask the question. Maybe i would ask the question. Do you have a question for me . Will it be emailed to you . Just send it to me in a word document and ill go through them between next sunday and sometime before the 7th, decide which ones i think would be good. If theres one of yours that i would like you to ask, ill follow up with you and say how about asking this question, if we have time. We may not have time to get to all of them. I thought this would be a fun way to involve the class, but also in a way that is im really a stickler that i want this to be totally fair to both candidates. And its funny, these days, even in the president ial debates as we saw particularly in the exchange between hillary and trump, the questions are much more personalized to a particular candidate than they used to be. Those were never debate rules i would agree to. I always felt like the question needed to be, you know i feel like its more fair if its the same question posed to both candidates, rather than Something Like oh, theyre going to give me a zinger and theyre giving my opponent a cream puff. So thats how well do it. Any questions on that . I think that will make it fun. We will be on zoom. But that way they dont have to wear masks either, so thats a plus. Even though it would be fun to be here in person. Okay, next 20 minutes were going to start on the textbook chapter 2 on political math. So some elections are very close, decided by relatively few votes. We know that. A couple of famous examples well, let me give you a couple of my examples first. So in 1988 i talked about this, im going to continue to, im sure, the reelection where he had been trailing in the polls by 30 . Eventually he won 40 to 38 , about 11,000 votes out of 650,000 votes, so very close. 1991 when i first ran for Salt Lake City mayor, it was a fiveway race in the primary. Every poll had me in third or fourth place going into primary election night. When i went to my little Victory Party with my supporters, i had notes in my pocket to give a concession speech because i thought clearly ive lost. I ended up squeaking through into second place by 0. 003 , by 102 votes. So sometimes these races are very, very close. Nationally we have the famous example of bush versus gore in 2000, where bush carried florida by 537 votes, thus winning the electoral college. Although he lost the popular vote. And then similarly, our last president ial election in 2016, trump won with a little bigger margin in the electoral college, 304 votes, but lost the popular vote, 46. 1 to 38. 2, or 63 million to 66 million votes. So trump won in three states that were key, pennsylvania, wisconsin, and michigan, which really won him the election. Those are states that could have gone either way. Those three states, the total margin of victory was 79,316 votes, or 0. 057 of all votes cast. So incredibly, incredibly close. Now, theres been other examples that are mentioned in the text book such as Senate Elections in delaware, missouri, alabama, even control over the Virginia State assembly after a tie vote, where they picked a winner out of a hat. So sometimes elections are 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, this is according to the authors of our book, that campaigns can totally make a difference in whether theyre won or lost because there are so many elections that are very, very close and that just one minor change here or there could have made a difference in the outcome. Now, this contrasts with a number of Political Science scholars who actually, the notion that elections are primarily determined, their notion is that elections are determined more by structural underlying economic demographic and partisan fundamentals. Theyre determined more by fundamentals of the electorate than by whatever the campaign does or doesnt do. Heres a few examples of that. Brookman, they said they found no evidence that persuasive contact activates the candidates supporters to turn out. I looked at their article, this is not quoted in the text, but i share it with you. They say we present unique evidence indicating campaign persuasion is extremely rare in general elections. When party cues are absent and primaries are when persuasion is conducted before the general election, it appears the Campaign Advertising can influence voters choices. So what they concluded is in a general election they dont believe the campaigns make much difference, but before the general election, the primary or an election where candidates are unkno unknown, it could definitely have an impact. Well, what do you think about that . Well go back. If thats true, why are we here . Thats what i think about it. If campaigns make no difference, we should cancel this class, call it good, but obviously we think they can matter and thats why were here. Any comments or thoughts on that . Does that surprise anybody . I thought it was a little surprising. So there is this scholarly skepticism, but the Campaign Managers who were surveyed for this book do not suggest that campaign effects are large and none seem to believe that there are big pools of moderate undecided voters, and they agreed that fundamentals matter, but they also leave ample room for marginal effects of turnout persuasion. This is really what were focused on, not that theres 50 , not in a general election usually, 50 of the voters who would go either way. Theres usually 5 or 10 or Something Like that that could go either way that the campaign is really focused on, as well as not losing the support they already have. So heres some questions to consider. Are those who say fundamentals matter most in campaigns hardly register on the results correct . Are those that say mobilization is most vital correct . What about issues what about those who say persuasion is the most important factor . Do campaigns matter, and if they matter, do they matter by mobilizing their sides, partisan voters, or by persuading swing voters . Any thoughts on these questions . Ill get a drink of water. I have an opinion on this. Yeah, give us your name, please. Its ryan. Hi, ryan. So this is just my thinking, and, again, i have not done a study. But i feel like i feel like a bad campaign can hurt more than a Good Campaign can help, and i feel like part of Campaign Strategy is just avoiding the really bad things. Because a bad campaign can definitely derail a candidate, but i dont know if a Good Campaign can really win in a place where they otherwise would be unable to. Thats interesting. Okay, i could see that. I could see that. I think it could be both. But, yeah, i think its an interesting point. Thanks for sharing that. Other thoughts or comments on this controversy of do campaigns matter or not . Charlie has a comment. Charlie, please. I actually disagree with that point. I actually think that a Good Campaign can make a huge difference. I mean, you can look at races historically and there are some races that have been in very red or blue areas throughout the entire country, that with a Good Campaign, Campaign Manager, or a good candidate, could actually sway that seat, incumbents being removed, and sometimes even in the same party. Im trying to think. There was one in new york that was a really long time incumbent loss to somebody. Was it new york or new jersey . I dont remember exactly. I think it was a democrat. I dont remember. Theres been a lot of examples of races where campaigns have really made a huge difference in the positive. So i actually would very much disagree with that point. Okay. I think you could both be right. Im not just trying to be political here. But i think that a Good Campaign can make a difference. I also think a bad campaign can make a difference. And theres probably other campaigns where they really dont make much difference, the fundamentals are so strong, theres really no way to overcome them. So i think its kind of all over the place. So the point i want to get across here from the book is that Many Political scientists do argue that the fundamentals such as the economy, the incumbents approval ratings, partisan competition of the district or the electorate ultimately sort winners and losers, not hundreds of decisions that Campaign Managers and candidates make. Weve kind of talked about this, so unless anybody has something they really want to say, i think they have a point, but i dont think you can say it makes no difference. Anyone disagree with that . All right, so ill give you a number of examples. I dont think ill take the time to go through each of these, but you can just see these examples of where the scholars have raised concerns or raised at least skepticism that campaigns make as much difference as people in the Campaign Business might assume. So this kind of scholarly doubt is rooted in several assumptions. All of these fundamentals could make a big difference, and that no amount of Campaign Spending or brilliant strategy can change those fundamentals. And also that scholars argue that even if campaigns had the potential to change entrenched minds, there would need to be measurable differences in the impact of competing advertising campaigns. So what theyre saying here is that, yeah, campaigns, okay, but they kind of negate each other. One person runs an ad, another person runs an ad. A lot of times the spending is fairly even, at least maybe even enough of what makes a difference that, you know, theyre just skeptical that this really makes that much of a difference. Well, Campaign Managers point out that much of the Scholarly Research is focused on president ial campaigns, where fundamentals are likely to matter the most. And campaigns are likely to least. So what theyre saying, and it may be more true for president ial campaigns than most of the campaigns in america, because we know that theres thousands of nonpresident ial campaigns and elections, whether for congress, legislature, governors, city and county elected officials and so forth. One Campaign Manager stated, maybe the notion that campaigns have little effect has some validity on the president ial level, but on the state and local levels i think campaigns make all the difference. So down ballot races, as theyre sometimes called, are more susceptible to campaigns effects in high profile races because the quality of the campaigns vary more widely at the local level. So things are not always as even a Playing Field as you get down the ballot into these smaller races. So theres a couple of arguments that talk about that, you know, that basically as you go down to ballot its less true, but president ial it may be somewhat true. So lets just throw it out. What do you think about this idea of the scholarly skepticism versus the counterarguments that no campaigns can make a difference . If you had to make a choice, which side would you be on, or somewhere in the middle . [ inaudible ] okay, yeah, and maybe where its less partisan, too, right, it could have a bigger impact . Okay, thanks. Anna, right . Whats your name . Abby. I had the first letter right. Abby, thanks. Yeah, other thoughts on this . I guess my main point would be we are here for a reason. Campaigns can make a difference. But its also good to temper that, because one thing that i think is also very true is that those who are campaign consultants, maybe professional Campaign Managers, they may overstate the good they can do for a candidate, right . They may oversell, like we can make anybody and make them president , you know, we can theres a lot of other factors, and certainly the fundamentals, the partisan nature of the electorate, where they line up on the partisan basis, whats going on in the economy. Theres just a lot of other things going on that also matter. But certainly on the margin, and many elections are decided on the margin, many elections are won by less than 10 or even less than 5 of the vote, and thats where campaigns really can make a difference. Thanks, everybody. Well see you one way or the other on wednesday. Get ready for all these debates coming up. Oh, my goodness, its like my favorite time of the decade. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, on American History tv on cspan3, go inside appear Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s, to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging in to class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus, watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. Gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union, but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. Freedom of the press, which well get to later, i should just mention madison originally called it freedom on the use of the press, and it is indeed freedom to print things and publish things. It is not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on cspan3, every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3, created by americas Cable Television companies as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. Up next on American History tv, a class on president ial communication, in both campaigns and in office, from rider university, this lecture assesses six categories of president ial communication, vision, charisma, pragmatism, credibility, luck and speaking ability. Welcome, everyone, to our second class. This is for the people who are here for the first time tonight, the making of the president , 2020, better known as the political circus of the century. Im going to be talking about two different and yet related topics. The first has to do with the factors that are considered when we look at president ial effectiveness. The second part, i would like to