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Bush, Kerry Tentatively Settle on 3 Debates
By Mike Allen and Dan Balz, Washington Post Staff Writers
The campaigns of President Bush (news - web sites) and Sen. John F. Kerry (news, bio, voting record) have tentatively settled on a package of three face-to-face debates that both sides view as a potentially decisive chance to sway huge audiences ahead of the Nov. 2 election, Democrats and Republicans said yesterday.
Bush's campaign, which opened the negotiations by urging just two sessions involving Bush and Kerry, yielded to the full slate of debates that had been proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates, according to people in both parties who were briefed on the negotiations.
No agreement will be final until the two sides agree on details for the format of a town-meeting-style debate that Bush at first resisted but now is willing to endorse, the party representatives said.
The debates will be spread over two weeks just before the hectic homestretch of a bitter contest that had been tied for months until Bush recently opened a small lead in a number of national polls. The nominees will focus on foreign policy during the opening session, on Sept. 30 in Florida; they will take questions from undecided voters at the town-meeting-style debate Oct. 8 in Missouri; and they will conclude with a session on Oct. 13 in Arizona that will revolve around domestic issues.
Vice President Cheney and Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards (news - web sites) will debate Oct. 5 in Ohio. Each of the four debates will begin at 9 p.m. Eastern time and will run 90 minutes.
The officials, who declined to be identified because they were not supposed to be discussing the matter with reporters, would not say when an agreement will be announced.
Both campaigns declined to comment on the state of negotiations. Bush-Cheney communications director Nicolle Devenish said: "The campaign maintains its position that it will not negotiate the terms of the debates in the press."
Kerry's campaign sees the debates as especially important, coming after a period in which he has been put on the defensive by the Bush campaign and its conservative allies. Polls paint a confusing picture of the state of the race, with some showing a virtual dead heat and others giving Bush a clear advantage. In many of the key battleground states, Bush appears in stronger shape than his challenger.
Bush's chief negotiator, former secretary of state James A. Baker III, agreed to three debates in part because of Missouri's importance as a swing state and because the president did not want to be portrayed as ducking his opponent, according to a source.
Under the commission's proposal, the participants for the town meeting will be undecided voters from the St. Louis metropolitan area who are chosen by the Gallup Organization.
"The Bush campaign didn't want to do the town hall because they really didn't trust the process identifying uncommitted voters," said a Republican source familiar with the talks. "But things are going so well for them and so poorly for Kerry that they didn't want to give Kerry an opportunity to change the subject and say that Bush is afraid of debates. Bush not doing debates or dragging out the debate on debates could have been played by the Kerry campaign as arrogance."
A Democratic official involved in the process said the Kerry campaign worked to bring pressure on the Bush campaign through the news media, Republican donors and public officials in Missouri to go through with the town-hall debate. Bush won the state by three percentage points in 2000, and both sides expected it to be among the most closely contested swing states, although a number of polls show Bush ahead there now.
After reaching agreement on the broad outlines of the schedule, Baker and Kerry's lead negotiator, Democratic power broker Vernon E. Jordan Jr., were negotiating details of the town meeting over the weekend. Officials indirectly involved said they believed that was the only element standing in the way of a final agreement. The Republican adviser said the one way that the schedule could change would be if Baker and Jordan did not work out all the specifics of the town meeting and Bush pulled out at the last minute.
The town-meeting debate is to be held at Washington University in St. Louis, which hosted debates in 1992 and 2000 and had been selected as a commission site in 1996, but lost out when President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) agreed to only two debates. University officials had already completed expensive preparations for security, broadcast transmission and parking.
Baker insisted on reversing the commission's plan that the debates focus first on domestic policy and later on foreign policy, which the president's campaign sees as his strength. Jordan agreed, both sides said.
The nonpartisan commission has sponsored debates in each election since 1988, but candidates are not obligated to accept the commission's proposal. As negotiations continued, the commission issued an unusual letter Wednesday saying the campaigns must settle on a schedule by today for production and logistical deadlines to be met. In a nudge to the Bush campaign, the letter included a reference to the popularity of the town-hall format with the public.
Both sides have already begun portraying the opposing candidate as a tremendous debater, as part of the quadrennial ritual of trying to lower expectations for the nominees' performances. Kerry strategist Joe Lockhart told reporters in a conference call Friday that he would "challenge anyone to name a major debate that George Bush (news - web sites) has been in where he hasn't been considered the winner."
Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist, said in an interview earlier this month that Kerry "is very formidable, and probably the best debater ever to run for president." "I'm not joking," Dowd added. "I think he's better than Cicero," the ancient Roman orator. "But I think it'll be a very good thing for the American public to see these two men stand side by side. You can't hide who you are."
Both campaigns agreed to the dates, locations and moderators proposed by the commission. Commission officials plan to begin moving equipment and other materials into place at the debate sites today, on the assumption that their plan will be embraced by the campaigns.
The Sept. 30 debate will be held at the University of Miami in Coral Gables and will be moderated by Jim Lehrer, anchor and executive editor of "The NewsHour" on PBS. The Oct. 8 town-hall debate will be moderated by Charles Gibson, co-anchor of ABC's "Good Morning America." The last debate, on Oct. 13, will be at Arizona State University in Tempe. The questioner will be Bob Schieffer, CBS News chief Washington correspondent and moderator of "Face the Nation."
The Oct. 5 vice presidential debate will be held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and moderated by Gwen Ifill, moderator of PBS's "Washington Week."
Bush, Kerry Tentatively Settle on 3 Debates
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America Votes | With Bush rising, debates are Kerry's make-or-break time
By Dick Polman
Inquirer Staff Writer
The word on John Kerry - from his publicists, anyway - is that he's a great "closer," a warrior who cranks it up when the chips are down, a guy with true grit who once blew open a tight Senate race at the eleventh hour and won in a walk.
But if he can't play the closer at the coming presidential debates, then it may well be closing time for his candidacy.
With President Bush clearly in the ascendancy - he is now leading or pressuring Kerry in ostensibly Democratic states such as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin; Kerry isn't as competitive in most Republican states - the debates offer Kerry his last major chance to change the dynamic and rescue fretful Democrats from a winter of discontent.
Kerry's problem, however, is that the Republicans - with their longstanding talent for crafting visceral messages, and aided during August by Kerry's complicity via his silence - have managed thus far to frame this campaign as a referendum on the challenger's character, rather than a referendum on the incumbent's record.
Kerry has been talking tougher in recent days, after hiring several gut-fighting Bill Clinton alumni, and the most optimistic Democrats - those who are not prone to whining in times of crisis - are now insisting that ultimately, this race will be about Bush. But negative perceptions of Kerry's character have deepened since August, and that sentiment could benefit Bush when the two men meet (tentatively scheduled for Sept. 30, and again in October), because, essentially, presidential debates are explorations of character.
The "winner" in debates is typically the candidate who best exudes an air of command, and - notwithstanding the latest dire news from Iraq, and an intelligence report suggesting that peace in Iraq is a mirage - a majority of voters are telling pollsters that Bush best fits their conception of a commander.
Kerry started winning debating prizes back when he was a schoolboy, but most viewers of presidential debates don't score the candidates on their mastery of policy detail; instead, they seek character clues. The danger for Kerry is that if he indulges his penchant for verbosity, particularly if he seeks again to explain his votes on Iraq, he'll be stuck with the "vacillator" image that Republicans have been selling for him since March.
His aim is to avoid the fate of Al Gore, whose policy smarts in the first 2000 debate were trumped by the fact that he behaved like a Chihuahua on amphetamines; his hyper manner (crowding Bush's answers, defying the time limit by asking "Could I make one more point?") made him look like a know-it-all, and he turned off a significant number of female voters who never came back.
As Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, an informal Kerry adviser, says: "You couldn't go through that election without seeing that debates matter. Gore went from 5 points ahead, before the debates, to 5 points behind. I had thought such a thing was unimaginable. The point is, debates move voters."
A few incumbents have paid the price - including the elder George Bush, whose big mistake, during a 1992 debate, was that he looked at his watch in the presence of citizen questioners, affirming a perception that he was out of touch with voters. (He affirmed anew during a 1999 TV interview: "Was I glad when the damn thing was over? Yeah, and maybe that's why I was looking at it, [thinking] 'only 10 more minutes of this crap.' ")
In 1976, President Gerald Ford declared in a debate with challenger Jimmy Carter that Eastern Europe was not under Communist domination, a verbal slip that fatally confirmed the image of a bumbler. In 1980, President Carter cited his young daughter, Amy, as an informal adviser on arms control, and that, coupled with challenger Ronald Reagan's hawkish message, fatally damaged his air of command.
The current President Bush - who has won virtually all his past debates, even though his aides will again seek to lowball the expectations - faces potential pitfalls of his own. The biggest is Iraq. How he handles that issue, on a stage devoid of presidential trappings, may well determine whether he "wins" the debate on character (as a resolute commander in chief in wartime), or comes off as a stubborn ideologue who refuses to face facts.
On the stump, Bush has been making rosy predictions about Iraq. Yet it's clear, thanks to a newly leaked intelligence document, that Bush was told last summer that Iraq was in bad shape and could slide toward civil war. Even Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a leading voice on foreign policy, dismisses the Bush forecasts as "nonsense." Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska calls the situation "beyond pitiful and embarrassing."
Alan Schroeder, a debate expert who has written a history of presidential debates, says: "The President has been appearing at staged events, taking softball questions from handpicked supporters, and that's not necessarily good preparation for the debates, where he will be asked tough questions about Iraq. He will have to defend a record that he hasn't been challenged on."
When asked about Iraq the other day, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman offered this defense: "War is very difficult, very hard to plan, and you have an incredible appreciation for, and thanks for, the sacrifices so many families are making. And you pray for them. At the same time, you need to remember that the reason they're making this sacrifice is to protect all of our freedoms.
"So, is it a tough battle? Absolutely. Will it be hard? It will. We need to remember that as we go forward." (Given the Bush campaign's message discipline, it's a good bet that Bush's debate language will be similar.)
Jack Pitney, a former national Republican official and Capitol Hill aide, says that tone is also important: "The President can't seem defensive. He'll need to give a calm recitation. He'll need to avoid a deer-in-the-headlights look, because people would remember that. Most people already accept him as commander in chief, anyway. I'm sure the Kerry camp is hoping he'll cite his twin daughters as his chief Iraq advisers."
Democrats insist that the chaos in Iraq - major cities under rebel control, mounting costs and casualties - undercuts Bush's commander in chief credentials, and that Kerry can tap that theme in debate. In the bullish words of Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, "For this president, reality bites."
The problem is, most voters don't seem primed to accept that argument. Democratic pollster Mark Penn, who worked for President Bill Clinton, released sobering numbers in Washington the other day: 72 percent of voters believe that Bush has "a clear agenda" on security issues; only 30 percent said the same about Kerry. Indeed, says Penn, what Kerry needs most to win over viewers is "clarity."
Kerry's clarity deficit stems from his inability to concisely explain his vote for war authorization and his later vote against reconstruction money. There's a 110 percent chance that Bush, in the debates, will demand more explanation, as a way to enmesh Kerry in the details and ensure that the Democrat gets stuck on defense.
The answer: Stay on offense.
Democratic strategist Rosenberg, who learned those skills in the 1992 Clinton campaign "war room," says: "Kerry shouldn't get tied up in the past. Instead he should argue, 'The war was a success, but what has happened since has failed. We have lost lives and money and world prestige, we're not safer, and this president has to take responsibility. So let's debate what we should do now.' Kerry can say that in one minute, in plain English."
Indeed, Bush has said little about how he plans to defeat the insurgency; nor has he offered any exit strategy for U.S. troops. But the thing is, neither has Kerry. On the radio Wednesday, Don Imus pressed him for details, but he declined the offer. In debates, it may be tough for Kerry to trump Bush on commander credentials if he fails to provide TV viewers with an endgame plan of his own.
But playing offense is Kerry's only real option. In debate expert Schroeder's words, "It's about being an 'appropriate aggressor' - showing the kind of aggression that people want to see in a president, demonstrating to people that you know how to strike when there's a need to strike. This is a key character issue, because these debates will be played out on an emotional, rather than an intellectual, level."
Historian James David Barber, in a landmark book on the importance of personality in politics, wrote in 1972 that "character makes possible a realistic estimate of what will endure into a man's White House years." Barber died a few days ago. But as the 2004 debates will surely demonstrate, there appears to be no reason to question his judgment.
America Votes | With Bush rising, debates are Kerry's make-or-break time
By Dick Polman
Inquirer Staff Writer
The word on John Kerry - from his publicists, anyway - is that he's a great "closer," a warrior who cranks it up when the chips are down, a guy with true grit who once blew open a tight Senate race at the eleventh hour and won in a walk.
But if he can't play the closer at the coming presidential debates, then it may well be closing time for his candidacy.
With President Bush clearly in the ascendancy - he is now leading or pressuring Kerry in ostensibly Democratic states such as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin; Kerry isn't as competitive in most Republican states - the debates offer Kerry his last major chance to change the dynamic and rescue fretful Democrats from a winter of discontent.
Kerry's problem, however, is that the Republicans - with their longstanding talent for crafting visceral messages, and aided during August by Kerry's complicity via his silence - have managed thus far to frame this campaign as a referendum on the challenger's character, rather than a referendum on the incumbent's record.
Kerry has been talking tougher in recent days, after hiring several gut-fighting Bill Clinton alumni, and the most optimistic Democrats - those who are not prone to whining in times of crisis - are now insisting that ultimately, this race will be about Bush. But negative perceptions of Kerry's character have deepened since August, and that sentiment could benefit Bush when the two men meet (tentatively scheduled for Sept. 30, and again in October), because, essentially, presidential debates are explorations of character.
The "winner" in debates is typically the candidate who best exudes an air of command, and - notwithstanding the latest dire news from Iraq, and an intelligence report suggesting that peace in Iraq is a mirage - a majority of voters are telling pollsters that Bush best fits their conception of a commander.
Kerry started winning debating prizes back when he was a schoolboy, but most viewers of presidential debates don't score the candidates on their mastery of policy detail; instead, they seek character clues. The danger for Kerry is that if he indulges his penchant for verbosity, particularly if he seeks again to explain his votes on Iraq, he'll be stuck with the "vacillator" image that Republicans have been selling for him since March.
His aim is to avoid the fate of Al Gore, whose policy smarts in the first 2000 debate were trumped by the fact that he behaved like a Chihuahua on amphetamines; his hyper manner (crowding Bush's answers, defying the time limit by asking "Could I make one more point?") made him look like a know-it-all, and he turned off a significant number of female voters who never came back.
As Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, an informal Kerry adviser, says: "You couldn't go through that election without seeing that debates matter. Gore went from 5 points ahead, before the debates, to 5 points behind. I had thought such a thing was unimaginable. The point is, debates move voters."
A few incumbents have paid the price - including the elder George Bush, whose big mistake, during a 1992 debate, was that he looked at his watch in the presence of citizen questioners, affirming a perception that he was out of touch with voters. (He affirmed anew during a 1999 TV interview: "Was I glad when the damn thing was over? Yeah, and maybe that's why I was looking at it, [thinking] 'only 10 more minutes of this crap.' ")
In 1976, President Gerald Ford declared in a debate with challenger Jimmy Carter that Eastern Europe was not under Communist domination, a verbal slip that fatally confirmed the image of a bumbler. In 1980, President Carter cited his young daughter, Amy, as an informal adviser on arms control, and that, coupled with challenger Ronald Reagan's hawkish message, fatally damaged his air of command.
The current President Bush - who has won virtually all his past debates, even though his aides will again seek to lowball the expectations - faces potential pitfalls of his own. The biggest is Iraq. How he handles that issue, on a stage devoid of presidential trappings, may well determine whether he "wins" the debate on character (as a resolute commander in chief in wartime), or comes off as a stubborn ideologue who refuses to face facts.
On the stump, Bush has been making rosy predictions about Iraq. Yet it's clear, thanks to a newly leaked intelligence document, that Bush was told last summer that Iraq was in bad shape and could slide toward civil war. Even Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a leading voice on foreign policy, dismisses the Bush forecasts as "nonsense." Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska calls the situation "beyond pitiful and embarrassing."
Alan Schroeder, a debate expert who has written a history of presidential debates, says: "The President has been appearing at staged events, taking softball questions from handpicked supporters, and that's not necessarily good preparation for the debates, where he will be asked tough questions about Iraq. He will have to defend a record that he hasn't been challenged on."
When asked about Iraq the other day, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman offered this defense: "War is very difficult, very hard to plan, and you have an incredible appreciation for, and thanks for, the sacrifices so many families are making. And you pray for them. At the same time, you need to remember that the reason they're making this sacrifice is to protect all of our freedoms.
"So, is it a tough battle? Absolutely. Will it be hard? It will. We need to remember that as we go forward." (Given the Bush campaign's message discipline, it's a good bet that Bush's debate language will be similar.)
Jack Pitney, a former national Republican official and Capitol Hill aide, says that tone is also important: "The President can't seem defensive. He'll need to give a calm recitation. He'll need to avoid a deer-in-the-headlights look, because people would remember that. Most people already accept him as commander in chief, anyway. I'm sure the Kerry camp is hoping he'll cite his twin daughters as his chief Iraq advisers."
Democrats insist that the chaos in Iraq - major cities under rebel control, mounting costs and casualties - undercuts Bush's commander in chief credentials, and that Kerry can tap that theme in debate. In the bullish words of Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, "For this president, reality bites."
The problem is, most voters don't seem primed to accept that argument. Democratic pollster Mark Penn, who worked for President Bill Clinton, released sobering numbers in Washington the other day: 72 percent of voters believe that Bush has "a clear agenda" on security issues; only 30 percent said the same about Kerry. Indeed, says Penn, what Kerry needs most to win over viewers is "clarity."
Kerry's clarity deficit stems from his inability to concisely explain his vote for war authorization and his later vote against reconstruction money. There's a 110 percent chance that Bush, in the debates, will demand more explanation, as a way to enmesh Kerry in the details and ensure that the Democrat gets stuck on defense.
The answer: Stay on offense.
Democratic strategist Rosenberg, who learned those skills in the 1992 Clinton campaign "war room," says: "Kerry shouldn't get tied up in the past. Instead he should argue, 'The war was a success, but what has happened since has failed. We have lost lives and money and world prestige, we're not safer, and this president has to take responsibility. So let's debate what we should do now.' Kerry can say that in one minute, in plain English."
Indeed, Bush has said little about how he plans to defeat the insurgency; nor has he offered any exit strategy for U.S. troops. But the thing is, neither has Kerry. On the radio Wednesday, Don Imus pressed him for details, but he declined the offer. In debates, it may be tough for Kerry to trump Bush on commander credentials if he fails to provide TV viewers with an endgame plan of his own.
But playing offense is Kerry's only real option. In debate expert Schroeder's words, "It's about being an 'appropriate aggressor' - showing the kind of aggression that people want to see in a president, demonstrating to people that you know how to strike when there's a need to strike. This is a key character issue, because these debates will be played out on an emotional, rather than an intellectual, level."
Historian James David Barber, in a landmark book on the importance of personality in politics, wrote in 1972 that "character makes possible a realistic estimate of what will endure into a man's White House years." Barber died a few days ago. But as the 2004 debates will surely demonstrate, there appears to be no reason to question his judgment.
racehorse
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Guest
The A-Team wrote: I am really excited about these debates. Maybe the powers that be could set an ORR type thread. That would be interesting.
I'm sure that will happen right here in P & G.
We did this during some of the Democratic Primary Debates. Anyone can start a thread like that here in P & G, so I have no doubt it'll happen. Anchors Aweigh!