Keep watching: Past presidents prove second debates matter most

He killed him.  And then he took a sip of water.

It was 1984 in Louisville, KY, and President Ronald Reagan took on his general election challenger, Former Vice President Walter Mondale. With GDP growth the best in a decade, inflation bested, and Mondale down in the polls, the election was not seen as a contest.   

{mosads}But Mondale had a plan for that first debate. He would lean in, be aggressive, like a lawyer who is questioning a hostile witness. Reagan’s team wouldn’t expect this from Mondale, and it might even be seen as impolite (for 1984, that is.)

He’d challenge, even scold, the commander-in-chief on occasion, using the second person.

“Is that what you said…there you go again?… You’ve got a $260 billion deficit. You can’t wish it away. You won’t slow defense spending; you refuse to do that —”

It worked better than he could imagine. Reagan was not prepared to defend. He was quickly thrown off.  

The confident pitchman with a lifetime of radio and television now glanced away from the audience and downward at his notes. The normally clear orator generalized and stammered. He waved his hand, out of concert with what he was saying.

At one point when he thought he was finished, he had to be reminded by the moderator that he had more time.  

In his closing statement he seemed to make little sense as he said the economy under his administration was good, but then said: “Not everyone — there are people there are in the pockets of poverty and haven’t caught up…”

From Mr. Morning in America to Mr. Gloom?     

There was panic in the Reagan camp after Louisville.

“I flopped,” he told aide Stu Spencer.  

Reagan got no sleep that night, a night that Nancy Reagan thought was one of the worst of his presidency. It was, because his flop drove the issue beyond the election race.

Mondale benefited by seven points in the polls, but it stirred up an independent question of Reagan’s age and fitness for a second term.  The Wall Street Journal headline blared “New Question in Race: Is Oldest President Now Showing his Age?”

The stretch between the seventh of October in 1984 and the twenty-first of October must have been unbearable. That’s a fairly long stretch between debates as campaigns go, and the media coverage was all about Reagan’s age.

Yet his campaign got ready. They threw out the briefing books — Nancy and campaign staff felt he was overbriefed — and they got to the basics. Quick stats, short notes.

And a great line.  

In the Music Hall in Kansas City, KS, Reagan had his moment.  

When Baltimore Sun journalist Henry Trewitt asked Reagan if his age would prevent him from fulfilling the rigors of the presidency, Reagan said:

“I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I will not exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

The audience laughed. The moderators laughed.  Mondale even laughed. Reagan took a sip of water from a glass and the keys to the White House for another term.  

He was likely thankful that his team had negotiated a second presidential debate, something that every campaign since Jimmy Carter in 1980 has done. There’s a reason.

Second debates are important. Indeed, with the excitement and adrenaline rush of first presidential debates, it’s forgotten that it’s the second debates have been the source of some of the best moments.   

Recall that it was in the second presidential debate between Jimmy Carter and President Gerald Ford where he made his infamous misstep.

He pronounced, in response to a question about the Helsinki Accord, that there “was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and would not be under a Ford administration.” 

When viewed in context, Ford’s comment made sense. He meant to say there were no Soviet troops or tanks rolling into Eastern Europe because Helsinki required notification of troop movements. That didn’t matter. Carter hit back that Ford was out-of-touch and surged six Gallup points, and would go on to win.  

It was also in the second presidential debate of the 1988 election, at the University of California in Los Angeles, where CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis if he would favor the death penalty if his own wife were raped and murdered.

He responded with policy babble about the death penalty that was shocking in its lack of emotion.

And it was in the second presidential debate of 1992, where President George H.W. Bush seemed distant from the economic problems of the town-hall audience and at one point glanced on his watch.

Less dramatic, but also impactful were the second debates of 2000, where Vice President Gore’s robotic performance cost him ridicule and votes, and 2004 where the second debate allowed President George W. Bush to stave off John Kerry’s first debate humdinger and turn a Kerry lead to a dead-heat.  

It’s a common misperception to think that second debates are not as important because they won’t get the ratings of the first.  That’s sometimes true but not always.  

For instance, more viewers (67 million, per Nielsen) watched Reagan’s comeback in Kansas City than had (65 million) watched his flub in Louisville. This was also true of 1992, 2004 and 2008— more viewers in the second debate than the first.  

It could be that first debates, while anticipation-filled, are too early for impact on voter’s minds.  That was true certainly of the first televised presidential debates ever in 1960.

But since that novelty and advanced prepping techniques, second debates are the moments where the story of the election can change, for good or for bad.  

Keep watching.  

Carlson is the host of My History Can Beat Up Your Politics Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes and follow him on Twitter at @myhist.