Page 146 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 125

POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS
of policies can be fatally undermined by one slip. In his 1976 debate with
Jimmy Carter, incumbent Gerald Ford unintentionally reinforced a growing
image of him as stupid and lightweight by appearing to suggest that Poland
was not part of the Soviet bloc. Ford probably knew what he was trying to
say, as no doubt did most of the audience, but the verbal faux pas haunted
him for the rest of the campaign, contributing substantially to his defeat by
Carter. Carter himself, during one of the 1980 debates with Ronald Reagan,
appealed to the audience’s anxiety about the Republican’s hawkishness by
introducing the image of his daughter, Amy, losing sleep at night over the
issue of nuclear weapons. Coverage of the debate tended to take the view
that this was a cynical manipulation of a child, furthering the process by
which Carter lost to Reagan on polling day. The debates between Al Gore
and George W. Bush in the 2000 election transformed the latter’s image as a
bumbling, ignorant cowboy to that of an attractive, electable candidate.
Gore, by contrast, emerged from the debates with a reputation as a timid,
pedantic bore.
The live debate format encapsulates the great dilemma of free media for
modern politicians: the massive exposure which it generates can win
elections (this, for example, has become the received wisdom about John F.
Kennedy’s narrow victory over Richard Nixon in the 1960 campaign, which
he won by only 17,000 votes). It can also lose them over such a simple matter
as a slip of the tongue.
Britain, in contrast to the US, did not have a tradition of live debating
between candidates for the highest governmental office, although each
passing general election campaign was accompanied by calls for such debates
from the challengers. British prime ministers, Labour and Conservative, well
aware of the dangers debates can throw up, have until recently taken the
view that one of the privileges of incumbency is to refuse to participate in
such an uncontrolled spectacle. The assumption here is that there is more to
be gained by playing the role of a dignified statesperson, operating above the
glitzy presidentialism of the debate format, than could be lost by being seen
as aloof and inaccessible. The first break with this approach came in June
1994, following the death of Labour leader John Smith, when the three
candidates for the succession – Tony Blair, Margaret Beckett and John
Prescott – debated live on BBC’s Panorama programme, the first time such
a debate had ever been broadcast on British television. The Liberal
Democrats undertook the same exercise for their leadership campaign in
2006, as did Labour leadership contenders in 2010.
In 1997, prodded by Labour’s media managers (confident of Tony Blair’s
ability to perform well) the main parties came closer than ever before to
agreement on the terms and conditions of live debates between the party
leaders. In the end they backed off, for reasons which remain unclear. Some
speculated that Labour, having initially supported the idea of a leaders’
debate, took the view that with a huge lead in the opinion polls it was not

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