Page 147 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 126

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
worth risking the kind of disaster experienced by Carter, Ford of Dan Quayle
when the latter famously, and foolishly, compared himself to John F.
Kennedy. Others claimed that it was the Tories, fearful of how their leader,
John Major, would perform against Blair, who stymied the negotiations. For
whatever reason, there was no leaders’ debate in 1997. Nor was there in
2001 or 2005, to the disappointment of many commentators.
It should of course be remembered that in Britain, unlike the US, the Prime
Minister and his or her principal challengers are seen debating live on
television most weeks of the year. Prime Minister’s Question Time in the
House of Commons is an event without parallel in the US political system,
and may perhaps be viewed as a more than adequate substitution for the
one-off presidential debate. In the House of Commons a party leader’s
success is not measured in terms of soundbites and slip-ups alone (although
these are noted), but on performance over a parliamentary session, which
may be thought to be a tougher and more accurate test of debating skill than
the 90 or so minutes of a US presidential clash. 3
There are in Britain, in addition, live campaign debates between more
junior politicians in which detailed policy issues are covered. The party
leaders also submit themselves to set-piece interviews by the most prominent
pundits of the day, such as Jonathan Dimbleby, Jeremy Paxman, and John
Humphrys. These occasions allow a measure of comparison to be drawn
between candidates. The Labour leader’s ‘handling’ of Paxman or Dimbleby
can be compared with that of Tory leader David Cameron. Gaffes are easily
made, and not as easily recovered from. One of the decisive events of the
1987 general election campaign occurred during Labour leader Neil
Kinnock’s interview with David Frost on the latter’s Sunday morning
4
Breakfast show. At that stage in the 1987 campaign Labour was doing
reasonably well in the polls and had received some enthusiastic coverage for
its advertising campaign (see Chapter 6). In the course of the interview
Kinnock implied, during an attempt to explain Labour’s non-nuclear defence
policy, that the Soviets would not invade Britain, whether it had nuclear or
non-nuclear defence, because of the strategic difficulty of taking the islands
against determined opposition (including, he emphasised, guerrilla warfare).
This statement of an obvious military fact slipped out almost unnoticed, until
Conservative campaign managers spotted it on recordings of the show and
proceeded to develop a powerful public relations and advertising campaign
around the theme of Labour’s incompetence on defence (see Figure 7.1).
Kinnock had inadvertently opened up the defence debate, on which Labour
was traditionally weak, and handed the Conservatives a valuable oppor-
tunity to ‘score’. Rather better at these exercises was Tony Blair, who, as
prime minister, participated in several live interview and debate sessions
involving journalists and members of the public. On Ask the Prime Minister
(ITV), Question Time (BBC 1) and Newsnight (BBC 2), not only did Blair
break new ground in British political communication; he also avoided the

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