Page 148 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS

institution, copied in many other democracies—is the archetypal ‘free
media’ event. In itself it guarantees the politicians extensive live
coverage, since the serious broadcasting organisations must all report
it fully, providing acres of follow-up coverage of the issues raised,
and the respective performances of the participants. The debate sets
the agenda in a contemporary US presidential campaign. It provides
a platform for a candidate to appeal directly to the mass audience,
and to demonstrate his or her superiority over the opponent. And
for the politician it is, in contrast to advertising, free.
As is characteristic of free media, however, the presidential debate
also carries the possibility of catastrophic failure. Live and unedited,
mistakes are more difficult to cover up, and a candidate’s detailed,
intelligent articulation 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 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 117,000 votes). It can also
lose them over such a simple matter as a slip of the tongue.
Britain, in contrast to the United States, has not developed a
tradition of live debating between candidates for the highest
governmental office, although each passing general election
campaign is 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 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,
rather above the glitzy presidentialism of the debate format, than

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