From Lincoln’s civility to Trump’s anger

More than a century ago, between August and October 1858, during an electoral contest for one of Illinois’ two seats in the nation’s Senate, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held seven outdoor debates for the public. They were long, about four hours, and they spoke with eloquence, conviction and a sense of humor. They had a deep understanding of history that went beyond the electoral process and demonstrated that their ambitions extended beyond personal victory. Lincoln defended the end of slavery and lost to Douglas, but he was the first president to win the election. The Great Debate As their meeting ended, his fame grew so much that two years later he won the presidential election.

Since then, candidates have debated to defend their ideas and illustrate their leadership potential. However, these face-to-face meetings have lost the civility that used to make them a fundamental pillar of democracy. Starting in the 1960s, television imposed spectacle over substance and candidates, as Reagan demonstrated against Carter in 1980, had to be better actors than politicians.

Kennedy won the first televised debate in 1960 not because he was more prepared than Nixon, but because he was better on camera. Vice President Nixon was recovering from kidney disease and did not want to wear makeup. He sweated in the heat of the spotlight and was never at ease. A calm and seductive performance was all that was needed to defeat Kennedy by a slim margin. George W. Bush did the same to Al Gore in October 2000. Gore was much better, but Bush had studied the agenda more deeply.

A presidential candidate must have three to five key ideas on more than fifty topics. That is, you must be able to manage at least 250 concepts without paper and heavy pressure. It is not easy to do it well, that is, to speak without pedantry and with empathy, thinking above all of the undecidables, the range that goes from 3% to 5% of voters who will change their vote depending on how they see the candidate.

That is the value of debates. It seems like little if the polls anticipate large differences, but it means everything when expectations drop to zero, as is now happening between Biden and Trump.

A debate influences 3%-5% of voters and this is crucial in close campaigns like the current one

The debate they had in 2020 was the worst debate in history, a bar fight, a circus. Trump’s lies, interruptions and anger drove Biden out of his mind. Dialogue was impossible.

Nixon didn’t prepare for the 1960 debates, and neither did Gore in 2020. Both were victims of their own egos.

Trump understands that debates confirm rather than convince and his strategy is nothing more than to blow them off

Trump also has a huge ego, but if he doesn’t look studied it is because his strategy is not to convince but to explode. The 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton was the most watched in history – 84 million viewers – because people expected to see what Trump had to offer them. Clinton had prepared well to resist her opponent’s rude harassment, but she too had a bad result. Television rewards confrontation far more than reflection. The most ignorant and rude candidate can escape with two or three verbal barbs and a white smile, even if it is fake.

Nixon saw this immediately. He understood that television was not the appropriate medium for confronting ideas about the country’s future. He refused to debate in the 1968 and 1972 campaigns. Johnson did not want to do so in 1964 either because he was easily ahead of his opponent.

The League of Women Voters, a progressive organization, organized the presidential debates between 1976 and 1984. Republicans and Democrats then agreed to have them organized by a neutral commission. However, after the 2020 fiasco, Trump and Biden have left the commission and have reached an agreement on the format they will follow in this campaign, with today on CNN and September 10 on ABC.

Trump and Biden are facing each other again, older and weaker than in 2020

Four years have passed and both rivals are not only older but also weaker. Power has weakened Biden and justice has weakened Trump. They will certainly not have as much fun during tonight’s rematch as Lincoln and Douglas had 166 years ago.

The network will kill whatever they say live cruelty

At the top, powered by non-human bots, the winner will be declared.