We all know how much in denial Trump has been about the causes of his performance. He points his finger at multiple perpetrators but he is faultless. Of course. Predictable. No introspection.
But then Matthew Dowd’s tweet inspired this diary.
Trump is like a pitcher who had a bad outing & responds by saying he didn't hit enough batters. Needs honestly that he lost to fix mechanics
Though Trump’s debate performance has been widely reviewed as the worst performance in modern times, I haven’t seen any historical comparisons of his responses in the aftermath of his debate debacle.
I have personal memory only of the debates from 1976 forward. Every candidate made gaffes and individual mistakes, but I think there are only two candidates prior to Trump who tended to fail an entire debate: Reagan in 1984 and Obama in 2012.
We know how Obama responded because it’s recent history. How about the post-debate reactions of other candidates or their campaigns? I only looked at the most significant mistakes for each election (IMHO and recollection) although a thorough review of all the candidate aftermath reactions to debate mistakes might be an interesting read.
1976: Carter against incumbent Ford
Three nationally televised debates failed to have much effect on the polls, but Ford made a bad gaffe of his own, claiming, "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe." Hounded mercilessly by the press in the days that followed, he stubbornly stood by what he had said, and the jokes about him intensified.
By letting this this issue fester, I remember that it undermined Ford’s overall credibility. He was smarter than that and I can only imagine personal pride influenced him to not renege on his statement
1980: Reagan against incumbent Carter
As the two [candidates] went to their podiums, Carter aide Vernon Jordan became immediately alarmed. “I didn’t like what I saw,” Jordan later recalled. “Reagan looked relaxed, smiling, robust; the President, erect, lips tight, looking like a coiled spring… an over-trained boxer, too ready for the bout.” Each time Carter hurled a verbal barb, Reagan chuckled, and with a gentle toss of the head, remarked, “There you go again.”
Later, Carter complained that Reagan, the former B-movie actor, had “memorized” his best “lines, and he pushes a button and they come out.” He was confident that “the issues are more important than the performance.” He was wrong...
This was cringe-worthy when I watched it. But I didn’t cringe at Carter’s performance; I cringed at Reagan’s cheap scripted line that would play well to the audience. Instead of being defensive about his performance, I wished that Carter had tried to use humor to deflect criticism.
1984: Mondale against incumbent Reagan
Reagan's closing statement, which is objectively more of a ramble than anything Obama did on the Denver stage [against Romney].
This was bad. Reagan knew it was bad. "As soon as he left the stage," reports Lou Cannon in President Reagan, "Reagan confessed to [adviser Stu] Spencer that he had flopped." … [W]hen Mondale left the stage, he confided to an aide that "This guy is gone" -- as in mentally not all there. Two days after the debate, RNC Chairman Paul Laxalt held a press conference admitting that Reagan had blown it, but "it wasn't because of any physical or mental deficiency... he was brutalized by a briefing process that didn't make any sense."
This doesn’t reference Reagan’s whimsical drive down the Pacific Highway ramble. I couldn’t find a reaction to that ramble that occurred in the second of two debates. This is about a closing statement ramble in the first debate that appears at the link. I remember this because it opened up questions about Reagan’s mental competence perhaps for the first time on the national scene. Reagan lost seven points in the polls after this ramble.
Though Reagan and Republicans didn’t fess up to Reagan’s mental capacities, they did own up to his performance. And they addressed it—sort of. By scripting another cheap zinger in the second debate that deflected concerns about his age. I thoroughly disliked the way Reagan was a scripted president.
1988: Dukakis against incumbent VP Bush
The question wasn't hard. "Governor," CNN's Bernard Shaw asked, "if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"
It was an easy opportunity for Michael Dukakis, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, to sound human. But he whiffed and discussed his ironclad opposition to the death penalty. …
What he didn't do in his two-minute response is talk about this wife, Kitty. The next day, Kitty Dukakis called the question shocking and inappropriate. Dukakis later admitted that he made a mistake by answering such a raw question so clinically.
He admitted his mistake. He still lost the election but I give him credit for owning up.
1992 and 1996
Clinton versus incumbent Bush and Dole versus incumbent Dole. Other than Perot’s role, those were forgettable debates for me so I have nothing to say about them.
2000: Bush against incumbent VP Gore
Watching the debate, we were winning on substance, we were winning on who was really fit to be president. But Gore was also sighing and reacting to Bush, and there were lots of reaction shots. It was somewhat inexplicable — as if the things that Gore had been told not to do became his to-do list.
That first debate took on an even larger life five days later when “Saturday Night Live” did a devastating spoof where the Gore character wouldn’t stop talking and reacting and saying “lockbox.” ... “We had to try to laugh about it. But really, it hurt us. ... The second debate was a tremendous overcorrection by Gore. He kept agreeing with Bush, and Bush just clearly won.”
In the aftermath of the first debate, Gore’s campaign admitted that the problem was on Gore and tried to correct but failed.
2004 and 2008
Kerry versus Bush, and Obama versus McCain. Though mistakes were made, nothing of lasting historical significance comes to mind.
2012: Romney against incumbent Obama.
No need to rehash the details on the first debate where Obama was unprepared. I want to focus on the aftermath:
The cacophony of Democratic criticism of Obama's performance was intense, and his advisers were blunt in their assessment of his performance. The only way out of the hole he had created was practice.
After watching a videotape of his debate performance, Mr. Obama began calling panicked donors and supporters to reassure them he would do better. “This is on me,” the president said, again and again.
And we know how Obama turned it around.
Final thoughts
My intention isn’t to look at historical precedents to predict whether Trump can turn it around. Anything would be better; as someone said, he could only do worse in the second debate if he pulled down his pants and mooned the crowd. Which, i dunno, it seemed he came close to doing that verbally in the first debate when he bragged about his “restraint” instead.
Instead, I wanted to compare these precedents to Trump and his campaign’s abject denial that he caused his own problems. He’s not alone in that other candidates have placed external blame on their problems.
This review has obvious revealed how the bar of acceptable debate performance has plunged just since 2000 and Gore’s sighs. And in 1992, Bush briefly checked his watch and was pounced for showing that he was out of touch with that transgression.
Per my intentions, I think this review reveals that Trump and his campaign have a new historical precedent in persisting to claim that he did well when he absolutely did not. I didn’t note that other candidates denounced the debate reality so publicly and vehemently as Trump has done.