There's been a lot of talk about whether these two older men are fired up enough for Thursday's presidential debate, but as a debate expert who has successfully advised candidates like Scott Walker (recall election), Carly Fiorina (Senator election), and several British politicians on debate tips and tactics, I suggest a different approach to debate preparation.
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden need to get some really funny professional comedians in the room, and they need to do it now.
While much of the preparation for a debate focuses on candidates becoming fluent on their policies and coming up with witty remarks to defeat their opponents, it's the moments when someone does something funny and makes a great point that stick in viewers' minds for days, weeks, months and years after the debate.
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Anyone who watched the 1984 debate between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale will remember the rather funny line where Reagan said that one should not use his opponent's youth and inexperience for political purposes. This was great because not only did it counter a major criticism of Reagan (his age), but it also made people laugh.
When people laugh with a candidate, they tend to associate that experience with something or someone that triggered that emotion. That's a positive thing.
Candidates, who are often major league nerds, don't necessarily realize this. Their advisors are often unaware of this because they're also major league nerds, policy wonks, or ideologues. And when they do realize, they worry that the candidate's jokes will be perceived as “inappropriate” or unbecoming of a future president. [insert prospective job title for the politician in question].
If a candidate accidentally says something interesting, their advisers want to block it and hope they stick to the interesting talking points they gleaned from think tank policy papers.
But that's not the case in other parts of America.
This was an issue for Marco Rubio in 2016. I've spoken to Rubio's advisors and major donors, and they genuinely believe that his “we're going to win again” moment during the 2016 New Hampshire debate was better and more dignified for him than the times during the same campaign when he was debating Donald Trump's hands, or his ability to do yoga in other contexts.
These people are wrong. Not only were these some of the few moments when Rubio captured the attention of a broad range of voters in the way that the media-savvy, “can’t take my eyes off him” Donald Trump has since he was about three years old, but it also made Rubio seem more normal and likeable to people who don’t wear pearl-studded cashmere two-pieces to high-dollar fundraisers. But these “normal people” actually vote, especially if they feel there are interesting enough people on the ballot.
Trump also fully understands the benefits of humor and, ironically for a man with an ego the size of Jupiter, has been quite self-deprecating throughout his career.
The old footage of Trump chasing a cross-dressed Rudy Giuliani in a motorboat was hilarious. Trump allowing Jimmy Fallon to mess with his hair was also funny (and went a long way in dispelling the notion that he must be wearing a wig). Trump's 2016 joke at the Al Smith dinner — “Before tonight's event, Hillary went to confession, and the priest asked her about her sins, and she said she couldn't remember” — understandably angered Clinton fans. But it was actually funny.
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Democrats were recently incensed when Trump referenced “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” and recited the line, “I've got old friends over for dinner,” but many of us hear the line from the movie and both wince and laugh at the same time, because double meanings often make us laugh.
The problem with Trump is that as he has fallen out of favor with Hollywood and the media — essentially America's “cool kids” — he has become more repulsive than ever and is now more “mean” than “funny.”
“Nasty” or even “harsh” is a word that is sometimes used in politics, especially when trying to land a crushing blow on an opponent in a debate.
For this very reason, when I worked as a communications consultant for former Texas Governor Rick Perry's 2012 presidential campaign, I once told a senior staffer to stop all debate preparation, have Perry get on the phone with Rudy Giuliani, and have him write down and memorize every nasty, harsh thing Rudy would say about Mitt Romney. I then advised Perry to repeat it all at the next debate. (Unfortunately, this advice was generally treated as a joke by my fellow advisors, but it was never a joke.)
What really matters is to hit your opponent as well as possible, ideally keeping him off balance and forcing him into mistakes he never thought he'd make.
But humor is more effective even if the joke turns out to be no laughing matter.
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Speaking of Romney, just ask him. Aside from spending all of 2012 as the goofier of the two candidates struggling to get laughs, neither Romney nor we, nor Barack Obama, will ever forget the line Obama made about Romney's stance on Russia: “The 1980s are calling for a foreign policy revival.” A wonderful irony.
Everyone laughed at the time, including those of us who were completely with Romney and against Obama, and of course, even if Romney wasn't funny, it's still memorable because he was totally right.
But ideally, to win a debate, a candidate needs to have both.
There are a lot of doubly-averse voters out there, so making sure Trump and Biden are seen as at least one side is smart, and for most Americans, being funny is probably not a difficult goal to achieve, much less being right.
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