White paper on televised political campaign debates.

The Racine Group *

PREFACE

In the Fall of 2000, with the Bush-Gore debates freshly in memory, the American Forensic Association's Publications Committee and the National Communication Association's Research Board launched a collaborative initiative to facilitate greater cooperation in research on televised presidential campaign debates and to promote and make more usable the diverse range of existing Communication research on the subject. The project convened a select group of Communication scholars representing both the humanities and social sciences. Their research interests ran the gamut from critical analyses of rhetorical strategies in specific debates to the trans-campaign effects of debates on such matters as voting behavior, image formation, and attitude change, and from the role that the media play in shaping the debates and their interpretations to the way that the debates, beyond their function in campaigns, influence general conceptions of democratic norms, cultural practices, and perceptions of leadership.

During the summer, participants circulated position papers concerning the state, implications, and resource needs of Communication scholarship on presidential debates, and, in September of 2001, they arrived in southeastern Wisconsin and northeastern Illinois. Approximately half of the group contributed to a public program held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. This program was endorsed by the Wisconsin Humanities Council, the local League of Women Voters, and the Edison Initiative, as well as UWM's College of Letters and Science and Communication Department; it subsequently was broadcast on public radio station WUWM. Approximately half of the participating scholars gave presentations at a colloquium at Northwestern University sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies. On September 21, the two sub-groups converged at the Racine Marriott, halfway between Milwaukee and Evanston, for two days of intensive work. The goal was to produce a White Paper that surveyed the current state of Communicat ion research on televised presidential campaign debates, secured a foundation for coordinating and promoting the discipline's under-appreciated, but wide-ranging contributions, and suggested means of expanding the scope and enhancing the quality of this body of scholarship. Primary audiences anticipated for this White Paper were those outside our discipline who have a stake in better understanding the communicative dimensions of such debates and those inside the field who are interested in developing new research or teaching projects.

Preliminary results of the Racine conference were presented at a public panel at the 2001 NCA convention in Atlanta. Revisions were made in light of the ensuing discussion with the audience, and further editing and discussion produced the final product printed below. This White Paper is not definitive but is a first attempt at codifying, encouraging, and stressing the importance of Communication research--and particularly cooperative, multi-methodological Communication research--on televised campaign debates. We intend to follow this paper with a presentation/reaction session at the 2002 NCA Convention in New Orleans.

INTRODUCTION

Because they command the attention of the public, the media, and the candidates, televised political campaign debates have become a permanent aspect of America's political landscape. The first nationally broadcast debate, the Kennedy-Nixon encounter of 1960, attracted an audience nearly equivalent to the final game of the 1959 World Series, which to that point had been the most watched event in television history. (1) The debates between Carter and Ford in 1976, the next set of televised debates, were viewed by well over eighty percent of the television audience, (2) and presidential debates invariably command the largest audience for any campaign event. (3) Moreover, the news media make presidential debates a centerpiece of their campaign coverage. For example, in 1996, two-thirds of television news stories during the debate period mentioned the debates and almost one fourth of network news lead stories featured them. (4) Especially in close elections, debates may stimulate interest in the campaign generally and in the debates themselves, with the audience growing in size and interest as the sequence of encounters continues. (5) According to Jamieson and Birdsell, "when debates are announced, movement in the polls slows; in anticipation, the electorate suspends its willingness to be swayed by ads and news. Here is the opportunity to see the candidates side by side, unfiltered and unedited." (6) We may be skeptical whether the debates are really "unfiltered," given the painstaking briefings of the candidates and the tendency to adhere to pre-fabricated scripts, but these exchanges certainly are more spontaneous and revealing than the spot commercials and stump speeches that, for most voters, provide the only other direct opportunity to observe the candidates. (7) Thus, while journalists and scholars display varying degrees of cynicism about the debates, few deny that viewers find them useful, and almost no one doubts that they play an important role in national campaigns.

Although there was some doubt about this point because of the hiatus in presidential debates between 1960 and 1976, televised campaign debates now seem destined to continue. (8) The revival of the debates in 1976 and 1980 established expectations strongly reinforced in 1984 when incumbent Ronald Reagan agreed to debate Walter Mondale, even though Mondale trailed in the polls and Reagan seemed to gain no strategic advantage and indeed to place himself at some risk in making this decision. (9) In all campaigns since 1984, debates have occurred, and they have become firmly established as a part of the cycle of election events. A candidate now could not refuse to debate without disappointing public expectations and paying a heavy political cost.

Owing to the durability and importance they have achieved in our political culture, televised campaign debates demand and deserve careful scholarly inquiry, and the discipline of Communication is ideally situated philosophically, historically, and methodologically to play a leading role in such scholarship. The discipline traces its origins back to the theory and practice of debate in classical civilization; it includes argumentation as a major element in its teaching and research and has long served as the chief sponsor of intercollegiate debate. Campaign debates have interest for scholars in almost every sub-field of the discipline, and at the same time, the range of interests and expertise that the discipline can bring to bear on the debates provides an appropriately broad and diverse ground for scholarly work. In fact, as this report demonstrates, the discipline already has produced an impressive body of solid research. Unfortunately, however, the significance of this work is not adequately recognized, an d the scholarship lacks the systematic, long-term coordination needed to do full justice to the subject.

Although it is not widely recognized or cited outside of our own literature, the discipline has produced an impressive body of diverse and substantial scholarship on televised debates. This scholarship nicely demonstrates how the breadth of the field--its incorporation of several approaches to research--can function constructively when different research protocols are directed toward a single, relatively clear object of study. Thus, the disciplinary literature encompasses traditional studies of rhetoric and argumentation as well as social scientific work grounded in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. We have produced studies of the strategic dynamics of debates in relationship to their historical contexts, (10) studies that compare local and national contests or national primary and general campaign debates, (11) studies of measurable audience effects (including the learning of information, image formation, and voting choices), (12) and studies of how viewers make use of televised debates. (13) Other recent Communication research focuses on visual or nonverbal aspects of the debates, (14) on the debates' relational dimensions, (15) on the ways that the debates reaffirm or subvert norms and assumptions about democracy and how they socialize auditors to democratic values (independently of the outcome of any particular debate), (16) on how lay viewers interpret the debates within specific cultural and gender expectations, (17) on viewers' perceptions of relative importance of various issues, the relative desirability of candidates' issue positions, and the confidence in their projected voting choice, (18) and on the media's ability to affect interpretation and evaluation of debates. (19)

In addition to theoretical inquiry, research in the discipline also has led to important practical applications. For example, Myles Martel's groundbreaking book, Political Campaign Debates: Images, Strategies, and Tactics, offers a comprehensive, research-based strategic guide for political campaigns involving debates. (20) And, with respect to policy studies, we have made a notable contribution through studies of debate format. At the request of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Communication scholars conducted an extensive focus group study that produced a number of interesting conclusions and that strongly influenced the Commission in its decision to use a single moderator format for the presidential debates in 1996 and 2000.21 Future studies that bear both on practice and policy seem natural projects for scholars in our discipline and also present opportunities for us to put our research to good use.

Participants in political debates long have recognized the expertise available in the discipline, but they sometimes tend to narrow and compartmentalize it. Candidates tap us for strategic advice about...