Posted on 09/27/2012 3:39:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
There was only one presidential debate in 1980 between challenger Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter. Just two days before the Oct. 28 debate, Carter was eight points ahead in the Gallup poll. A week after the debate, he lost to Reagan by nearly ten percentage points.
Reagan's debate quip, "There you go again," reminded voters of Carter's chronic crabbiness. Even more devastating was Reagan's final, direct question to American voters: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" No one, it seemed, could muster a "Yes!"
Yet there was more to the 1980 campaign than the final game-changing debate rhetoric -- and some of the details are relevant to 2012.
Carter conceded that he could not run on his economic record -- not with a high "misery index' driven by high inflation, high interest rates, high gas prices and high unemployment. The lengthy Iranian hostage crisis finally began to highlight rather than mask Carter's anemic domestic leadership. Without a record to defend, Carter instead pounded Reagan as too ill-informed and too dangerous to be president.
The negative campaigning had not only worked but also seemed to get under Reagan's skin. He kept going off topic while committing serial gaffes: He claimed that California had eliminated its smog; that trees polluted as much as cars, that Alaska had more known oil than Saudi Arabia, and that new evidence cast doubt upon Darwin's theory of evolution. Reagan got clumsily bogged down in distracting controversies about everything from Taiwan and the Vietnam War to the Ku Klux Klan and the stealth bomber program.
Reagan fumbled facts and numbers constantly, as the nitpicking Carter blasted him for implausibly promising lower taxes, balanced budgets and vastly higher defense spending all at once. Throughout late summer, Reagan could not tap widespread voter dissatisfaction with Carter's disastrous economic and foreign policy and his off-putting sanctimoniousness.
Even more unfortunate for Reagan, Republican Congressman John Anderson announced a third-party candidacy. Anderson and a fourth candidate, Libertarian candidate Ed Clark, eventually combined to siphon off more than 6.5 million votes, most of which probably otherwise would have gone to Reagan.
A desperate Reagan also was having difficulty getting Carter out of the Rose Garden to debate. Finally, in late October, Reagan capitulated to Carter's preconditions and met him one time, face to face, without Anderson present.
In other words, until the very last week of the campaign, Reagan had an uphill fight. True, he eventually won a landslide victory in the Electoral College (489 to 49) and beat Carter handily in the popular vote. Yet Reagan only received a 51 percent majority.
What had saved Reagan from a perfect storm of negative factors -- gaffes, additional conservative candidates on the ballot, a single debate and a biased media -- was not just the debate. Voter turnout was relatively low at only 53 percent. If Reagan's conservative base was united and energized, Carter's proved divided and indifferent.
Reagan also won about a dozen (mostly Southern) states by less than 4 percent. Had just a few hundred thousand votes gone the other way in those states, the race might have been far closer than the eventual electoral and popular tallies indicated.
What does 1980 tell us about 2012? Barack Obama, like Carter, can run neither on his dismal four-year stewardship of the economy nor on his collapsing Middle East policy.
Instead, Obama, as Carter did, must stamp his opponent as too inexperienced, too out of touch and too uncaring to be president. While Carter was a dull speaker and Obama, in contrast, possesses teleprompter eloquence, there is no evidence that Obama is any better a debater than was Carter.
Turnout will matter. Challenger Mitt Romney, like Reagan, is said to have the more fired-up base, but the demography of the electorate is far different than it was 30 years ago and now may favor Obama. There are no third-party candidates to skew the result, but the polls seem just as volatile, as Obama, like Carter, usually surges ahead for a while, only to fall back to even in tortoise-and-the-hare style.
Unless there is a war abroad or a financial crisis at home -- such as the financial trauma that helped the struggling Obama surge past John McCain in mid-September 2008 -- the race between an unapologetic liberal and a confessed conservative will go down to the last week.
The winner probably won't be decided by old video clips, gaffes or even campaign money, but by turnout and the October debates -- depending on whether incumbent Obama comes across as a petulant Carter and challenger Romney appears an upbeat Reagan. As in 1980, voters want a better president -- but they first have to be assured he's on the ballot.
We can analyze it to death, but the main thing is - massive voter turnout to vote out the usurper is what it takes this November!
Massive voter turnout to destroy their chance to steal the election!
Spread the words to the ‘leaners’, the Independents, the undecided - vote out the usurper/traitor obozo!
Our lives, our country depend on it!
True but I'm now starting to conclude he's incapable of doing that. I don't think he has it in him to blunt the types of attacks on him that Obama's making. First and foremost is that Bush's mess is still being cleaned up and Romney's going back to Bush. He has no ability to articulate exactly why Obama's wrong. I get the feeling he doesn't think there's any point in trying. In fact I just heard on the radio that Romney seemed to back away from his tax cut proposal in an Ohio campaign stop.
And it can be as simple as: "Mr. Obama's theory requires that we believe we have 23 million unemployed because we don't pay enough taxes. Americans are smarter than that."
Romney can also easily point out that lower taxes and less regulation resulted in the longest economic growth - into the Clinton years - when implemented by Reagan.
Anyway, I believe it can be done, I've heard Romney do it. Doing it right at the right time in a debate will be something to look for.
thanks for your reply.
Well it’s not really as simple as that but that is exactly the type of response he gives and will give in the debates.
That doesn’t address the question of why exactly the recovery is so bad - if there even is a recovery at this point. Nor does it point out USING NUMBERS the fact that it is terrible. It doesn’t explain why Obama’s at fault. It doesn’t challenge the FALSE idea that there is some Bush mess that Obama’s still cleaning up. In polls I believe more people still blame Bush for the bad economy than Obama. And it only indirectly disputes the ridiculous idea that Bush’s tax cuts caused the problem.
That is in fact a LOSER’S response. Which I’m starting to conclude is what Romney is.
I don’t agree. “Not because we’re not taxed enough” is a paraphrase of Reagan. By no means is it a full explanation of economic theory of the free market though.
I do agree that much more should have been done by now to refute the meme that Bush economic policies (instead of mortgage devaluation by government action) caused the crash.
I don’t know if it is too late to counter this. And, I think it may well be a mistake to refer back to Bush at all; but rather speak common sense on freedom and free markets.
thanks for your reply.
He doesn’t have to refer to Bush by name. But he has to dispute that there’s still some mess he’s cleaning up. And he doesn’t even have to go back to the cause of the mortgage mess.
This is what he could say:
“There was something that needed to cleaned up, the huge bad mortgage debt owned by financial institutions. However, whatever you think of them, the bailouts (TARP etc.) did clean that up more than 3 years ago. Further, tax cuts didn’t cause trillions in worthless mortgages to be lent out - the idea is idiotic. Obama’s not cleaning anything up, he’s actually making a new and bigger mess.” Then run through the numbers like plummeting household income, continuing high first time unemployment claims, 3 million more people in poverty, the labor participation rate down to levels from 30 years ago etc. etc. Lot’s of numbers.
See how that works? But Romney will not say anything like that. He’ll give essentially a one sentence explanation (”I don’t think higher taxes will help the economy”).
Not according to that (well 2%). He would have an excellent change if he knew how to articulate things in a detailed forceful way. He has “Republican disease” though where you can’t explain anything in any detail that people can understand, and you can’t forcefully attack Democrat premises. He’s just counting on people wanting to fire Obama and he has to just be not offensive. So 2% may be about right.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.