Blue Streak on The Debates

I like reading Susan Estrich's column. I fairly consistently disagree with her, but I really like that she stands up for what she thinks is right - no matter which side of the aisle is in the wrong, and that she's truly convicted in her opinions without being a jerk about it.

She served as the head of Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign in '88 and has written a really good piece on what Obama and McCain (and Biden and Palin) need to accomplish during the debates: Do No Harm.

I really liked all of the inside stories about many of the past presidential debates. On the Nixon/Kennedy debate, she writes:

It was not what Nixon said but how he looked that cost him that debate and very possibly, the presidency.

The story is about how that happened. Hewitt, who produced the debate for television, had hired a makeup artist to do makeup for both candidates. Backstage, in advance of the debate, he introduced her to the two contenders, and asked them if they wanted her to do their makeup. “No,” Jack Kennedy immediately said.

What could Nixon do? It was one of those moments, man to man. If Kennedy was going to turn down makeup, so would Nixon.

So there was Nixon, with his shiny 5 o’clock shadow, looking vaguely sinister in the unforgiving light of television. And Kennedy? When he came out, Hewitt immediately noted that he was, indeed, wearing makeup. He’d put it on himself. He carried it with him for TV.

...So what counts at debates, other than looking tall, wearing makeup, and getting a good suit?

First and foremost, like the Hippocratic oath, the imperative of all debates is not to make a mistake. Don’t get something wrong. Don’t suggest, if you’re president of the United States, as Gerald Ford was in 1976, that you don’t know that a country (it was Poland) is Communist. Don’t suggest, if you’re trying to prove that you are as ready as the former vice president to be commander-in-chief (as Senator Gary Hart was in 1984), that you’ll look inside the windows of a suspicious plane before deciding whether to issue the order to shoot it down.