How To Ace A Debate? Ask The Pros Behind The Politicians
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. And this is For the Record.
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MARTIN: We're talking presidential debates today. And in a few moments, we'll dig into the tactics used to win the stage. But first, NPR's Tamara Keith walks us through the highlights of last night's Democratic debate in New Hampshire.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Leading into last night's debate, the talk of the political universe was all about Bernie Sanders' campaign getting locked out of key voter files. That happened after Sanders' campaign staffers exploited a software bug and got into the Hillary Clinton campaign's voter data. It was the first topic of the night, but candidates dispensed with it quickly.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Does Secretary Clinton deserve an apology tonight?
BERNIE SANDERS: Yes, I apologize.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Secretary Clinton, do you accept?
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SANDERS: Not only do I apologize to Secretary Clinton - and I hope we can work together on an independent investigation from day one - I want to apologize to my supporters.
KEITH: Clinton's campaign had described the breach as egregious and alarming. But in the debate, Clinton said she appreciated the apology.
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HILLARY CLINTON: We should move on because I don't think the American people are all that interested in this. I think they're more interested in what we have to say about all the big issues facing us.
KEITH: One of those issues is terrorism. This was the first Democratic debate since the attack in San Bernardino. Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley had one of his most memorable moments of the night when he talked about trying to keep guns out of the hands of would-be terrorists.
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MARTIN O'MALLEY: ISIL videos - ISIL training videos are telling lone wolfs the easiest way to buy a combat assault weapon in America is at a gun show, and it's because of a flip flopping political approach of Washington that both of my two colleagues on this stage have represented there for the last 40 years.
SANDERS: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
O'MALLEY: We need common sense...
SANDERS: Let's calm down a little bit, Martin.
CLINTON: Yeah, let's get - let's tell - let's tell the truth, Martin.
O'MALLEY: I am telling the truth.
SANDERS: First off, let's make...
KEITH: The candidates spent significant time discussing the fight against ISIS. In past debates, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has seemed timid while talking about foreign policy. Last night he argued firmly for an international coalition led by Muslim nations.
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SANDERS: This is a war for the soul of Islam. The troops on the ground should not be American troops. They should be Muslim troops. I believe that countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar have got to step up to the plate.
KEITH: Something that came up more than once in the debate was regime change with both O'Malley and Sanders arguing that Clinton, as secretary of state, was too eager to oust dictators like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and Syria's Bashar al-Assad. This response from Clinton prompted a storm of critical tweets and emails from Republicans.
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CLINTON: We now finally are where we need to be. We have a strategy and a commitment to go after ISIS, which is a danger to us as well as the region.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Secretary?
CLINTON: And we finally have a U.N. Security Council resolution bringing the world together to go after a political transition.
SANDERS: Can I jump in?
CLINTON: If the United States does not lead, there's not another leader. There is a vacuum.
SANDERS: Can I just say this?
CLINTON: And we have to leave if we're going to be successful.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Senator Sanders, please.
KEITH: From start to finish, Clinton sought to position herself as the most electable candidate and the best equipped to take on Republicans in November. She repeatedly criticized Republican candidate Donald Trump by name. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, who many polls show leading in New Hampshire, painted himself as the more ideologically pure progressive candidate. And O'Malley had perhaps his most feisty and attention-grabbing performance, making the case, as he has before, that he represents a new generation. In the end though, it was Clinton who dropped a pop culture reference on this weekend that the new "Star Wars" movie hit theaters.
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CLINTON: Thank you, good night and may the force be with you.
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KEITH: It is entirely possible more Americans will have watched "Star Wars" on Saturday than this presidential debate.
MARTIN: That was NPR's Tamara Keith. By this point in the election season, we have seen our fair share of practiced one-liners. Candidates from both parties spend weeks preparing for these standoffs. Yes, they need to know the substance, but so much of a candidate's success in a debate is about style. For the Record today, the do's and don'ts of presidential debates.
BRETT O'DONNELL: My name is Brett O'Donnell. I'm a political communications consultant.
CHRIS JAHNKE: My name is Chris Jahnke. I'm a speech coach here in Washington, D.C.
MARTIN: Jahnke works with female Democratic candidates at all levels, and she helped prep Joe Lieberman for his vice presidential debate in 2000. Brett O'Donnell has been helping prep Senator Lindsey Graham and in past years has worked with George W. Bush and John McCain. And that's where we begin, with a story of how one now famous debate zinger came to be.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Welcome to Orlando in the heart of Central Florida. Tonight we're inside the Shingle Creek Resort.
MARTIN: Brett O'Donnell was there at that debate.
O'DONNELL: Back in 2007, when John McCain was running for president in a primary debate in Florida, he had been talking about a Woodstock earmark that Hillary Clinton had requested, which seemed to be excessive. And he kind of joked about it, said that Woodstock was a great experience and used a line which became memorialized for that cycle.
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JOHN MCCAIN: I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event.
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MCCAIN: I was - I was tied up at the time. But the fact is...
MARTIN: Did you plan that line?
O'DONNELL: We were sitting in prep before the debate itself on the day of the debate. And he said, you know, I was in prison during Woodstock. And we all said to him, you know, you should say that.
MARTIN: Now, part of why that line worked so well was that it came from the candidate himself. O'Donnell says debate prep is all about walking this fine line between preparedness and authenticity.
O'DONNELL: When I coach a candidate, we don't just preprogram everything. So those moments, they can't seem canned. They have to seem natural. And they have to come from the candidate's heart rather than their head.
MARTIN: Setting that aside, there is a ton of prep that goes into debates. Here are a few must-do's according to the pros. Number one...
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MARTIN: The details matter. Here's Chris Jahnke.
JAHNKE: Are you going to be standing or seated? Will there be a lectern or not? Will it be wooden or plexiglass? Do you want water? What type of microphone?
MARTIN: Brett O'Donnell says sometimes he even re-creates what the set will look like.
O'DONNELL: You know, a walk-through that they get for 15 minutes the day of the debate doesn't really do it because those lights are very, very bright. And I mean that literally and figuratively. The pressure of a presidential debate is beyond measure.
MARTIN: Number two...
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MARTIN: Don't make stuff up. But never say I don't know.
O'DONNELL: Answering a question with I don't know is, while it might be the honest answer, it's a devastating answer.
MARTIN: Number three...
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JAHNKE: Just like there is no crying in baseball, there should be no whining on the debate stage.
MARTIN: And usually the whining starts when candidates are demanding more time, which leads us to the fine art of interjection.
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JEB BUSH: I'm talking right now. I'm talking.
DONALD TRUMP: You can go back. You can go back.
BUSH: I'm talking.
TRUMP: You're not talking. You interrupted me, Jeb.
BUSH: September 30, you said it.
TRUMP: And you apologize, Jeb? No.
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CLINTON: You may be missing the forest for the trees.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Senator Sanders.
SANDERS: In my view...
CLINTON: You've got to look at all the other financial institutions.
SANDERS: In my view - you do not - I will give you a second.
O'DONNELL: In multi-person debates, candidates can disappear if they're not called on and if they don't have anything to offer on an idea. So if you disappear for 20 or 30 minutes in one of those debates, you're losing.
JAHNKE: And so what I suggest is everybody's got to come up for air. And when your opponent takes a breath, that's the moment to step in. And the best way to do that is to play off the moderator. Well, Anderson, let me add to that - or even better, Anderson, I disagree, and let me tell you why.
MARTIN: And then there's body language.
O'DONNELL: My very first candidate that I worked with was George W. Bush. And the very first debate in 2004 in Miami was a disaster for him on the body-language front. He laid on the podium. He sighed. And because of that, he was viewed as the loser of that first debate.
MARTIN: We've talked a lot about the don'ts of debating. Here is an important must-do.
JAHNKE: I have what's called the champion stance.
MARTIN: Chris Jahnke says there are a couple things you need to know about the champion stance.
JAHNKE: Number one, don't stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
MARTIN: I thought we were always supposed to do that.
JAHNKE: Well, most people do, but that allows you to sway. And on camera, you can appear as if you are speaking from the deck of the Titanic. And it may look like the boat's going down.
MARTIN: She says instead, put one foot in front of the other with weight on the back leg. And it may seem obvious, but stand up straight.
JAHNKE: And the best way to achieve that standing at a lectern is to rest your fingertips right on the edge because it positions your arms so that the shoulders will drop back. And you can see where I just did it right now, and you can see what happens with my shoulders. It improves my posture.
MARTIN: So that's how you're supposed to stand during a debate. But what about going on the attack? Both Jahnke and O'Donnell say when you are on offense, don't turn your head towards the person you're attacking.
JAHNKE: Because when you turn away from the camera, again it becomes something between you and this person. And you're losing, you know, direct eye contact with the audience at home.
O'DONNELL: When you look at someone, you're paying attention to them, which means that you can look subservient to them. And so in order to command that stage, you'll look straight out at the audience. Besides, you're never going to convince your opponent. So you don't look at them.
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MARTIN: Even after taking all those strategies into account - the posture, the eye contact, the way you're dressed, the message - everything comes down to how voters perceive the candidates in that moment on that stage.
O'DONNELL: They see election appearances. They see campaign events. They see television ads. All of those things, they know those are controlled. Those are staged. But debates, in their minds, are not staged. They're those places where candidates have to ask tough questions and think quickly on their feet.
MARTIN: And hopefully they're using the champion stance when they do it.
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MARTIN: That was Brett O'Donnell, president at O'Donnell and Associates, and Christine Jahnke. She's the president at Positive Communications.
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