Almost Every President Loses the First Debate. Can Trump Break The Curse?
By: Logan Phillips
Date: September 22nd, 2020
Mitt Romney surged ahead of Barack Obama for the first and only time in the 2012 election after the President suffered from a disastrous first debate in Denver. It likely felt like a historic moment for many watching at the time, but Barack Obama has plenty of company among his predecessors.
There have been seven sitting Presidents to debate their challenger, and all but six of them lost their debate so thoroughly that it either cemented their defeat or cost them ground in the polls. Carter failed to match Ronald Reagan and his TV level charisma in their one and only debate, and lost in a landslide only a week later. Reagan himself got rocked by Walter Mondale four years later, briefly making the race competitive. In 1984. George H.W. Bush seemed out of touch with American’s struggles compared to Clinton.
In 2020, the curse of the bad first debate looms large for President Trump, who hopes he can break the trend and outmatch Joe Biden with a performance that can narrow his deficit in the national polls. Our forecast shows the President is now behind by about 7.5-8%. Viewership is certain to be quite high, in an election that has had far less unscripted moments then most.
The biggest pitfall that trips up Presidents is that they come in unprepared. Trump could easily do the same – as he’s far more comfortable winging it and trusting his instincts then putting in the hard work of preparation. The problem is that debates are so fundamentally different then the normal duties that a President deals with, and their skills are rarely as sharp after four years without practice.
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In contrast, Joe Biden participated in eleven debates and dozens of town halls. It clearly made a difference. Biden may have bottomed out in his first debate of the 2020 Primary, but he got much better, and was giving crisp and compelling answers by the end.
Photo Credit: SRA Jessica M. Fatheree / Public domain
Trump may not be fond of Bill Clinton, but he’d be wise to take a page out of his playbook. He’s the only President to win his first debate, and it helped him secure a landslide victory. Clinton cleared his schedule for several days before the big day, and set up debate prep at his family home in Chappaqua, New York.
His advisors ran him through around-the clock practice drills, peppering him with hard questions and grilling him when his answers were too long or not decisive enough. He ran through mock-debate sessions, with Senator George Mitchell playing the role of Bob Dole. The campaign team tried to throw Clinton off guard at every opportunity, even sneaking in a surprise microphone glitch, the kind that once caught President Gerald Ford so off guard in his debate with Jimmy Carter that he remained frozen in his seat.
Trump should follow suit. Tens of millions of Americans will be watching, and it will provide the President with his best opportunity to claw way back into the race. Axios reported back in early August that Trump was going to be meeting with his debate team every ten days.
However, the New York Post reports that Trump’s been telling his aides he will come into the debate with zero practice, confident in both his own skills and that Biden will destroy himself. Perhaps Trump will get lucky, but if he actually shrugs off all preparation, he’s far more likely to be yet another incumbent thrown asunder by overconfidence.
