WASHINGTON — The science of preparing for a presidential debate has come a long way since John F. Kennedy sat at a kitchen table in his shirt sleeves with a pile of 3-by-5 cards and a couple of aides lobbing questions.
Nothing today, not even the color of a necktie, is left to chance.
Al Gore, known as a ferocious debater, spent three hours at a Los Angeles studio Tuesday rehearsing for tonight's match with Bill Bradley. Last month in New York, the vice president jogged around in the basement of the Sheraton Hotel and took a Harlem stage, as an aide put it, "pumped."
George W. Bush will cut short his campaign appearances to be briefed by his circle of experts before Thursday's GOP debate; then the Texas governor will likely go for a run and take a nap.
Haggling Over Smallest Details
In the hours leading up to pre-primary contests in Los Angeles, campaign negotiators will haggle over everything from the angle of the camera to the shape of the chairs to the color of the filter--red? blue? yellow?--that covers the lights. Stand-ins are rehearsing to play the opponent. Aides are concocting prepackaged zingers ready for hurling at first opportunity. Wives are standing by to make last-minute inspections for unruly strands of hair or bits of lunch left in the teeth.
So intense is the scrutiny of these televised match-ups--and this primary season has seen more of them than any other--that many agree even a debater of Abraham Lincoln's legendary stature would struggle under the glare of today's hot lights and high expectations.
"What debates have become today is part of the hazing of running for the office of president of the United States," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political science professor at Claremont Graduate University. "The most important strategy--particularly in California because it's bigger and more media-driven--is to do no harm."
Little did Kennedy or his rival, Richard Nixon, know it when they took part in that first live televised debate in 1960, but they were standing on the precipice of a seminal event that would shape modern campaigning into the next century. What has most endured from that contest is not what was said, but the flickering black-and-white image of the contestants as they said it: a pasty, sweating Nixon, in pain with a leg injury, toe to toe with a robust, youthful, confident Kennedy.
