Those who tuned in to watch the debates between the two US presidential candidates will have been struck by how much the Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, rose above expectations. Mr Romney, who dived in the polls after he was secretly recorded writing off “47 per cent” of the electorate, seemed reasonable and moderate. President Barack Obama, who has a professorial and didactic air when talking about policy, chose not to pin Mr Romney down on his evasions about his policy platform. Thus Mr Romney could keep his message positive and upbeat. This will only have helped the former governor of Massachusetts with undecided voters — and, indeed, the first polls seem to suggest that he received a significant bump, of around two per cent, in closely contested swing states like Virginia, Ohio and Florida.
The Obama campaign, however, will be able to draw some comfort from history. America’s presidential debates, while celebrated as an example of transparency about policy and personality, in fact have made very little difference in any race. Even the most powerful legend surrounding the debates — that they pushed the energetic and youthful John Fitzgerald Kennedy ahead of an unshaven and shifty Richard Nixon in 1960 — has little enough basis in fact. Before the debates, Kennedy was polling 50.5 per cent of likely voters; after them, he was polling 50.6. Indeed, in no major race has the “winner” of the debates pulled ahead if he was trailing earlier. Most obviously, the Democrat John Kerry, in 2004, outperformed incumbent Republican George W Bush pretty handily. Yet Mr Bush held on to his lead and was returned to office.
The odd thing about the debates is that, even while they are supposed to be substantive policy discussions, they in fact serve a very different purpose. They cut through the media blather and scripted, paid-for commercial clutter of American political campaigns, permitting voters to get a sense of whether the narrative about the candidates’ personalities that they have so far been fed feels right or not. This is why, even if Mr Kerry won on substance in 2004, he did not correct his image as a staid, and slightly superior aristocrat up against an earthy, approachable and decisive George W Bush. Al Gore, in 2000, presented an image of one who was changeable and slightly pedantic; and the elder George Bush, in 1992, played to the caricature of him being impatient and out-of-touch when he famously looked at his watch even as the charismatic Bill Clinton wandered the audience “sharing their pain”. And Ronald Reagan always showed up his opponents as a little too eager in comparison to the laid-back, easy-smiling ex-actor. This is perhaps why Mr Obama’s team might worry — because, in the first debate, the participants played against their type. Mr Obama showed little of 2008’s soaring rhetoric. And Mr Romney came across as an earnest technocrat rather than the deeply ambitious, greedy and uncaring plutocrat that voters were led to expect.
The president has been bolstered since by surprisingly strong jobs numbers, and it is never wise to underestimate his ability to build a personal connection with Americans. And Mr Romney has been hammered by the media since the debate on the facts and figures he quoted, which means he might be more rattled in the next editions. Thus the next few debates might play to type, and overall might have the minimal effect on the results that history suggests they should. Yet, if ever that trend were to be broken, it would be this year.