E-mail a friendRyan Lizza
original airdate October 6, 2008
Ryan Lizza's work has been called "required reading" for those interested in the American political scene. He's covering the '08 presidential campaign and national politics as Washington correspondent for The New Yorker and was previously The New Republic's political correspondent and senior editor. He also worked on an Emmy-winning documentary for PBS' Frontline at the Center for Investigative Reporting. Lizza's articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Monthly.
Journalist explains how Sen. Obama won the post-debate spin wars after the first presidential debate with Sen. McCain. (3:39)
Full interview. (9:55)
Ryan Lizza
Tavis: John McCain and Barack Obama will face off again tomorrow night in the second of their three debates for a preview and a look ahead to the final month of this campaign. I'm joined tonight by Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent for "The New Yorker" and former senior editor at "The New Republic." He joins us tonight from Washington. Ryan, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Ryan Lizza: Nice to be here, Tavis.
Tavis: It seems like ages ago now, but your thoughts, before we go forward, as to the first debate? What did you make of it, personally?
Lizza: Well, when that debate ended I was saying to folks I could have made a case for Obama winning that debate, I could have made a case for McCain winning that debate. I thought it was close on points, and so I think what happens when you watch a debate and you don't have a clear and decisive winner the moment it's over, what usually happens is the winner is determined in these post-debate spin wars, and I think that was true more for this debate than most, just because we didn't have one of those knock-out punches, we didn't have a clip that was played over and over again on the cable shows.
And I think what has happened in the time since the first debate, a couple of things - one, the environment has been more favorable to Obama, and he's been doing better in the polls. And I think that has sort of massaged opinions of how he did in that first debate. And I think overall, what most voters took away was more about style than substance, and the style, at least that I took away, and I think this is almost the conventional wisdom at this point, is that McCain looked almost erratic in that first debate. He was on the attack - he wouldn't look - very odd - he literally wouldn't look at Obama.
And Obama was sort of calm and cool and didn't attack McCain very much, and I think for a lot of voters who were watching this debate to get sort of one final look at Obama, the undecided voters who aren't sure about this guy, I think he probably came across as a very reassuring person in that debate and McCain came across as, again, a little bit erratic.
So I would say that Obama probably won the post-debate war, and therefore debate one goes to Obama.
Tavis: How important is it - you started to hint at this a moment ago - how important, Ryan, in the world that we live today, to win those post-debate wars?
Lizza: It really is so much about that, Tavis. It's all about the days after the debate, and people's opinions get settled in the conversation, public and private, that happens when they start reflecting on the debate. And I think a lot of what voters came away with from that debate was not any single, defining policy discussion that the two people had, although they certainly debated all the issues.
But I think at the end of the day, the voters that haven't made up their mind in this final month - and remember, it's not a big percentage of voters out there; most of them made up their mind. So these guys are just going after those final 10 or 15 percent of undecided voters, and those voters, a lot of the pollsters will tell you, are - they're looking for a reason to vote for Obama.
These are voters that don't like the direction of the country, they're voters that are unhappy with the Bush administration, unhappy with Republicans - if they were happy with Republicans, they wouldn't be undecided; they would be McCain voters, right? And they just have some reservations about this new guy, this challenger, Obama.
So I think the Obama campaign strategy for these undecided voters is they just want him to be reassuring, they want him to be steady, they don't want him to be flitting from issue to issue or from a tack to tack attack. They just want him to be a calming, reassuring presence, and that's what I thought he did in that debate.
Tavis: What does it say, then, to your point, what does it say then, Ryan, about the American electorate, and specifically about those undecided voters that you just talked about a moment ago - what does it say about them that what we're talking about now is really style more than substance, that Obama came across sure that he could at least handle himself in a foreign policy debate, that he wasn't Bambi, he didn't let McCain push him around, necessarily.
But the fact that you and I are having a conversation more about style than about substance, what does that say about those undecided voters and what they're looking for?
Lizza: Well, it says that at the end of a campaign - look, this campaign's been going on over two years, and folks like you and me have been paying attention with a lot of detail for a really long time. A lot of Americans don't have time to pay much attention, and they don't really tune in till the end. The pollsters sometimes call these folks low information voters.
And the truth is that a lot of these voters don't make up their mind on any one single policy position - they make up their mind - they try and judge the sort of character of the candidates, and whether they'd be comfortable with this person making decisions on their behalf. And that's why I don't think - it sounds kind of superficial to talk so much about the style of that debate versus the substance, but the last few presidential elections show that these final, undecided voters make up their mind on sort of - in a sort of gut way based on impressions more than policy.
Tavis: I thought that both of them, quite frankly, kind of danced around - and I understood it strategically; I may not agree with it, but I understood it politically and strategically - I thought they both kind of danced around the bailout plan, and that was because at the time, we didn't know whether there was going to be one, necessarily. We didn't know what it was going to be, we of course know since that the House, first go-around, voted the thing down.
I suspect in this debate tomorrow night they're going to have to come more correct. They got to come more honest on these economic issues, one, given that this debate tomorrow night is not just about foreign policy, number one; and number two, given the format of the debate - it's a town hall kind of format. So I suspect this economic issue is going to come up, and they had better come with it. Your take on that?
Lizza: Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more about the first debate. I thought that the first half-hour of that debate, where they discussed the bailout, you were watching that - you wouldn't have known that this country was in the middle of one of the worst financial crises in history. I thought they were a little detached from what was going on that day.
Now you're right - a lot has happened since then. This legislation has moved through Congress, it's now failed in the House. It could be revived. And I think since it's a town hall they're going to be responding to individual voters' questions. A lot of it will be about explaining this very complicated financial crisis in terms that an average person can understand. I think one of the reasons that public opinion turned against the first bailout package is that a lot of Americans don't understand why this bailout package would actually help them.
They think it's just $700 million for rich Wall Street folks. So I think the person who sort of can lead on this issue will be the one that really understands, in sort of very practical terms, what this means to average people. I go back to - remember the 1992 debate when Bill Clinton in the town hall forum - there was a lot of economic questions that year.
And the reason people thought Bill Clinton won those debates is he connected with people and George Bush didn't.
Tavis: To your point now, Ryan, because both of these guys have done countless town hall meetings in the course of this forever campaign to the White House, number one, and number two, given that McCain prefers the town hall to the stand-up debate, to the speeches, I'm not sure there's a clear favorite tomorrow night, given that they both do well in this format, they both prefer this format. Your take on that?
Lizza: I think, look, what I'm hearing from the Obama folks is hey, the town hall, that's the kind of forum that John McCain owns. Barack Obama, he's pretty good with speeches. That's the expectation spin.
Tavis: Yeah, lower the expectations, exactly.
Lizza: Exactly. And I think there's a grain of truth to that, but hey, I've seen Obama out there talking to voters for two years now, and he's totally underestimated in these settings. There's a reason he's such a star, and he does well in these situations. So I think it's a pretty even match.
Tavis: How ironic might it be, after all the talk and all the looking forward to these debates, that in the end, these three debates might not move the electorate, that is, too much one way or the other?
Lizza: I always thought that this race is a lot like 1980. In 1980, all the fundamentals of the economy, of what Americans thought about the direction of the country, favored the challenge, Ronald Reagan, over Jimmy Carter, the incumbent.
Tavis: Right.
Lizza: And what happened was at the first debate, people finally saw Reagan and he eased a lot of the questions that they had about whether he was up to the job. And I felt like a lot of those questions have been lingering until this first debate. If you've noticed, since this first debate, Obama has done very, very well in the polls. He's got about an average of a six-point lead now.
He's starting to surge in some of these swing states. There's a lot of panic among Republicans right now. So I think what he may have done in that first debate, and we'll see if it happens after the second one, is ease the concerns of a lot of these people who were withholding judgment until the end here, until they get this sort of final look at him. So I think it might matter.
Tavis: Well, we shall see what happens tomorrow night, and again, after tomorrow night, one more debate. Always good to talk to Ryan Lizza with "The New Yorker" magazine, of course. Ryan, nice to have you on the program.
Lizza: Thanks, Tavis.
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