On Romney and Political Debates

[No Elephants]

Wisdom comes from some intangible ability to pull together some combination of native intelligence, life experience, learning and memory and come up with things that you just naturally seem to live by.

Conventional wisdom is living by memes.


Conventional wisdom can be dangerous because it's what you think or assume you know; and assuming you know something is a million times more dangerous than knowing you don't know something.

Until the first debate between Obama and Romney, conventional political wisdom had it that debates don't affect the outcome of elections. You can google that and get a lot of written support for that tidbit. My guess is that none of the support Mr. Google offers you will be dated after Obama's lead shrank following the first Obama-Romney debate.

Now, if you were in the Obama campaign and did not assume you knew that debates don't matter, you might have looked more closely at the Kennedy-Romney Senatorial debate of 1994 and the O'Brien-Romney gubernatorial debate.

Kennedy v. Romney

Smelling blood, Romney ran against Kennedy at a time when D.C. Democrats in general were struggling some and Kennedy's image was newly that of an uncle in his drawers, drinking with his nephews the night when one of his nephews was charged with rape.

And Kennedy did struggle against Romney initially. Then, one local television reporter interviewed Kennedy.

As Kennedy bloviated about how superior Democratic principles were to Republican principles (principles?), the reporter asked, "Then why are you having such a hard time in this race?" (or words to that effect).

Kennedy sat uncharacteristically silent for a while.

Years later, when asked about that silence, Kennedy replied that the question had taken him aback. He was thinking to himself, "That's a very good question. Why am I having such a hard time?"

He realized he had not been running on the very thing he had just spoken of, Democratic principles versus Republican. (I saw a clip of the question and the silence. I wish they would have shown what he said to his interviewer after he had those thoughts!)

After that interview, Kennedy went in hard, including at the debate. Where Romney had been running on his business success, Kennedy zoomed in people fired due to Romney and Bain Capital. Where Romney had been running as a Washington outsider, Kennedy zoomed in on how utterly unknowledgeable Romney was about the legislative process, including the failure of the so-called businessman to have a clue about the cost of the proposals Romney had been campaigning on. And so forth.

Kennedy brilliantly turned his opponents' biggest bragging points into his biggest weaknesses, years before the nation would call that technique "Rovian." And Kennedy looked strong during the debate, challenging everything Romney said, and, yes, interrupting to cut him off with very pointed and very pertinent questions, while Romney looked steady--and mild, perhaps even a bit deferential.

Although Romney's wiki said that debate had no clear winner, I think that is conventional wisdom talking. Kennedy's numbers went nowhere but up after that debate.

Where, all along, it had looked like a close race and one that Romney very well might win, Kennedy got 58% of the vote, a very healthy margin (albeit a low one for Kennedy, believe it or not). Did that Romney debate affect the outcome of that Senatorial race? IMO, very much so.

Six years later, Romney ran against state treasurer O'Brien. Romney had no government experience. She had the best possible experience to run Massachusetts in a recession, short of already having been Governor. O'Brien led throughout the race and the only debate was a week before the election.

Apparently, Romney had learned a lot from his debate with Kennedy, though. And when he debated state treasurer O'Brien in the gubernatorial race, it was Romney who came on strong, not fearing to interrupt her, even though conventional political wisdom is also that you go easier on a female candidate in a debate than you would on a male so you don't look like a stereotypical male bully. And he did look like that, to me, anyway.

When she repeated Kennedy's line, "I'm pro choice. My opponent is multiple choice," Romney began to scold her as though she were an impudent child whose naughtiness was "unbecoming." (Was she trying on an unflattering hat, or questioning a political stance of a political opponent?)

Anyhoo, a week later, Romney was Governor-Elect of Massachusetts (which has never elected a female as Governor or U.S. Senator, despite its reputaton as a wildly liberal state). Did that Romney debate affect the outcome of that election? Unquestionably.

If Obama's people had thrown out the conventional wisdom about Presidential debates and looked more closely at the two prior Romney debates/election outcomes, Obama couldda been a contender after that first debate, instead of someone whose lead and momentum were sorely wounded by a Presidential debate.

There's a life lesson in there somewhere about conventional wisdom in general and political convention wisdom in particular.

I would love to live by, and in, wisdom, not "conventional wisdom stupid."

[Enthusiast]

1. Wow!

That was good.

[No Elephants]

2. Thanks so much.

You're probably the only one in the world with enough patience to make your way through a post that long.

Edison slept only three or four hours a night and turned that into General Electric and a record-breaking number of patents. I post. Sigh.

[Enthusiast]

3. My posting has been somewhat

curtailed due to unwanted wheat gluten in my diet. Apparently my "new" BP meds have a gluten binder. I take two of these per day. The gluten is making me miserable. The pharmacist told my wife not to worry that the pills looked different because they are the same. But they are not the same. The binder must be 100% gluten. I can't just quit taking them either because my untreated BP is dangerously high. So I am a bit distracted. Plus my butt hurts badly because the terrible skin rash has returned due to the gluten. I know, too much information. But I've left out the worst. :eyes: