This Thursday I went to see a lecture with the promising title “We could be making history”. It talked about one of the first televised presidential debates, the one that really did make history: the first face off between Kennedy and Nixon. With the upcoming debates and the already historical election I can’t help but wonder: are we going to make history? Is the impact of the first debate between McCain and Obama, and all the others that will follow, going to make a change?
According to Dr James Baughman, a professor and director at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the man leading the lecture, televised debates found there heart in 1967. The entire debate was a big happening at that time, with according to the New York Times more than 70 million people watching it. With the DNC and the RNC already attracting millions of viewers, it’s only a guess how many people are going to watch the first debate between Obama and McCain here at our own University. Not only our campus, the city of Oxford and her surroundings are going to be disserted, but the entire nation will most probably be glued to their TV’s.
However, even though the first Kennedy-Nixon drew an enormous audience, the question that resonated afterwards was in what way this televised debate effected the voting of the American people. Did the debate at that time account for Nixon’s defeat? Did it make more people vote? Did it actually change peoples vote? Or did it just reassure people of their choice of candidate? According to Baughman this last point is the right one: the debate did not have this big effect many people thought it had. His point: the official polls before the debate didn’t change significantly after the debate even though Kennedy clearly had won.
What Baughman says is that, even though many admitted Kennedy won the debate, they also proclaimed that this would not make them change their vote. Most of the people already knew who they were going to vote for, even before the campaign really started. They were already predisposed to a candidate and were not about to change that vote. 40 years later this is still the case. Even before John McCain and Barack Obama have headed off against each other, most people have already made up their minds about which candidate they are ruling for and they are not about to change. The next obvious question is then, if these televised debates make any sense if they don’t even have a significant effect on people’s vote. Why would they make such an effort organizing a debate if it not going to change a thing? The answer is easy: because this time it will.
40 years after ‘the first debate’ there are more independent voters then ever before and party ties are getting weaker and weaker. In other words: there are many more votes to be won. If candidates perform well during a debate, they can energize these people and make them see that their votes actually do count. These debates also give room to the candidates to once and for all tell the world what their stances are on the nation’s most important issues. By watching these debates all these men and women who do not know who to vote for, or even know why they should vote, are going to get a reason to make their vote count. And as for all of the people that already made up their mind: a little more information can never do any harm. The more informed you are, the more you will be able to make a good and deliberate choice.
September 26th, 2008: “We are going to make history”
According to Dr James Baughman, a professor and director at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the man leading the lecture, televised debates found there heart in 1967. The entire debate was a big happening at that time, with according to the New York Times more than 70 million people watching it. With the DNC and the RNC already attracting millions of viewers, it’s only a guess how many people are going to watch the first debate between Obama and McCain here at our own University. Not only our campus, the city of Oxford and her surroundings are going to be disserted, but the entire nation will most probably be glued to their TV’s.
However, even though the first Kennedy-Nixon drew an enormous audience, the question that resonated afterwards was in what way this televised debate effected the voting of the American people. Did the debate at that time account for Nixon’s defeat? Did it make more people vote? Did it actually change peoples vote? Or did it just reassure people of their choice of candidate? According to Baughman this last point is the right one: the debate did not have this big effect many people thought it had. His point: the official polls before the debate didn’t change significantly after the debate even though Kennedy clearly had won.
What Baughman says is that, even though many admitted Kennedy won the debate, they also proclaimed that this would not make them change their vote. Most of the people already knew who they were going to vote for, even before the campaign really started. They were already predisposed to a candidate and were not about to change that vote. 40 years later this is still the case. Even before John McCain and Barack Obama have headed off against each other, most people have already made up their minds about which candidate they are ruling for and they are not about to change. The next obvious question is then, if these televised debates make any sense if they don’t even have a significant effect on people’s vote. Why would they make such an effort organizing a debate if it not going to change a thing? The answer is easy: because this time it will.
40 years after ‘the first debate’ there are more independent voters then ever before and party ties are getting weaker and weaker. In other words: there are many more votes to be won. If candidates perform well during a debate, they can energize these people and make them see that their votes actually do count. These debates also give room to the candidates to once and for all tell the world what their stances are on the nation’s most important issues. By watching these debates all these men and women who do not know who to vote for, or even know why they should vote, are going to get a reason to make their vote count. And as for all of the people that already made up their mind: a little more information can never do any harm. The more informed you are, the more you will be able to make a good and deliberate choice.
September 26th, 2008: “We are going to make history”
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