The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; First Debate Image Analysis

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Well, it wasn`t like the morning after the first Nixon-Kennedy debate of 1960 this morning -there was no rush of opinion or support to either Mr. Ford or Mr. Carter after their stolid exchange of statistics in Philadelphia last night. Subjective opinions apart, the only objective data available suggest a slight edge for Mr. Ford in the reaction of voters. Our own poll, taken right at the end of the debate by Burns Roper, showed that 39 percent thought Ford had done the best job, 31 percent gave it to Carter and 30 percent called it a draw. Later in the night the Associated Press did its own national survey, and that also gave Ford a narrow advantage. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the less scientific reaction was more mixed; as could be expected, both the Ford and Carter camps immediately claimed victory. But Carter himself did concede today that he had gotten off to a slow start last night and he had not been aggressive enough against the President. Much of the newspaper punditry is labeling it a draw, some analysts giving Ford a slight edge for his aggressiveness, others giving it to Carter just for hanging in there so closely with an incumbent President. The only general consensus is that not many votes were affected either way -- no knockout punches were landed, no dramatic breakthroughs were scored. Everybody who watched the debates, of course, came away with their own individual reactions. Robin?

MacNEIL: We asked three people whose own individual reactions are based on a lot of experience in assessing the effectiveness of politicians on television to give us their views tonight. Harriet Van Horne is a syndicated columnist appearing in the New York Post and other newspapers around the country. In 1960 she covered the Nixon-Kennedy debates as a TV critic for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. Miss Van Horne, very briefly, who won in your opinion last night?

HARRIET VAN HORNE:, I think the President won. He won chiefly because he was absolutely intelligible. Jimmy Carter, I said in the paper today, badly needs what we used to call elocution lessons. He talks too fast, he doesn`t breathe properly, his southern accent, under stress, is uncuttable; and President Ford was very much in command -- he was amiable, authoritative, fatherly and surprisingly glib. And there was poor little Jimmy Carter getting more nervous and more unintelligible by the minute. So I`m afraid that President Ford did win; and as you can gather, I wasn`t exactly thrilled that he did.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Patrick Buchanan, now a syndicated columnist, formerly media advisor and aide to President Nixon. How did you score?

PATRICK BUCHANAN: I scored it for President Ford on points, and the reason is that the central, cutting issue for the Democratic Party this year, by their own definition, is the economic issue -- jobs, inflation and the rest. In a debate which focused primarily upon that single issue, 69 percent of the people, according to the Roper poll, which is your own poll, said the President of the United States defeated Jimmy Carter on his best issue. That`s one reason; the second reason is, I think, that Gerald Ford got in the best counter-punch of the night. I think Gerald Ford came out stronger from the beginning, and I think overall that Ford made more points than his opponent did.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Dorothy Sarnoff is the head of her own firm, called Speech Dynamics. Miss Sarnoff is a former actress and singer who is now a speech consultant, and she specializes in training executives and others for appearances in adversary situations. Miss Sarnoff, your opinion briefly.

DOROTHY SARNOFF: I think Liz Drew won. (Laughter.) She was the most animated and exciting and focused and to the point. But seriously, I think President Ford had intensity, he had energy, he projected well, his body .... If we consider that people give messages in five different ways -- the idea, language; the tone; the eyes; the face; and the body -- then you`d have to give President Ford points.

MacNEIL: Well, no disagreement there, on the simple answer. But what really makes a debate work for one candidate and not another? How do images and issues blend together to add up to victory or defeat for a candidate? We`ve asked these guests to select moments from last night`s debate that they think will show us the strengths and weaknesses in the candidates` performances last night and how those moments helped them to decide on a winner. Miss Van Horne, you picked as one of Carter`s high points his discussion of energy -- in particular his remarks on nuclear energy -- and we`ve excerpted just a small portion of that:

JIMMY CARTER: I would certainly not cut out atomic power altogether; we can`t afford to give up that opportunity until later. But to the extent that we continue to use atomic power I would be responsible, as President, to make sure that the safety precautions were initiated and maintained. For instance, some that have been forgotten: we need to have the reactor coil below ground level, the entire power plant that uses atomic power tightly sealed and a heavy vacuum maintained; there ought to be a standardized design...

MacNEIL: Miss Van Horne, why did you select that piece?

VAN HORNE: I didn`t know any of those things, not being a nuclear engineer, and I thought it was very good that he was so knowledgeable on this point. That`s rather reassuring -- it`s nice to know, if we`re going to be atomized some day, it`s awfully nice to know that we could have a President who`d know just what to do. I think his flaws came out in this little excerpt, however -- par for power -- and that rushed delivery; if he`d only pause and take a breath, and sort of measure out these words. But if you listen to what he said, it was very wise and very reassuring. I liked it. If he could just go back and read it again in standard English.

MacNEIL: Another point where you thought Carter did well on were certain points of his remarks regarding the tax system and unemployment, I gather.

VAN HORNE: Unemployment.

MacNEIL: You noted in particular this clip in which he referred to President Ford as "insensitive."

CARTER: 7.9 percent unemployment is a terrible tragedy in this country. He says he has learned how to match unemployment with inflation; that`s right. We`ve got the highest inflation we`ve had in 25 years right now, except under this administration, and that was 50 years ago. And we`ve got the highest unemployment we`ve had under Mr. Ford`s administration since the Great Depression. This affects human beings, and his insensitivity in providing those people a chance to work has made this a welfare administration, and not a work administration.

MacNEIL: Why did you select that particular piece?

VAN HORNE: That shows, think, the very best quality in Mr. Carter`s character: that he does have concern, that he is a person who is troubled to see so many unemployed people. He`s a caring man, and I don`t think President Ford really is. Of course, once again, you`ve got a garbled sentence here, with "highest inflation we`ve had in 25 years, except under this administration and that was 50 years ago." He`s implying that Ford was President 50 -- well, I`ve thought that some days, too; Ford was President 50 years ago. But you see, the lack of coherence -- when he gets excited everything flows out of him. He never stops to shape these sentences and to organize things. But I`m so glad he said this: "the insensitivity in providing these people a chance to work." When the votes are finally cast, you know, it`s going to be which man cares; which man notices unemployment figures and sees them as human beings and little children, and so forth. I don`t think President Ford has that much imagination; he`s not compassionate to that degree. So if only Jimmy Carter had developed this point he might have won last night.

MacNEIL: You don`t think that these answers were largely pieces of campaign rhetoric replayed in chunks that seemed appropriate to the occasion, and therefore they might come out rather glibly?

VAN HORNS: Except that a man says it the first time because it`s spontaneous and he means it. When you deliver as many speeches as Jimmy Carter I expect there`s a tape in your head and you just start turning it. I`m sure, however, that he does mean this, and when we finally decide who will be President we will remember that Mr. Carter showed concern where President Ford perhaps was rather frosty and indifferent.

MacNEIL: Let`s go on to the third point that you selected: Ford and his comments on the anti-Washington feeling cited among many of the voters. You noted this clip, in which he swung that sentiment full circle around to the Congress of the United States:

GERALD FORD: To me, instead of the anti-Washington feeling being aimed at everybody in Washington, it seams to me that the focus should be where the problem is, which is the Congress of the United States, and particularly the majority in the Congress. They spend too much money on themselves, they have too many employees, there`s some question about their morality; it seems to me that in this election the focus should not be on the executive branch, but the correction should come as the voters vote for their members of the House of Representatives or for their United States senator.

MacNEIL: Why did you select that, was that because you thought Ford did well in that piece?

VAN HORNS: Yes, he defused Jimmy Carter`s -- one of the criticisms. But you know, he probably made the understatement of the night; he said of Congress, "there seems to be some question about their morality." I felt that his answer was very good in that it tuned things in a very subtle way. He said the focus should not be on the executive branch; well, I differ with that. But he`s right, it`s the Congress who, untimately, passes or rejects the legislation.

MacNEIL: To sum up the pieces you`ve chosen, you really were listening for content and judging on content.

VAN HORNS: Fool that I was, yes. Because I didn`t think the content was especially good. I thought they did deliver little messages that had been going round and round in their brain, little snippets left over from the stump. But the ones I`ve selected I thought were rather good. I guess of these three I think Jimmy Carter`s comments about suffering people -- people suffering because they`re out of work...if only he had developed that. Well, I hope he listens and he would do this in his next debate.

MacNEIL: Miss Van Horne, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Your first selection for us, Mr. Buchanan, was that of Ford recounting the facts and statistics on Carter`s term as governor, which included an assessment by current Governor Busbee of Georgia:

FORD: In the four years that Governor Carter was governor of the State of Georgia, expenditures by the government went up over 50 percent. Employees of the government of Georgia during his term of office went up over 25 percent; and the figures also show that the bonded indebtedness of the State of Georgia during his governorship went up over 20 percent. And there was some very interesting testimony given by Governor Carter`s successor, Governor Busbee before a Senate committee a few months ago on how he found the Medicaid program, when he came into office following Governor Carter; he testified -- and these are his words, the present Governor of Georgia -- he says he found the Medicaid program in Georgia in shambles.

LEHRER: Mr. Buchanan, why did you pick that one?

BUCHANAN: I picked that one because for the first time the Republican administration -- the President in particular -- has gone after Jimmy Carter`s record. Mr. Carter has portrayed him self, as Governor of Georgia, as a fellow who came to Atlanta and found it wood and left it marble, as it were. He`s talked about his administration program, he`s gotten a free ride, and for the first time the President had new statistics which showed that Carter`s reforms cost a great deal more money; secondarily, the President for the first time, almost, in that debate not only used a couple of effective statistics but used an excellent line that was a memorable line -- when he said that the Medicaid program was in a complete shambles. And I thought he made his point effectively then, and I think the President in the entire debate was much better as a counter-puncher and when he moved on the offensive than he was when he was using just the statistics to defend his own record.

LEHRER: Would you say that was his best moment?

BUCHANAN: I think it was Mr. Ford`s best moment because it also slowed down a period when I thought Mr. Carter was gaining a little bit of momentum, and I thought it was Mr. Ford`s best moment of the debate, yes.

LEHRER: Alright, the second excerpt that you`ve selected is one in which Carter explains a recent campaign trip and his experiences with the people he talked to in regarding the unemployment issue:

CARTER: Well, Mr. Ford doesn`t seem to put into perspective the fact that when 500,000 more people are out of work than there were three months ago, we have two and a half million more people out of work than there were when he took office -- that this touches human beings. I was in a city in Pennsylvania not too long ago near here, and there were about four or five thousand people in the audience -- it was on the train trip -- and I said, "How many adults here are out of work?" About a thousand raised their hands.

LEHRER: Good moment for Jimmy Carter, right?

BUCHANAN: I thought it was an excellent moment for Jimmy Carter, and the reason I think that is this: I think both the President and Jimmy Carter overemphasized statistics, statistics, statistics. And I think where Carter started doing fairly well in the debate was when he began to relate them to individuals. When you talk about a thousand steel workers, or whatever it is, putting their hands up and saying they`re unemployed, or when Carter started using specific anecdotes, those were his strongest moments. Both- candidates, quite frankly, suffered from an overuse of statistics and underuse of anecdotal material, of examples, of historical allusions. What made the Kennedy press conferences effective? What makes Ronald Reagan a great speaker? It`s not the facts and statistics, it`s the stories, the anecdotes, the way they`re woven in, and there was not enough of that last night; and Carter was just starting to do that, and that`s when I was concerned, being pro-Ford, because I thought Carter was beginning to do it effectively when that cable was cut.

LEHRER: Do you think there`s a possibility that these two gentlemen programmed themselves and prepared so intensely on wanting to have all the facts that they forgot these basic elements?

BUCHANAN: I think this: I think President Ford, especially, was over prepared statistically but under prepared rhetorically. There are very, very few, if any, lines -- and shambles is one of them -- any memorable lines, any memorable phrases that Ford left. Now, with fir. Carter, he started in there and he left a couple of them. I was over talking to some black fellows today, and one of them said, "You know, Carter is right when he says the Republicans are against things for three years, and in the final three months they`re suddenly for them." Carter was beginning to get in some of his best lines midway through it, I think. But as I say, because I think the President started off so strong I think he made the overall better impression on points.

LEHRER: Alright. Your final selection, Mr. Buchanan, was Ford`s rebuttal to some of Governor Carter`s negative comments about his record as President as well as negative comments about Republicans and taxes:

FORD: The Governor has also played a little fast and loose with the facts about vetoes. The records show that President Roosevelt vetoed on an average of 55 bills a year; President Truman vetoed on the average., while he was President, about 38 bills a year. I understand that Governor Carter, when he was governor of Georgia, vetoed between 35 and 40 bills a year. My average, in two years, is 26. But in the process of that we have saved nine billion dollars. And one final comment -- Governor Carter talks about the tax bills and all of the inequities that exist in the present law. I must remind him the Democrats have controlled the Congress for the last 22 years, and they wrote all the tax bills.

LEHRER: Another Ford counter-punch, right?

BUCHANAN: Another Ford counter-punch, and not only that; this was excellent in the sense that one of Carter`s major charges in the entire campaign is "our tax code is a disgrace to the human race." Now, every single tax bill has been written, in the last 22 years, out of a Democratic tax-writing committee into a Democratic conference committee and passed by a Democratic Congress, both houses of which are Democratic. So the full responsibility for every credit, allowance, deduction, expenditure in that tax bill belongs to the Democratic Congress and for the first time Mr. Ford moved on the offensive and hung the tax code around the Congress of the United States, which is exactly what he should do. The loopholes that are there they put there or they approved. All Mr. Ford can do, with this new monstrosity of 1500 pages is say yes or no. The Democrats wrote it, and they`re the ones responsible for it; and I think Ford made that point very well.

LEHRER: Thank you, Mr. Buchanan. Robin?

MacNEIL: Miss Sarnoff, the first clip you picked is one showing the contrast in body movements of the two men throughout. Could you explain what you see as an image-maker as we watch this rerun?

SARNOFF: I wish we could change the world "image-maker;" however, let`s look at it.

MacNEIL: There`s no sound on this one, we just want to look at their faces and the way their bodies are placed.

SARNOFF: I think Ford has a marvelous "football-tackle" approach there; he`s got isometric in his body, he`s got his muscles contracted, and that tells us energized, vitality, animation. And he uses his hands well. And Carter, you notice, most of the time kind of kept a kind of "I`m a conservative person," with the hands in, this way, so that they were not underlining what he was saying.

MacNEIL: I was just going to say Mr. Ford had been criticized, or it had been much commented on in the past, that his hand movements were very artificial-seeming and contrived. You remember the speech a year or so ago, where he stood up and gave a great many sort of...

SARNOFF: Oh, yes, with a calendar. Yes, I remember that.

MacNEIL: But you think he`s improved that greatly, do you?

SARPTOFF: Oh, yes, because it all has force and energy in it. And then let`s get to their faces; we`ve spoken about their body language.

MacNEIL: Just before their faces, what message is conveyed intuitively, or viscerally, to the voter by that body language you`re talking about -- Ford`s sort of energetic stance and Carter`s....

SARNOFF: Well, it says, "I can support. I`ve got strength." And as soon as you go slumpy you don`t look as strong, you don`t look as though you have as much authority as you do when you`re sitting with contracted muscles. Also, it projects the voice a great deal. Harriet made some very good points there, although I would quarrel with a few of them -- I don`t believe the southern accent is as thick as all that -- but if you support here, bodily, then you project a phrase very strongly. And I hear that people who were in the theatre last night when the sound went off could hear Ford and could not hear Carter.

MacNEIL: Right. Now, you talked about the faces. Obviously the face tells us a lot. You selected one interesting contrast that you thought, I gather, had an impact on the audience, so let`s look at this clip.

SARNOFF: Well, I really didn`t select that so much for the faces. I selected it for focusing attention on the person who is speaking instead of kind of playing, perhaps -- I`m not sure that`s the reason -- to the camera. Most of the time Mr. Carter was speaking President Ford focused his eyes and listened with his eyes, as well as with his ears. And I didn`t feel that Mr. Carter -- Governor Carter -- did that.

MacNEIL: And what significance do you think that would have for a viewer?

SARNOFF: I think that it`s a kind of politeness to the person who`s speaking; it may turn you off because you don`t feel he`s quite as gracious to the person who is speaking. But also, I wonder, was there a ground rule that said don`t show any teeth last night? Suddenly we didn`t see any teeth from anybody, we didn`t have any animation or smiles at all, as though they both had said, "Now, we`ve got to be serious, and we`ve got to be taken seriously and be credible and sincere and..." no smiles.

MacNEIL: If you were doing what you do for business executives who come to you for advice on this sort of thing, what advice would you give now Mr. Ford to do in the next debate, and Mr. Carter to do in the next debate in terms of demeanor and body English -- body language?

SARNOFF: I think I would have to focus a little bit more on Mr. Carter. I don`t think elocution is the word I would use with him, Harriet.

VAN HORNE: But he talks so rapidly.

SARNOFF: Yes, he certainly does. Especially for a Southerner. We`re used to Southerners speaking very slowly.

VAN HORNE: Like Mrs. Carter. Now, she`s got a southern accent and every syllable is knife-clear and her vowels have a beautiful, musical, liquid sound. Her voice is exquisite.

SARNOFF: But I think Harriet is really talking more of finishing the phrase. Carter is inclined to trap-talk -- gives a few words, and then they kind of...

VAN HORNE: And ignores punctuation. Where there`s a comma he`s got no comma.

SARNOFF: Remember that written punctuation and spoken punctuation are entirely different.

VAN HORNE: Not always. We all speak with commas and semicolons and so on.

SARNOFF: If you are willing to change that word for pauses, emphasis through pauses, through cadence in effect, I`ll go along with you.

MacNEIL: Let`s go back to Mr. Buchanan who has a reputation as at least a rhetorician in print, in words, for other people to read.

SARNOFF: I wish ,I could say one thing to you Mr. Buchanan that was terribly important. You emphasized something that all people who make presentations and speeches should respect, and that is give the listener some visual for the mind`s eye to see. And that`s what you`re talking about when you talk of analogy, anecdote and so forth.

BUCHANAN: Precisely. There was no metaphor; there was no anecdotal material; there was no real humor or wit; and the couple of examples, as I said, that were sort of attempted were attempted by Governor Carter. I think President Ford was tremendously well prepared statistically, but I think he was really under prepared to leave some sort of memorable line -- you recall, most of the speeches even Mr. Nixon`s speech that was so controversial, it left the "great silent majority" line, or the "new frontier" or something like that. I think Mr. Ford`s presentation was deficient in that regard, and if I were him working on the defense debate, I would certainly have several phrases and sentences that would surely have impact and be repeated the next day.

SARNOFF: Bravo, bravo, that`s so important. And you do it so well, by the way.

BUCHANAN: Thank you kindly, but I`m no longer in that business.

SARNOFF: I know; I wish you were.

VAN HORNE: May I, in the interest of absolute fairness, correct one thing? All day long, on the radio, I`ve been hearing that the present governor of Georgia is quite indignant about that shambles line. He said, "When I said the Medicaid was in a shambles I meant federal, I did not mean the State of Georgia." Therefore Mr. Ford was making an unfair charge against Jimmy Carter and I just think it`s nice to have that corrected.

BUCHANAN: Well, wait a minute now, if we`re going to get into unfair charges I can go into a number of statistics that Mr. Carter was rolling out last night that had my eyebrows rising because I sure didn`t realize that they existed, and Mr. Ford, as you know, corrected Governor Carter on the one about the vetoes. I`m certain both of them made errors, but I think they probably equaled out.

VAN HORNE: I don`t think anybody remembers one single statistic from last night. Statistics, as you said, are so bloodless.

BUCHANAN: Exactly, and there were so many of them.

SARNOFF: Well, if you use them, please back them up with something specific that the mind`s eye can see. Can we give that rule to the nation?

LEHRER: I`d like to ask Ms. Sarnoff a question. I noticed that at the beginning, when Governor Carter would answer the questions, he was looking right into the camera. When President Ford was answering the questions he was looking at the interviewer; in other words, there was no direct eye contact with the TV viewer -he was obviously looking at the person who had asked the question. What`s the effect of that? I thought at first, "My goodness, Carter`s being smart about this," then I wasn`t so sure by the time it was all over.

SARNOFF: Well, somebody forgets to tell somebody that the place to loot: is into the questioner`s eyes. Robin and I were discussing this just before the cameras went on. And many chairmen of the board and presidents of corporations I work with never know that little simple rule, that you really just look 90 percent eye-to-eye into the person you`re talking with, and let the camera do its work and pick you up from there. And I don`t think that`s what happened last night. I think perhaps no one had told him and he was trying to favor his face -- most people would, if you don`t know where to look.

MacNEIL: There was criticism of the 1960 debate that Mr. Kennedy gave his answers to camera and Mr. Nixon gave his answers to Mr. Kennedy. And Kennedy was supposed to have scored for having done that -- established that eye contact.

SARNOFF: But Kennedy`s face always had what I called "little love apples."

MacNEIL: I`m afraid, on that charming note, we have to end this. Thank you very much in Washington, and thank you. Jim Lehrer and I will be back on Monday evening. I`m Robert MacNeil; good night.