Pretty much what the title says. Has your vote ever been decided by a debate you witnessed, on TV or in person?
It’s happened only once for me, in 1992. Remember Ross Perot running for President? I didn’t see the three way Presidential debate, but I did see the Vice-Presidential debate, between Al Gore, Dan Quayle, and James Stockdale(Perot’s running mate.
Now, a lot of people mocked Stockdale after that debate. I heard one commentator mention “he looked uncomfortable on stage” Well, try having your leg broken in a Vietnamese prison camp and you might be uncomfortable standing for several hours too. And Stockdale’s hearing aid? An acquaintance told me he thought that made him look funny. The man simply didn’t have the artificial polish the other two candidates had, but since when is that a bad thing?
I voted for Perot/Stockdale after listening to how Stockdale answered questions. Gore and Quayle were polished and kind of smarmy, and the answers they gave were worded so they could be interpreted almost any way. You couldn’t pin them down on issues. When Stockdale was asked his position on the abortion and it’s legality he answered, as he had on other questions, short and sweet “I believe that what a woman does with her own body is her business, period.” When the moderator looked at him as if to ask, “Is that* IT*?” he repeated the word “period!” After that I figured if Perot picked someone who could state his mind so clearly, then he might make other good choices too. I still figured he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, but my vote is MY postion.
I initially thought I’d vote for Hillary in 2008. Obama’s answers in the debates made me more interested in him as a candidate. I read Obama’s books and then voted for Obama in the primary and the presidential election.
I haven’t changed my vote due to a debate, but I did greatly change my opinion of John McCain after seeing him debate Barack Obama. Prior to that I had an overall positive impression of him as a human being, but now I automatically discount everything he says because of what I perceived as his cowardice (yes, I said it) on that debate stage.
It doesn’t help that every time I see him now I hear Jon Stewart saying, “Fluffy? Has anybody seen Fluffy?”
Watching the 1988 Bush-Dukakis debate, I felt Dukakis came across(*) as very weak. This cost him only half a vote as I just stayed home on Election Day rather than voting Democrat.
(* - With Wikipedia I see Dukakis’ poor performance on 2nd debate is blamed on a flu. Sorry, Mike! :smack: )
For CA governor last year, I was prepared to vote for the Green Party candidate. That changed when I saw the main debate (which unfortunately didn’t include any third-party candidates, natch). My previous impression of Jerry Brown was that he was merely competent, but he impressed me at the debate.
I voted for Nader when he explained why we are in the mess we are in. I couldn’t do it again because the prostitutes working for the Repubs in the senate and house are too damn dangerous. They will sell the country out for money and an entry ticket into the halls of power.
Holy cow, that’s the first time I’ve ever read anything good about Stockdale’s performance. I felt sorry for the old fellow at the time, clearly he had long past the time in life where he had contributions to make to society. I have sympathy for him based on his POW experience, but we were looking for someone qualified to take over the presidency on a moment’s notice, not someone who could make us feel good about the hardships he overcame.
Um, clearly you are entitled to your opinion. And I surely didn’t vote for the Perot-Stockdale ticket in 1992. But I do want to point out that Admiral Stockdale published two books after this campaign, clearly before the onset of his Alzheimer’s disease. He died in 2005.
So while he was deaf as a stone (which he wouldn’t dispute, since the North Vietnamese had beaten him in his ears) he seems to still have had some contributions to society left in him in 1992.
So he wrote books. So has Sarah Palin. While I’m sure his were better, I don’t know if they really were of great benefit to society. The most important thing about his debate performance was that it showed he clearly was not capable of taking over the presidency.
Meh, based on what I know about Stockdale’s life it is only correct that he appeared old and confused. In truth he was just old and more or less normal, he would have been a fine President if Perot had been elected and died in office.
There are a lot of things people don’t know at all about Stockdale’s performance:
Stockdale was told very shortly before the debate that Perot would still have him as his VP candidate and he would need to be in the debate.
Stockdale was not interested in running for Vice President, the Perot camp told him he was a “stand in” until they found someone else. [This sort of shows that while Perot was a phenomenon at the time, his campaign was not ran all that well. He got a lot of attention because he was so different and he bought 30 minute television spots with his limitless personal fortune.] When Perot ended his campaign Stockdale had no idea it would be restarted in the fall and he certainly had no idea he was going to be in a national televised debate.
Stockdale wasn’t a politician of any note before this, he wasn’t a public performer, he didn’t have “body men”, he didn’t have speech writers, he didn’t have campaign managers.
Because of the confluence of the above three things, Stockdale essentially went into a debate he had been assured he’d never be a part of (because he’d have been replaced as VP candidate by then) against guys who had been rehearsing tirelessly with professional campaign managers, political handlers, and etc for months prior to the debate, rigorously playing out their answers to every possible permutation of question the moderator might ask.
Looking good in a debate has very little to do with debating and very little to do with intellect. Even someone who was heavily into forensics in school would struggle in a nationally televised political debate, because the rules are very different and the glare of the cameras is something that only professional politicians can adjust to easily. Stockdale wasn’t a politician at all, he was just a guy with a hell of a resume pulled essentially off the streets and put into a situation as near to cold as can be.
There’s no evidence the man had Alzheimer’s at the time, was in any way mentally impaired, or any of that.