Schapiro: Debate over debates spotlights candidates` flaws

Schapiro: Debate over debates spotlights candidates’ flaws - Richmond Times Dispatch: Government And Politics
6/24/13 11:39 AM
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Government and Politics
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Schapiro: Debate over debates
spotlights candidates’ flaws
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Posted: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 12:00 am | Updated: 10:53 am, Wed Jun 19, 2013.
BY JEFF E. SCHAPIRO
[email protected]
For a guy whose opponent says he’s scared of debates, Terry McAuliffe spends a lot of
time preparing for them. McAuliffe even has a stand-in for Ken Cuccinelli: Paul Reagan,
a former congressional and gubernatorial aide. Rehearsing for a political debate is akin
to an automobile test crash: You run them again and again and again until the dummies
come out in one piece.
The debate over debates is a sideshow to the campaign for Virginia governor, itself
unfolding as a bit of a freak show. That speaks to the essence of the debate over
debates: the weaknesses of the candidates.
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McAuliffe says five debates are sufficient.
Cuccinelli wants 15.
Their first debate is supposed to be before
the Virginia Bar Association on a Saturday
morning in July. The real audience won’t be
the lawyers lounging at The Homestead.
Rather, it will be the people whose opinions
matter most: ordinary Virginians, likely
focusing on baseball, beer and the beach
rather than the brawl that passes for a
gubernatorial race.
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Schapiro: Debate over debates spotlights candidates’ flaws - Richmond Times Dispatch: Government And Politics
McAuliffe doesn’t want to debate too much because he is flawed messenger. Running
a second time in four years, he remains a newcomer to state government and politics.
It still shows in such unforced errors as his ignorance of the positions that make up
the governor’s Cabinet. Further, his is a personality better suited to high-decibel Top
40 radio than the melodious Muzak of modern elections.
Cuccinelli wants to debate as often as possible because he is a flawed messenger.
He needs to change the subject from a lengthening string of ethical snags. Star
Scientific and Consol Energy are becoming shorthand for a seemingly politicized
attorney general’s office. Further, he is seen as a menacing cardboard cutout rather
than the articulate, self-deprecating everyman he is.
By limiting the time, venues and audiences he must share with Cuccinelli, McAuliffe
increases the opportunities for defining Cuccinelli as he chooses. Whether it is via
paid advertising, social media or local events, the McAuliffe message will go largely
unchallenged, at least for a while. The big money behind it guarantees this.
Cuccinelli’s insistence that McAuliffe participate in more debates than the minimum is
part of a broader story line: That McAuliffe’s candidacy is as murky as his
investments; that he’s averse to transparency in the people’s business and his own.
Releasing his income tax returns while McAuliffe sits on his is supposed to drive
home Cuccinelli’s point.
6/24/13 11:39 AM
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Because politics can be about unintended consequences, the images of the
Richmond Times-Dispatch Jun 11, 2013
candidates that emerge from this debate over debates may not be quite what they
expected.
Cuccinelli comes across as garrulous and combative, confirming as a candidate for
governor what he has been as attorney general. Voters know him to be a fighter, but
they haven’t seen in him — yet — the capacity for calm deliberation that Virginians
usually associate with their governor.
In contrast, McAuliffe, the noisy partisan for whom politics and profits are
synonymous, seemingly drifts above the fray. He occasionally alights in a friendly
setting to schmooze with supporters. In Richmond Monday, it was a group of
moderate Republicans. The desired effect: to present McAuliffe as gubernatorial. It’s
an image that takes getting used to.
Gubernatorial debates are loftily represented as rare opportunities for candidates to
communicate directly with voters. More often, they are carefully executed encounters
confined to talking points. However, there have been seemingly unexpected moments
— they can be scripted, too — that ripple through a campaign, reshaping it.
In 1977, populist Democrat Henry Howell challenged John Dalton, a boardroom
Republican, to a series of debates. Virginians would have been in for a treat: the
sharp-tongued Howell versus the subdued Dalton. The debates never went off.
Dalton refused, angry over Howell’s thinly substantiated claim he had enriched
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Schapiro: Debate over debates spotlights candidates’ flaws - Richmond Times Dispatch: Government And Politics
himself at public expense. For Dalton, it was a two-fer: He was spared the ignominy of
a televised skewering by the verbally adroit Howell. Also, Howell’s conduct confirmed
anew what Republicans had always said about him: he was an irresponsible gadfly
not worthy of the governorship. Voters bought it. Dalton won.
6/24/13 11:39 AM
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Twenty years later, Democrat Don Beyer faced Republican Jim Gilmore. Intent on
denying Gilmore further traction from his proposal to junk the car tax, Beyer used the
Virginia Bar Association debate to unveil a car tax rollback of his own. It backfired,
represented by the press as a desperate attempt at me-too-ism. It also was a
harbinger of Gilmore’s landslide victory.
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In 2005, Tim Kaine made much of Jerry Kilgore’s refusal to debate in all 11
congressional districts. A nimble trial lawyer, Kaine wasn’t as interested in actually
facing Kilgore as he was depicting him as weak and indecisive. It worked. In two of
their three debates, Kilgore, by his own performance, confirmed the Kaine narrative.
It also proved a truism in the debate over debates that may yet shape the CuccinelliMcAuliffe race: You’re damned if you do; doubly damned if you don’t.
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814. His column appears Wednesday and
Sunday. Watch his video column Thursday on TimesDispatch.com. Follow him on
Twitter.com/ @RTDSchapiro. Listen to his analysis 8:33 a.m. Friday on WCVE (88.9
FM).
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday.
Watch his video column Thursday on Times-Dispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter.com/
@RTDSchapiro. Listen to his analysis 8:33 a.m. Friday on WCVE (88.9 FM).
© 2013 Richmond Times Dispatch. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Posted in Government-politics on Wednesday, June 19, 2013 12:00 am. Updated: 10:53 am.
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Schapiro: Debate over debates spotlights candidates’ flaws - Richmond Times Dispatch: Government And Politics
6/24/13 11:39 AM
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