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McCain & Obama Prepare For Showdown In The South

By Billy House, Media General News Service

McCain and Obama meet Friday at Ole Miss for the first of three debates that experts say could be their best chances to move undecided voters. Click here to watch classic moments from presidential debates McCain & Obama Prepare For Showdown In The South

Published: Wed, September 24, 2008 - 9:32 am Last Updated: Wed, September 24, 2008 - 10:18 am

WASHINGTON - John McCain and Barack Obama meet Friday at the University of Mississippi for their first of three 90-minute debates -- showdowns that experts say could be their last best chances to move undecided voters.

As Obama hunkers down this week with advisers in Florida's Tampa Bay area and McCain also prepares privately, history provides no hard-and-fast rules to gauge the importance of presidential debates.

But the delivery during a debate of a memorable line, or expectations not met, or gaffes committed can and have set the tone for the stretch runs of some past campaigns.

"The race is so close, these could be the most important debates we've seen in several (election) cycles," says Allan Louden, a campaign rhetoric and political communications expert at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, N.C.

"Typically, the first debate is the one most watched," adds Alan Schroeder, author of Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV, who predicts viewers could top 70 million, despite its Friday night scheduling.

The audience for the first George Bush-John Kerry debate in 2004 was 62.4 million viewers. Schroeder, a Northeastern University professor, predicts that the influence of the Internet and real-time live streaming will lead to Friday's debate being watched more widely, while also allowing millions of Americans to add their own voices to the post-debate analysis and spin.

"Obviously, every debate has its own idiosyncracies; but you never know what you're going to get and what bombshells might occur," said David Lanoue, a University of Alabama political science professor.

Memorable Jabs and Gaffes

The most memorable - and even devastating - lines or miscues in presidential debate history have run a gamut. Many are easily re-lived today through YouTube and other Internet video sites.

There was the first 1960 debate between Richard Nixon and JFK, which kicked-off the age of TV presidential debates. Nixon's "5 o'clock shadow" and his relative unease contrasted sharply for many viewers to Kennedy's tan, confident and well-rested demeanor. Those who listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon won the debate.

Watch an excerpt from the Kennedy/Nixon debate.

In 1976, President Ford claimed wrongly in a debate "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," a mistake that reinforced his image as a less-than-brainy chief executive.

Watch Ford's 1976 gaffe

Four years later, Carter found himself the target of two memorable debate lines after he asserted that Ronald Reagan would cut Medicare. Reagan responded, "There you go again," and then asked Americans during his closing remarks, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

Watch excerpts from the Reagan/Carter debates

In 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis's dispassionate, unemotional response to whether his opposition to capital punishment would stand if his wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered seemed to rub many viewers the wrong way.

Watch Dukakis explain his position on the death penalty

And in 2000, the shrugs and sighs of vice president Al Gore - in contrast to a folksy, likeable persona projected by George W. Bush -- became fodder for satire, including a memorable Saturday Night Live skit.

More recently, Kerry was able to turn what was a fairly persistent Bush lead in the polls in 2004 into a dead heat by shifting the focus of their debates on whether Bush had mishandled the war on terrorism.

This year, the debates will be the first ever in which neither candidate is a sitting president or vice president.