Presidential debates are a staple of the election cycle, but in recent years the drama of deciding

who gets to host a debate and when can often be more exciting than the event itself. In

a world where news is instant and everyone is connected, do they have the same impact and

influence on elections as they once did? In this episode, I want to know, who cares about

presidential debates?

Welcome to America, a history podcast. I'm Liam Heffernan and every week we answer a different

question to understand the people, the places and the events that make the USA what it is

today.

To discuss this, I'm joined by our resident election expert, Dr Emma Long, but by day she's

Associate Professor of American History and Politics at the University of East Anglia.

Welcome back Emma. Hi Liam. I sort of feel like I should apologize to regular listeners to

the podcast. They've heard a lot from me recently, so anyone out there who's thinking, oh God,

it's her again. Deep apologies. I promise I'll stop talking eventually. Yeah, I mean, it's

the nature of the beast, right? We are we are midst election cycle and it's hey, we've we're

getting a bit politics heavy by I can promise any listeners that after November, we're gonna

we're gonna lighten the load a little bit and do some other stuff, I promise. But in the

meantime, we have Emma to help us understand what the heck is going on. Well, I try. This

week to do that, we're going to take a closer look at presidential debates. Now, we were

just talking before the recording that we've had this episode kind of in the pipeline for

months. And I think the discussion today is going to take on a much different form than

it would have done a couple of months ago. So let's just start before we get into maybe some

more recent context. I'm just wondering if you can provide a bit of broad history on presidential

debates. Yeah, okay. So. Just out of interest, if I was going to ask you, when do you think

the first presidential debate was? Well, I'm a bit of a film and TV nerd, so I'm going to

say it probably lines up roughly with sort of the booming in radio and maybe the birth of

TV. I'm going to say sort of 50s. Yeah. Yeah, you're pretty close. I think the one that most

people think of when they think of the history of presidential debates, the Kennedy-Nixon

debates in 1960.

Kennedy is seen as the first TV president about the way he used television, not just in the

debates, but otherwise. And the common line on these is... the idea that viewers who watch

TV thought that Kennedy won the debate, viewers who listen to it on the radio thought that

Nixon won it, and you know, the impact of visuals. Now, there are a lot of people who've written

and said, it's a bit simplistic to say that, and maybe it's not that, but what the debates

did was sort of legitimize Kennedy by giving him a platform, you know, this relatively unknown

senator from Massachusetts Nixon, who'd been vice president under Eisenhower and so on.

But this is where this gets complicated because you'd think when was the first presidential

debate would be a really straightforward question, right? But it sort of depends on how you define

the presidential debate. So Kennedy-Nixon's kind of the first one that I think we would

recognize where you've got the two main candidates facing off against each other live, or at least

it was live on TV, they didn't have a studio. audience. There were four debates between the

two of them, including one where they weren't in the same studio. So it's like the earliest

version of a Zoom era debate in that Kennedy was in New York and Nixon was in California,

which I just think is incredible when you think about the technology from 1960. Okay, so 1960,

this happens, it seemed to be quite a big deal. When do you think the next one was? Okay. So

I'm naively going to make an assumption that I'm sure a lot of people would make in that

they just continued every election cycle after that, but I'm sure you're going to tell me

I'm wrong. Yeah. I sort of signposted that one. 1976 takes 16 years before you get another

presidential debate. Johnson, LBJ in 64 refuses to hold them. But. The next set of presidential

debates that we know about is Gerald Ford against the then relatively unknown Georgia governor

Jimmy Carter, who was challenging him for the presidency in 1976. And it gets weirdly technical.

So the reason that there's this big gap in the middle is to do with broadcast technology and

the laws governing it. So the Communications Act in the US. governed airtime and these kinds

of things basically said, was published in the 1930s, and basically said, if you're going

to do something like this, you have to give every candidate for office time to speak, not

just presidential candidates, but every possible candidate for elected office in every election,

which clearly was not possible and was not going to happen. And they couldn't find a way around

it. So in 1960, they get kind of special dispensation from Congress to have the Kennedy-Nixon debates.

But it takes until 1975 for Congress to basically find an exception to this rule, to this law,

for presidential debates and allow them to happen. And then they've happened every year since

1976. So everybody thinks of Kennedy-Nixon, but actually it's almost like a one-off. in

the midst of this and then they don't become regular until the late 1970s. But if you think

about presidential debates, not just as the candidates themselves, but say spokespeople

on behalf of the candidates, interestingly enough, the very first presidential debate defined

that way involves two women. which I think is probably kind of surprising. It happens in

1956 and on the program that is quite well known in the US, Face the Nation, so it wasn't a

specific debate, it happened on a regularly scheduled TV program, and you have Eleanor

Roosevelt speaking on behalf of the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, and you have Maine

Senator Margaret Chase Smith, speaking on behalf of Eisenhower. So if you define presidential

debates as being sort of party representatives rather than necessarily the candidates, the

very first presidential debate was 1956 and it was two women, which I think is really great.

I also think it's really interesting that you had a former First Lady kind of quite actively

campaigning. I know Michelle Obama, you saw her at the DNC very recently to this recording

and Michelle Obama doesn't actually go out there campaigning, does she? No, no. And I mean,

she's been very clear both in interviews, but also in her book, Becoming. She writes very

clearly, I don't like politics. I'm not interested in going into politics. I will go out and talk

about issues that are important to me. talks about speaking out for people that she knows

and people she respects and so on, but she's not driven by politics in the same way. Eleanor

Roosevelt was a very different character. She was very engaged with Franklin Roosevelt's,

not just the campaign, but his administration. Of course, because he was paralysed as a result

of polio and it was difficult for him to travel and so on. you know, she went out and about

and met people that he didn't or couldn't or wouldn't. And she sort of fed that back to

the administration. So she was, she's an interest, really interesting character in her own right,

but continued sort of political engagement long after FDR died. I mean, she was, she was a

key figure in the development of the UN, for example, after World War II. So maybe she's

somebody that we can talk about in a future episode of the podcast. I think she probably

deserves at least an episode of her own. Oh, I would love to do an episode on Eleanor Roosevelt

and on FDR as well. I think maybe there's a sort of doubleheader there. I think obviously

the two are going to overlap quite a bit. But I'd like to know because you've explained a

little bit about some of the reasons around the rules, why it took so long for the second

debate. I'm keen to know how popular that first debate was and how the audience figures have

changed over time. Funnily enough, the figures haven't changed massively over time. So it's

estimated that about 70 million people watched the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960. I mean,

it's easy to throw the number out there. 70 million is a huge number. I mean, take any,

like the biggest of... TV shows at any moment in time would probably give the right arm for

70 million people sitting down and watching it. So we're talking big numbers. And also

just for context, that's basically the size of the entire population of the UK, right?

Yeah. And probably bigger, of course, than the population size in 1960. Of course. So just

to give you, yeah, just to sort of compare that. And actually, if you look at figures over the

years that are sort of made publicly available. So something called the Commission on Presidential

Debates that was formed in the late 1980s that for many years, up to this year actually, organized

the presidential debate. And their website that I think we're going to link to in the show

notes has publicly available data on. the number of viewers or estimated viewers for the debates

over history. They suggest that numbers haven't changed a huge amount over time. They sort

of hover between the low 60 million figure and upwards depending on debate. So the most watched,

we were talking about this before we started recording, the most watched... presidential

debate in US history to the current point was the first Clinton Trump debate in 2016. And

that's about 84 million people. And my understanding is that 84 million doesn't include people who

would say, watch it was streaming online or you know, that that's TV viewers, which is

huge. I mean, okay, as a percentage of the population, that's probably slightly smaller than the Kennedy

Nixon won, but it's still, I mean, there's 84 million households, right? Not just individuals,

but households sitting down to watch the presidential debates. And just as a comparison, I mean,

I could, there's no point. I could sit and read all the numbers off, but that will bore everybody

to tears. But the first Biden Trump debate in 2020 was the third most watched in US history.

And that had 73 million people. The one that was so consequential for this election cycle,

the one June 2024, again, between Biden and Trump, where Biden just sort of basically,

this whole campaign imploded, the estimates for that were about 51 million. So actually,

in terms of the number of people who were watching it, live, at least, that was a little bit down.

And I think... I think that probably reflects things we've talked about in this podcast before,

which is that there was just a general apathy about the election. Fewer people wanted to

tune in to watch two old white men basically debate each other in the format that they had

debated each other in 2020. As of course we know, it all went unexpectedly wrong for the

Biden campaign. And obviously I suspect many more people have seen clips of it since. Exactly.

And I think that that's, it's that engagement, that follow up engagement with the debate that

is probably more indicative of how much impact that debate has had. And, you know, when you

mentioned that, you know, two of the three most watched presidential debates of all time involved

Trump, that suggests to me that actually the audiences that they're galvanizing, to tune

in live, are people that are already pretty loyal to one candidate or another and are tuning

in to cheer that candidate on. And I just wonder how effective the debates are as a piece of

live television to sway undecided. Yeah, it's difficult to tell, isn't it? Because there's

an interesting thing, the second most watched debate in US history was 1980, which is the

first one with Reagan. I find it interesting that those three top ones are with presidential

candidates who already had sort of, I guess, a media presence. Reagan was in films, though

he'd had a political career since then. And Trump, obviously, we've talked about his background

with The Apprentice and sort of his sort of people were familiar with him just from being

around in culture. It's hard to tell. I mean, the Pew Research. Center, which is one of the

great go-tos for

public opinion polls. It's a non-partisan organization that does polls internationally on a whole

range of issues. But the last time they asked about presidential debates and who was watching

them and whether the people watching them thought that they were useful in thinking about the

candidates and deciding who to who to vote for. The last time they asked it, as far as I could

see, was 2016, so that first Trump campaign. About 63% of their poll suggested that people

were interested and they found them useful in thinking either about the candidates or about

the policies that they were following. That number has been fairly steady in the years

previously that they had asked. about this. Now, obviously, we know that American politics

has become more partisan, it's become more divided, particularly when it comes to kind of presidential

level and national level politics. On the ground, a lot of people kind of fall more into the

purple zone than into the red or blue one, but national level politics has become increasingly

divided, and particularly when you're talking about stuff. with this kind of level of exposure.

So whether that might have changed since 2016, it's difficult to tell whether people are watching

to see their particular candidate and sort of to cheer them on and to see that their candidate

sort of deliver the knockout blow rather than tuning in to hear about policies. It may be

that we don't have the evidence either way to suggest, but I mean, that wouldn't be new if

you ask people about the most famous moments in the history of presidential debates. It's

almost always gaffes that candidates, usually losing ones actually, that have made various

points. So this idea of tuning in either to see somebody deliver the knockout blow or alternatively

to see whether they're going to fall apart. that in and of itself isn't new. What's new

at the moment is of course the partisan context in which it's taking place. And I think what

can be so devastating for candidates now, particularly when they make a gaffe in a debate, is just

how quickly that can spread and how much that can sort of come to define their campaign because

with social media now, if you made a gaffe, back in the 70s, okay, news wires might pick

it up and play a little clip on the national news or whatever. Nowadays, within minutes,

that is clipped, it's on social media, it's going viral, and many more millions of people

that would never have bothered to watch the debate are now very aware that you made a mistake

in that debate. Yeah, instant memes, right? And probably... your worst moment or sometimes

the good ones. I mean, one of the interesting things about the 2020 campaign, the primary

campaign, one of the things that raised Kamala Harris's profile was when she challenged Biden

on busing. And that was a similar thing, right? That got clipped and replayed and people showing

that. So it can be... good stuff. But I think the nature of our society and politics as it

is at the moment is that we have a tendency to go, oh my God, look what they did. That's

terrible. Let's share it. Yeah. And actually, with that in mind, I wonder how networks have

dealt with the changing expectations that people have on debates now and how that's impacted

the way and the look and feel and the execution of presidential debates. Are TV networks having

to think a little bit more about trying to get those soundbites and those elements that kind

of bring people into the debate? Maybe not live, but at least encouraging them to engage afterwards.

Yeah, I mean, interestingly, actually, the networks haven't had control over this until this year,

actually. So mentioned before the Commission on Presidential Debates. So that was formed

in... 1987 by an agreement between the Republican and the Democratic parties that there would

be this sort of non-partisan non-profit organization that would be responsible for organizing the

debates. They usually have a moderator and actually if you look at the history of the moderators,

they cover all of the major networks in the US. So CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and actually PBS,

which people here may not quite know so much about, is the public broadcasting system, which

is the closest thing the US has to the BBC, although it's not exactly the same. So those

have always been shared around, and particularly since the advent of Fox News, when there have

been enough presidential debates, there's always been that sense that, you know, there's one

conservative... moderator and sort of the others along the way. But the point of the commission

was set up so that the networks didn't have control over it and the format was decided

between the campaigns and the parties. And it's varied over time. Famously, for example, in

1992, one of the debates like a more kind of town hall type feel. So they didn't have the

podiums, they had a live audience and people could, the candidates could walk around and

sort of as if they were sort of chatting to people individually. And that's widely considered

to have favoured Clinton in 92 and this kind of style that he had of trying to connect with

people. Obviously, you've got the famous moment from the 2016. campaign where Trump sort of

loomed up behind Hillary Clinton as if like trying to intimidate her that also went viral

in terms of those. The numbers have varied year on year, whether they have a, you know, what

kind of audience they have. In fact, if you look at them, a lot of them have been held

on university campuses, which I think is kind of interesting. So it's a changeable feast.

And it's determined or has been at least determined by the commission and the campaigns and the

candidates and you know who favors what and how many and set the rules. This year was slightly

different. So the Republican National Committee pulled out of the commission in 2022. And it

sort of cited a whole range of things, but said that the moderators were biased and also actually

that the debates were too late. you know, normally they happen sort of September, October. Of

course, the Biden one that we've been talking about was June, which is one I think about

the earliest they've ever happened. And part of the reason for that was that a lot of states

have early voting. So election days this year is November 5, but a lot of states opened their

polls up to 30 days before that. And obviously, if you've got postal votes, then you're voting

early as a as well. So there's been an argument in recent years that actually, some of those

later presidential debates have been happening after people have already voted. So one of

the reasons for having the June one this year was that it would reach people before early

voting started. Yeah, I think it's interesting just all of those cogs that are wearing in

the backgrounds, sort of making those seemingly... innocuous decisions about the format and the

structure and the date of these debates because it is all quite calculated from the campaign

teams. I don't know if anyone's ever watched the newsroom, which is the Aaron Sorkin show

from the early 2010s. Love it. Absolutely love it. It's a great show and if you haven't, go

and watch it. It takes place during the 2012 election, so there's this very dramatised arc

in one of the seasons where they're... sort of the news network is trying to win a debate.

But there's this sort of real compromise and negotiation happening between the news networks

and the parties and to come to this sort of agreement on the rules and the format and the

structure and all of these elements so that everyone's happy and it just really got me

thinking about, you know, the debates as a campaign tool. You know, they're not really these independent

platforms, are they, to grill candidates? No, they're stage managed. Yeah. And, you know,

candidates are grilled to within an inch of their lives on these. And, you know, particularly

those ones that we've seen more recently where it's been, you have a certain number of minutes

to reply, to comment, and then they have a certain number of minutes to reply and respond and

etc. Of course they're stage managed. Absolutely. Because... even if they don't have the questions

in advance, you kind of have an idea of what sort of topics are going to come up. To reference

another Aaron Sorkin series, The West Wing, which came before the newsroom. They have several

episodes throughout the series, the seven-year series, where they've got their candidates

being prepped for the debates and how that plays out in a kind of

rigorously prepared for. I mean, as we're recording this, I mean, by the time this show goes out,

they may have resolved it. But just as we're recording this, the current battle that seems

to be going on is about the Trump-Harris debate and whether the candidates' microphones are

going to be on or off when the other person is speaking. So the agreement with the Biden

camp, And what happened in the first debate was that microphones would be off when people

weren't speaking. And this seems to have been a response to, I think it was 2020, another

viral moment from the 2020 campaign where, you know, Trump is constantly interrupting Biden

and Biden quite famously says, will you just shut up, man? He's fed up. You see, he's getting

fed up with being interrupted. So the agreements that they had this time was that microphones

would be off to stop. that. And the Harris campaign has tried to make a bid to have microphones

on permanently. And there's speculation about this, but as a general rule, it's thought that,

again, this is about the campaigns, that the Republicans want the microphones off because

it stops, it forces Trump to focus and he has that time that is allocated to him. And if

he says something outside of that. the audience isn't going to hear it. So it makes him look

more focused and on point. The idea that the Harris campaign want that on because they think

that what it will show is him with outbursts and rambling on and all the rest of it and

they think that's going to help their campaign. So yeah, it's just a little example of exactly

what you're talking about in the current circumstances where... the campaigns are trying to work out

what format is going to most benefit their particular candidate. Do you think they're almost sort

of cutting their nose to spite their face because when it's so tightly controlled, it can almost

become boring? Potentially. And you know, if people want effectively car crash TV, right,

you know, there's that, that on the sort of edge of your seat, what's gonna happen. But

I suppose it depends how you think about them, right? It's sort of, are these debates intended,

regardless of what they end up being, are they intended to be spectacles, right? Where you,

you know, you watch the two candidates slug it out in whatever format they want. Or are

they intended to kind of be some kind of public service in which people get to understand not

just who the candidates are, but what they stand for. I think historically at least, some of

the reasoning for this was that there's a public service element here, right? That it's, yes,

it's an opportunity for the candidates and for the parties to get their platforms out there

and say what they, you know, where they stand on policy and, you know, that's it. But it's,

you know, there's that informative element. where the balance has been, we all, you know,

of course, they've sort of emerged it more into spectacle. They probably always were, right?

You know, if it's televised and you've got an audience and you play up to the cameras and,

you know, especially in this era of sound bites and all the rest of it, of course, that's part

of it. But I think the format of them has always been about trying to manage that and also provide

some element where you don't just allow them to go off on whatever tangent they want, that

actually it's meant to be informative to the public. So I think there's been a tension between

those two things. And have they always got it right? Probably not. But lots of people are

still watching, regardless of why they're watching. And even if they do come for the spectacle,

they're probably going to hear some stuff about policy as well. Yeah. And I think lots of people

are watching, not just in the US, but all over the world. I mean, we're two Brits sat here

in the UK talking about US presidential debates. We're not alone there. A lot of people care.

And it makes me wonder if now that we're in an age where people want stuff on demand and

people aren't necessarily going to watch live, particularly if you're in a different time

zone. argument there to think about people coming along like Netflix who are now doing more live

content and Amazon Prime and all these other streaming services. Is it only a matter of

time before one of them pick up these debates? And how is that going to change the look and

feel of it versus a news network running it? Yeah, it's hard to know because the whole point

of these, it's in a bit of flux at the moment. So in the years when the Commission for Presidential

Debates covered it. The whole point was that this was, like I said, almost like public service

broadcasting. This was not for profit. This was public service. And they made the feed

of this available to any network that wanted to show it. So it's not about competing. It's

not like, oh, ABC's got it this time and Fox News will have the other one. It could show

on all of those channels at the same time and historically has at various points. So it's

hard to know. I mean, I can see the appeal of something like Netflix or Amazon Prime or either

Disney Plus or start running out of streaming services to mention here. I feel like the BBC,

right? Other services are available. But I suspect there might be resistance to it simply because

of that idea about, you know, is this more, is this about money shaping politics? Is it

profit who are doing this rather than companies that are doing it from a public broadcasting

situation. And of course, most of them are streamed live anyway. So if you're thinking about an

international audience, to the extent that the international audience actually matters, and

I have some doubts about how much they're really thinking about the international audience,

those things are available anyway via live stream. these days. So you wouldn't necessarily need

something like one of the streaming platforms to make it available. So I don't know. I mean,

if you think about them as entertainment, you can see that. But I genuinely think there'd

be sort of resistance to doing that. And let's look at the June 2024 debate between Trump

and Biden. I feel like we need to for a bit in this episode because It hadn't happened

when we were first planning to record this. And the answer that I would have had to this

question on the podcast, Who cares about presidential debates, would have been, well, not many people

outside of a campaign team or that changed this year, didn't it? And so I'm keen to understand

what lessons were learned from the Biden-Trump debate because the wheels came off and it ended

Biden's campaign, right? Yeah. Yeah, despite his best attempts not to. And I mean, there

had been concerns before, right? And I remember the discussion, you know, what would Biden

need to do in the debate? It was like, just not mess up, which is hardly a high bar, right?

To ask someone to achieve and in the end that didn't happen. I don't know. I think there's

something quite specific about this particular election, right? About... We've talked... before,

we'll probably talk again, you know, people were not enthusiastic, even the partisans,

right, were really not that enthusiastic about a Trump-Biden rematch. And there was just a

lot of apathy about the election. And I mean, actually, if you look at the viewing figures

for that debate, before anybody knew what was going to happen, right, they were the lowest

they've been since, I think, probably since presidential debates started. So the answer

to your question, who cares? I mean, 51-ish million people is still a lot of people watching

the debate, but it's significantly lower than in previous years, which does sort of suggest

that people weren't that interested. Of course, what happened is that things went wrong and

it showed up the weaknesses in Biden. And I think obviously more people have seen it since.

And it's not the watching it live, it's the kind of the consequences of that. Lessons to

be learned. That's hard to say. We've got two more debates coming up, or at least two that

have been agreed. One between Trump and Harris and one between Walls and JD Vance. I'm looking

forward to that one. I think, yeah. I mean, that just two completely different characters.

Yeah. Right. I just think that has the makings of a really interesting one. And actually,

interestingly, 2008, when Obama was running the first time, it's the one year that I could

find where the vice presidential debate got higher viewing figures than the actual presidential

candidates. I do wonder if the, the Wolfsfans one might be the same, the same here. I guess

we'll see. But I think we're only going to see the idea of lessons learned or ways in which

it shapes them by seeing what happens next. And we haven't seen that yet. And also in terms

of format, like I said, we're in slightly uncharted territory at the moment, because both parties

have now pulled out from the commission on presidential elections. These ones with networks. And I

don't think we yet know what impact that might have on how these are run and organized in

the future. So there are a few things to watch out for, I think, going forward. I think maybe

then I should reword the question to this episode from who cares about presidential debates to

why should candidates care about presidential debates? Because it feels like if you win a

debate, or if you have this sort sound bitey moment. People like it, but it doesn't necessarily

transform your fortunes. If you have a really bad debate, actually, as we've seen it with

Biden, it can end your campaign. So it just feels like the benefits do not outweigh the

risks. Certainly a tightrope to be walked. And like I said, some of the famous moments are

where candidates got it wrong, which suggests those things are the things that live on in

people's memories. But on the other hand, where they do seem to have benefited candidates,

and actually this applies a little bit this year given everything that's happened, is to

relatively unknown presidential candidates who are running for office. So Kennedy in 1960,

Carter in 76, even to some extent Clinton in 92. You know, these were people who, I mean

Kennedy, sort of, I guess all of them really, known in a kind of regional area within a small

grouping, but didn't necessarily have a national platform. And what the debate did in a way,

even campaigns couldn't necessarily, was give them a platform to get themselves known, sometimes

just as people, sometimes in terms of the policies. And I think That applies to Harris too. I mean,

you know, one of the things that people have been talking about is the fact that despite

the fact that she's been vice president for four years, she's relatively unknown to most

Americans. And we're seeing the pressure at the moment. Why hasn't she sat down for a TV

interview at the moment? Why hasn't she, why is she now saying that she'll sit down for

one, but she's bringing a vice presidential candidate along? Is this because she doesn't

want to? do it by herself or she can't do it by herself. You have to take all of that with

a pinch of salt. This is all driven to some extent by the partisan side of things. But

in the same way that the conventions can provide a platform for people, the debates can do that

too, especially for candidates who are less well known. And I mean, the one thing that

we've not talked about so much is sort of the getting. the presidential debate. So increasingly

there are primary debates that are televised now. Again, not entirely new. There are some

examples of that happening on small scale, particularly in battleground states in the past. But those

are becoming nationally televised as well. So you're getting more and more opportunities

to do that. But yeah, I mean, I still think that it is there is a risk to candidates as

we saw with Biden this year. And speaking as somebody who finds live public speaking quite

terrifying. Because you never quite know, are you going to have a blank moment? Are you going

to suddenly forget all the dates or the information that you had? And what if you can't find the

right words? Or what if somebody asks you something you weren't prepared for? ramp that up to a

massive scale when you're talking about national and international policy. And there's a, yeah,

there are real risks there. But at the same time, that ability to respond and to deal with

that, you know, it's something that Americans expect of their leaders. And if you're not

going to show that in something that is as structured as a presidential debate, then that's going

to be significant for people to want to know as well. Yeah, it's a great point to end on.

When you look at the rhetoric in response to the Biden-Trump debate, that was part of it.

It was a demonstration of just, it was kind of an affirmation of all the doubts that people

had in his mental state, I guess, and his ability to lead at that level for another four years.

It's weirdly unfortunate as well, because then you see the speech that he gave at the DNC,

you know, that very forceful speech. And, you know, the meetings that he had at various times

with international leaders, all of whom have no reason to come out and say, oh, yes, yeah,

you know, he was he was on top of it and all the rest of it. So, you know, I think I'm pretty

sure I've said before on one of these, you know, Biden is clearly somebody who has good days

and bad days, right, at this point. And, you know, I think about my parents in particular

circumstances, and maybe they have good days and bad days too. The consequences are different,

clearly. But at the same time, you know, I think the debate in many ways showed Biden sort of

at his worst and on a different day, maybe wouldn't have been. that wouldn't have been quite the

same outcome, but it did. And we've seen the fallout of it. Yeah. And by the time this episode

goes out, I think it would be just before the next debate, by the time we talk about this

again, who knows, maybe after September 10th, the tickets are going to change again. Who

knows how. I don't think the system could cope with that. Yeah, unlikely, but. Hey, who'd

have thought that the first one would have had the sort of consequences it did? And, you know,

I think it shows that there is still a lot of weight to the presidential debates and clearly

a lot of people still do care about it when we consider the sort of very recent impacts

that it's had. But thank you, Emma, for joining me on this episode to sort of give a bit more

of the history behind that. Really interesting to understand more about, you know, how the

debate started and how they evolved into what we know. they are today. So thank you so much

Emma and to anyone listening, if you do want to find out a little bit more about presidential

debates, we can put some links in the show notes for you to do just that. And Emma, if anyone

wants to connect with you, where can they do that? Oh, as regular listeners will know, I'm

not on social media. So if you search for my name at UEA, you'll find my email address is

probably the best way to... get in touch and thank you for inviting me on. It's always a

pleasure. Oh, it's always great, Emma. And you can find me on X as well. This is the Heff

and on LinkedIn. And of course, you can find the show on Patreon. We are on there. So if

you do want to support the show, we're going to record some bonus content straight after

this that you'll find only on Patreon. So do check us out on there. And if you're listening

to this podcast, which obviously you are, give us a rating and a review. Only takes a few

seconds and it will. really help us and help other people find the show as well. Thank you

very much and goodbye.