BLANKENSHIP: Debates recall past zingers

By BEN BLANKENSHIP
Published: September 25, 2008

The presidential debate season is upon us again. No doubt these TV beauty contests will get the highest viewership ever. For one thing, there is no incumbent campaigning. Further, the race is tight as a tick. And finally, spicing up the saga are two virtual unknowns — a minority and a woman.

The pundits will be pondering until election night the portent of these debates. Very little, I’d guess. Thinking back on earlier ones, I can’t remember any that made much difference in the final outcome.
But some were memorable. Correction: The debates themselves weren’t, being too long and windy. Only a few zingers were notable. Here are ones I enjoyed the most.

In 1960 it was Kennedy versus Nixon. Stiff and formal. But Nixon suffered in their first encounter. Not in what he said, but he looked tired, sweaty and unshaven (a shadowy portent of Watergate much later?), while Kennedy looked fresh and sassy. In the election, what was crucial was the Illinois electoral votes for Kennedy, swung by Chicago’s infamous political stuffing of the ballot boxes.

In 1976 it was Carter versus Ford. President Ford’s huge gaffe was in claiming that Poland was independent of Soviet communism. It filled headlines and commentary for the rest of the fall.

In 1980 it was Carter versus Reagan. Challenger Reagan first intoned that now-standard dig at the incumbents: “...it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Reagan got off another good one from the same debates: “We don’t have inflation because the people are living too well. We have inflation because the government is living too well.”

In 1984, going for his second term, Reagan pulled a beauty in his debate with challenger Walter Mondale. Reagan’s age had been deemed a minus (much like McCain’s is today). So at one pivot point, Reagan reassured the audience, “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

In the 2000 debates, my funniest remembrance wasn’t anything Bush or Gore said. Rather, it was during a town hall arrangement where they both stood and moved about freely in a ring surrounded by the audience in bleachers. At one point, Gore was obviously crowding up next to Bush while Bush was trying to answer a question. In reaction, Bush did a smiling double-take in classic vaudeville mode. It made Gore’s maneuver laughable.

In Bush versus Kerry in 2004, Kerry got off a good one: “Being lectured by the President on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country.”

The most famous put-down, though, occurred in a vice-presidential debate in 1988 between young senator Dan Quayle (GOP) and the veteran Democrat senator Lloyd Bentsen. Quayle claimed, “I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency…”

Bentsen’s stern response: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.” It brought the house down. Nevertheless, the first President Bush and his veep Quayle won going away against Dukakis and Bentsen.

Meanwhile, today’s mud slinging, typically absent in the official debates, is flourishing like never before on the flaming Internet. Here’s a sample. The first charge is that Obama isn’t legally qualified to be president. The second is that McCain isn’t.

Anti-Obama: A Democrat and former party official filed suit, claiming that Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen or that, if he ever was, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. He also cited “dual loyalties” due to Obama’s citizenship and ties with Kenya and Indonesia Further there is the issue with his birth certificate from Hawaii, “verified as a forgery by three independent document forensic experts.”

Anti-McCain: Another charge, from the Left: “By parentage he is a citizen, aided by the fact he was born outside the U.S. because of a military stationing of his parents. But…he was NOT born in the United States. The Constitution’s founders added the term ‘naturally born’ intentionally to insure that presidents were, in fact, born here. [But] if you are inside a U.S. embassy or consulate, you are on ‘U.S. land.’ That does not describe the conditions of his birth…”

Obviously, neither charge against the candidates had merit. If the charge against Obama had been valid, as my columnist friend Dave Kerr noted recently, wouldn’t Hillary Clinton’s lawyers have howled to the heavens?

Their silence spoke volumes.

A final note: Both Democrat candidates are lawyers, unlike either of the GOP candidates. Enough said.

Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at .