Presidential Debate: Losing Audience Share?

Supposedly the TV audiences for the presidential debate Friday night were lower than expected and lower than those for the Bush-Kerry debates four years ago.

Although before the debate I would not have predicted that myself, in retrospect I don't find it surprising. The debates of 2004, like 6 of the nine previous TV presidential-debate series, featured a sitting U.S. president. The other three series featured a sitting vice-president. Part of the appeal of these debates was the spectacle of seeing a political heavyweight titleholder perform extemporaneously and confront a challenger. In Friday night's debate both candidates were non-titleholders. I would imagine that for many Americans (of all ages; not all viewers are actually of voting age) this might have made the debate a less exciting attraction.


Since I thought that McCain acquitted himself better than Obama I would have preferred that he do it for the biggest audience possible. I wouldn't speculate upon how the smaller audience might affect the evolving campaign. But in thinking about its causes, I suspect that they symptomatize something working against Obama. Everybody concedes that Obama outdoes McCain in media star power. People show up in great numbers to see Obama in a stadium, at a monument, or to watch him on TV. Except that this time they didn't. The lower than expected ratings for the Friday debate probably means that Obama's stardom is waning. He's being seen as a regular boring politician rather than the reincarnation of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.


The smaller than expected audience also suggests that Obama has not been as successful as he'd like in convincing people that John McCain is a surrogate for George Bush. In 2004, many people who were not the least bit undecided about the candidates watched the debates in the hope of seeing Bush humiliated by Kerry. Americans who are still angry at Bush and would like to see his work repudiated by their liberal knight might have been expected to turn on the TV just to see Obama lay into McCain. But apparently McCain isn't enough like Bush to make him a really entertaining target. If so, part of Obama's message isn't working as well as he wants it to.


Even supposing these hypotheses are true, it would be reckless to project their effect on the actual voting. But if true they do indicate a changing dynamic in the campaign. It is clear, just from listening to Obama's stump speeches and his answers in the debate, that he has now decided to make himself heard by talking into the lunchbucket as loud as he can. It's a kind of politics, and elections have been won with it. Also lost. This week Obama seems to be doing all right.