by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
There was only one presidential debate in 1980 between challenger\u00a0Ronald Reagan\u00a0and President\u00a0Jimmy Carter. Just two days before the\u00a0Oct. 28\u00a0debate, Carter was eight points ahead in the Gallup poll. A week after the debate, he lost to Reagan by nearly ten percentage points.<\/p>\n
Reagan’s debate quip, “There you go again,” reminded voters of Carter’s chronic crabbiness. Even more devastating was Reagan’s final, direct question to American voters: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” No one, it seemed, could muster a “Yes!”<\/p>\n
Yet there was more to the 1980 campaign than the final game-changing debate rhetoric \u2014 and some of the details are relevant to 2012.<\/p>\n
Carter conceded that he could not run on his economic record \u2014 not with a high “misery index\u201d driven by high inflation, high interest rates, high gas prices and high unemployment. The lengthy Iranian hostage crisis finally began to highlight rather than mask Carter’s anemic domestic leadership. Without a record to defend, Carter instead pounded Reagan as too ill-informed and too dangerous to be president.<\/p>\n
The negative campaigning had not only worked but also seemed to get under Reagan’s skin. He kept going off topic while committing serial gaffes: he claimed that\u00a0California\u00a0had eliminated its smog; that trees polluted as much as cars, that\u00a0Alaska\u00a0had more known oil than\u00a0Saudi Arabia, and that new evidence cast doubt upon Darwin’s theory of evolution. Reagan got clumsily bogged down in distracting controversies about everything from\u00a0Taiwan\u00a0and the Vietnam War to the Ku Klux Klan and the stealth bomber program.<\/p>\n
Reagan fumbled facts and numbers constantly, as the nitpicking Carter blasted him for implausibly promising lower taxes, balanced budgets and vastly higher defense spending all at once. Throughout late summer, Reagan could not tap widespread voter dissatisfaction with Carter’s disastrous economic and foreign policy and his off-putting sanctimoniousness.<\/p>\n
Even more unfortunate for Reagan, Republican Congressman\u00a0John Anderson\u00a0announced a third-party candidacy. Anderson and a fourth candidate, Libertarian candidate\u00a0Ed Clark, eventually combined to siphon off more than 6.5 million votes, most of which probably otherwise would have gone to Reagan.<\/p>\n
A desperate Reagan also was having difficulty getting Carter out of the Rose Garden to debate. Finally, in late October, Reagan capitulated to Carter’s preconditions and met him one time, face to face, without Anderson present.<\/p>\n
In other words, until the very last week of the campaign, Reagan had an uphill fight. True, he eventually won a landslide victory in the\u00a0Electoral College\u00a0(489 to 49) and beat Carter handily in the popular vote. Yet Reagan only received a 51 percent majority.<\/p>\n
What had saved Reagan from a perfect storm of negative factors \u2014 gaffes, additional conservative candidates on the ballot, a single debate and a biased media \u2014 was not just the debate. Voter turnout was relatively low at only 53 percent. If Reagan’s conservative base was united and energized, Carter’s proved divided and indifferent.<\/p>\n
Reagan also won about a dozen (mostly Southern) states by less than 4 percent. Had just a few hundred thousand votes gone the other way in those states, the race might have been far closer than the eventual electoral and popular tallies indicated.<\/p>\n
What does 1980 tell us about 2012?\u00a0Barack Obama, like Carter, can run neither on his dismal four-year stewardship of the economy nor on his collapsing\u00a0Middle East\u00a0policy.<\/p>\n
Instead, Obama, as Carter did, must stamp his opponent as too inexperienced, too out of touch and too uncaring to be president. While Carter was a dull speaker and Obama, in contrast, possesses teleprompter eloquence, there is no evidence that Obama is any better a debater than was Carter.<\/p>\n
Turnout will matter. Challenger\u00a0Mitt Romney, like Reagan, is said to have the more fired-up base, but the demography of the electorate is far different than it was 30 years ago and now may favor Obama. There are no third-party candidates to skew the result, but the polls seem just as volatile, as Obama, like Carter, usually surges ahead for a while, only to fall back to even in tortoise-and-the-hare style.<\/p>\n
Unless there is a war abroad or a financial crisis at home \u2014 such as the financial trauma that helped the struggling Obama surge past\u00a0John McCain\u00a0in\u00a0mid-September 2008\u00a0\u2014 the race between an unapologetic liberal and a confessed conservative will go down to the last week.<\/p>\n
The winner probably won’t be decided by old video clips, gaffes or even campaign money, but by turnout and the October debates \u2014 depending on whether incumbent Obama comes across as a petulant Carter and challenger Romney appears an upbeat Reagan. As in 1980, voters want a better president \u2014 but they first have to be assured he’s on the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u00a92012 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There was only one presidential debate in 1980 between challenger\u00a0Ronald Reagan\u00a0and President\u00a0Jimmy Carter. Just two days before the\u00a0Oct. 28\u00a0debate, Carter was eight points ahead in the Gallup poll. A week after the debate, he lost to Reagan by nearly ten percentage points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[96],"tags":[12,1026,32,222,1016],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-6M","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10602,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/allegations-of-foreign-election-tampering-have-always-rung-hollow\/","url_meta":{"origin":420,"position":0},"title":"Allegations of Foreign Election Tampering Have Always Rung Hollow","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Blaming foreign influence on an election loss has become a habitual practice for unsuccessful presidential candidates, but such allegations have never rung true. On her current book tour, Hillary Clinton is still blaming the Russians (among others) for her unexpected defeat in last year\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "George W. Bush"","block_context":{"text":"George W. Bush","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/george-w-bush\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4665,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ronald-reagan-what-weve-forgotten\/","url_meta":{"origin":420,"position":1},"title":"Ronald Reagan: What We’ve Forgotten","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"A shorter version of this essay appeared in a Reagan commemorative issue of\u00a0National Review Magazine. by Victor Davis Hanson There will be a great deal of blanket praise written about Ronald Reagan in the next few days. Yet I don\u2019t think his legacy will be judged by his unwavering ideological\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2004"","block_context":{"text":"June 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/june-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4650,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-psychological-effect\/","url_meta":{"origin":420,"position":2},"title":"The Psychological Effect","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 28, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online RONALD REAGAN'S legacy is not one of ideological purity. He raised taxes and signed liberal abortion legislation in California. Despite his \"evil empire\" speech, he was not the preeminent Cold Warrior: Truman and Eisenhower had both fashioned the policy of containment and deterrence.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2004"","block_context":{"text":"June 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/june-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5336,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/reagans-second-act\/","url_meta":{"origin":420,"position":3},"title":"Reagan’s Second Act","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Media concedes simple truth, not simpleton by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Ronald Reagan's death in the midst of a hotly contested presidential election has occasioned all manner of oddities. There was John Kerry, the absolute antithesis of Ronald Reagan, making the pilgrimage to Simi Valley and monitoring his remarks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4652,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-reagan-for-everybody\/","url_meta":{"origin":420,"position":4},"title":"A Reagan for Everybody","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Who exactly was Ronald Reagan? by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers One of the strangest developments following the recent funeral of Ronald Reagan was the emergence of all sorts of \"authentic\" \u2014 and irreconcilable\u2014Reagans. Die-hard conservatives assured us that the California governor who signed the most liberal abortion legislation of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2004"","block_context":{"text":"June 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/june-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-the-debates-taught-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":420,"position":5},"title":"What the Debates Taught Us","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The president of the United States in the last debate chose to go on the attack against his challenger, Mitt Romney \u2014 and once again largely failed to convince the American people that he was the more presidential alternative. 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