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Sutherland,
by Islay McLeod
When Mitt Romney finally goes head to head with the man he wants to replace, he needs a great performance. Not just a good performance, a great one.
The Republican Party nominee has invested a lot in the importance of the first presidential debate in Denver and its game-changing possibilities. He’s cut his campaign schedule down – often to just one event a day – to allow him to rehearse his lines, hone his arguments and perfect his ‘zingers’: the short sharp responses he hopes will live long in the memory and damage President Obama.
Romney is behind in the polls, not just nationally but in most of the crucial swing states that will decide this election. He’s had a terrible few weeks with a poor convention, an intervention attacking Obama’s foreign policy which was considered ill-judged by senior figures in his party, and the release of a video in which he criticises 47% of the American people as ‘victims’ who are happy to live on government handouts.
And so the debates present the former Massachusetts governor with an opportunity to turn the direction of this contest and convince the independents who haven’t yet made up their mind or even wavering Obama supporters that not only does he have better ideas and a clear vision to lift America out of its economic problems, but that he would make a better president.
Mitt Romney has produced good debate performances when required. Through the extended and bitter primary process to pick a Republican nominee, he appeared in televised debates with a diminishing band of challengers 19 times. He was poor in some, notably when Newt Gingrich hammered him relentlessly ahead of the contest in South Carolina. To his credit, he recovered and gave a much more assured and combative performance ahead of the Florida primary which he won and stopped Gingrich’s southern advance.
The Republicans have defied political conventional wisdom by talking up the importance of the debate and the need for a stellar performance from their candidate. The New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, an early Romney backer and prominent supporter, says his man will reset the campaign with his performance. Normally expectations are kept low in the hope of surprising the watching millions.
But Romney is now in such a place that he has to deliver a substantial and significant win – if only to keep the money flowing into his campaign and the volunteers knocking on doors. He will also be aware that voting is now underway in more than half the states and by the time the two candidates meet again, many in key swing states like Florida, Colorado and North Carolina will have already made their decision on who to back.
The result from the match-up will shape the narrative in the days to come, will be pulled apart by the media and set expectations for the next debate. Romney will get a lift from simply being on the same stage as the president; but then he has to do some damage. Republicans say that he will ‘fact-check’ the president, attacking his record with an unemployment rate stuck above 8% of a national debt of 16 trillion dollars. He has to be aggressive, but not disrespectful.
Yet even if he does deliver a tour de force, it still may not matter. A strong showing can shake up a race, but there’s no solid proof that a candidate has won the White House because of a debate performance. People talk about 1960 – the first televised debate – and how a young and vigorous John F Kennedy outshone an ill and sweaty Richard Nixon. Yet controversial vote-counting in Illinois perhaps played a bigger part in the final result. And in 1984, Walter Mondale was largely considered to have won the first debate with Ronald Reagan by some distance and found the polls barely shifted.
But Mitt Romney needs to do something impressive to give him the chance of winning the election. The debate may be his best and last chance.
Alan Fisher is an Al Jazeera correspondent
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