How To Win A Presidential Debate | Meet The Press Reports | NBC News

Intro [Music] i'm chuck todd and welcome to meet the press reports we're excited to bring you something new somewhere new right here on nbc news now and peacock while you're used to seeing us focus on the week's big political headlines and meet the press and i meet the press daily on meet the press reports we're going to go in depth on the way the system actually works on stories that don't always make headlines instead of just talking about where we are we're going to talk about how we got here and where we might be going and instead of covering all the big stories we're going to cover one in near microscopic detail and we're going to start with one that really matters this coming week next week's presidential debate on september 29th president trump and joe biden will face each other directly for the very first time a 90-minute showdown between two polar opposites an upstart incumbent and a seasoned challenger and then after the first debate there'll be two more both in mid-october now you might think in an age of instant sound bytes and 280 character limits that one 90-minute presidential debate wouldn't do much to move the needle much less three and voters themselves think that but if this year's debates are anything like those in years past they are all but certain to give us some of the most dynamic the most provocative the most unforgettable moments of the 2020 campaign most ads will be forgotten almost as soon as they've aired most of the analysis and spin will spin its way into oblivion ah but the debates the debates have staying power history remembers the debates the debates matter the debates are what people will be talking about generations from now it's how we remember these campaigns so how do you prepare for one how do you develop a strategy and most importantly how do you win that depends on who you ask one thing is certain a debate night victory takes equal measures of art and science good evening good evening good evening good evening good evening good evening from hofstra for 60 years the general election debates have been the campaign's highest pressure political stage the candidates need no introduction the republican candidate vice president richard m nixon and the democratic candidate senator john f kennedy the 1960 nixon kennedy debates introduced live television into the campaign in a new way the first drew 66 million people and changed politics forever nixon refused to debate again and it was 16 years until the ford carter debates were a reminder that debates could make or break a campaign there is no soviet domination of eastern europe and there never will be under a ford administration the presidential and vice presidential debates became a memorable platform for the unforced error if we added up the killed and wounded and democrat wars in this century would be about 1.6 million americans enough to fill the city of detroit the unscripted moment exposing a candidate's blind spot governor if kitty dukakis were raped and murdered would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer no i don't bernard and i think you know that i've opposed a death penalty during all of my life the game-changing zinger i will not make age an issue of this campaign i am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience i have as much experience in the congress as jack kennedy did when he sought the presidency senator i served with jack kennedy i knew jack kennedy jack kennedy was a friend of mine senator you're no jack kennedy in 1992 the commission introduced the town hall and body language on stage became more important and unpredictable as trump and biden prepare to meet in cleveland both bring debate records biden's uneven performances during the primary cycle lowered expectations i agree that everybody once they emphasis anyway my time's up i'm sorry but over the decades he has proven his ability to draw on personal tragedy to create a connection with voters the notion that somehow because i'm a man i don't know what it's like to raise two kids alone i don't know what it's like to have a child you're not sure is gonna is gonna make it i understand and at times has been effectively combative jack kennedy lowered tax rates increased growth ronald reagan jack kennedy ronald reagan still biden's lack of verbal discipline is well known an editorial in the los angeles times said in addition to his uncontrolled verbosity biden is a gaff machine can you reassure your voters in this country that you would have the discipline you would need on the world stage senator yes then there's president trump whose debate performances in 2016 were memorable for his targets i'm relaxed you're the basket case don't worry about it a little margarita what we want to do is the such a nasty trust fund including the debate moderators honestly megan if you don't like it i'm sorry i've been very nice to you will those attacks work this time wrong that is absolutely improved over and over again you have to be loose and you have to be able to do it and the beach worked out well for me so how do you perfect a one-liner how do you land a great attack what are the do's and don'ts and most importantly how do you win as biden and trump prepare to debate we talked with more than a dozen political strategists who have been in the room on both democratic and republican presidential campaigns and their debate preparation process Debate Prep i always thought of debates as kind of the world's biggest most high profile job interview it is just person a versus person b you can't win an election in a debate but you can lose one first it starts with strategy the core of debate prep is often how to ensure that the candidate finds a way to both be responsive to the question but is able to pivot to their positive message in the summer before you get to the actual practice people build briefing books the process really starts with a lot of briefing books there's a lot of early homework that goes into the probably three to five weeks before the debates of debate practices the debate prep team feels they've done their job if the candidate does not hear or experience something for the first time eventually you get to the point where you do in person mock sessions senator kerry would leave the room everybody could have their say he'd come back and then the two or three people who could talk would say this is what we think and this is how you should do it differently we had um senator judd greg play al gore and he started the process early by just preparing well i watched a tremendous number of videos tremendous amount of audio what i don't do is i don't imitate a lot of people think you play these people by trying to sound like them or act like them i i don't believe that when that first exchange was over and she sat down she kept saying it was very smart when donald said this or he's very smart when trump said that and i was thinking you know what she's not saying fully she's saying trump and i clearly have done my job working with jerry ferraro was a real treat when i would challenge her as george herbert walker bush in a particularly aggressive way she would literally walk over to my podium and slug me so by the end of the rehearsals i had a black and white right a black and blue right arm if you don't get how he's going to respond to a position taken by then governor bush if you don't get how he's going to respond to moderators and how the questions are coming at him and if you get that wrong then your candidate in this case governor bush is going to be ill informed he's not going to be ready Oneliner the road to hell and debates is paid by the pursuit of the perfect one-liner we sit around and prep in in debate prep and think about how to capture the audience and the press's imagination with a clever line or a way of saying something that also makes a very important argument you can you know have a lot of witty one-liners in your back pocket but you know sometimes those don't work very well anyhow it's a difficult to come up with a great line like that and and b difficult in the pressure of the moment i think for a candidate to deliver it or to find the right moment to pull it off you don't want to spend too much time um digging under rocks for surprises you want to nail what you know is coming i have been in this situation before where um you know you think we don't want to tip the press off to an attack that we're going to make um because that would tip off our opponent so we'll just have the candidate landed in the middle of the debate and surprised everyone and the problem with that is if you don't set it up ahead of time it doesn't usually land you can come up with a number of them and you can prep them but then it really comes down to the candidate appreciating where she or he is in that moment to deliver it and if it ain't there don't force it i'll tell the story about that one of the most famous lines jack kennedy you know lloyd benson looking at dan quill and saying senator you're no jack kennedy it was anticipated but not scripted you tend to prepare for the last debate and what i mean by that is is in our first debate it was dominated by al gore making these exaggerated decides about governor bush's record you know it just he looked terrible um and so we came up with a line for the second debate if he did that again that governor bush would say stop sighing about my record um and of course vice president gore's advisers told him the sighing looked ridiculous and so he didn't do it again and so governor bush never had a chance to use that line john kerry went into that debate with a little mantra in his head which is he says saddam you say osama and it was a defining moment in that debate because after the president did it uh senator kerry turned to him and said solomon didn't attack us osama bin laden attacked us consider in 1992 with bill clinton his defining sound bite was not a zinger that went viral it was almost a respectful moment where he turns to president bush and basically says i do honor his service to our country i appreciate his efforts and i wish him well i just believe it's time to change that was the message of that campaign the horses and bayonets was a way for us to freshen up our argument that mitt romney wanted to spend too much on defense and we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. well governor we also have fewer horses and bayonets that was something that we developed during debate prep week he had not used it previously in the campaign Body Language body language piece is huge in understanding the candidate and how the candidate is really feeling in that moment they can get one or lost by body language you had in 92 right you had the accidental moment you had george herbert walker bush look at his watch do you want everybody in america to get the feeling there's nowhere you'd rather be than on that debate stage it's not just about when you're talking or pausing it's understanding that that camera is on you at all times governor bush was answering a question and then uh rob portman uh you know senator apartment went up behind him and just sort of lurked behind him and bush being bush just kind of broke character and looked at him and laughed and said like what the hell are you doing so i was sitting next to my boyfriend uh an audience and you know what did exactly what portland said he came behind and if you go back and you look at that you know bush just kind of looks at him like what are you doing and it's a funny moment people literally laughed in the audience but it was very much a moment that bush won you almost need to have an athletic posture that's true what we try to really work with barack obama is have an athletic posture when your opponent's speaking um and just like you're ready to pounce you're listening you're taking it in and you're ready to fire back in that debate in st louis when trump was sort of circling behind her almost stalking her looming over her and hillary just kept going Use Real Life Examples do use real life examples you can get bogged down in too many details or facts or figures know your stuff know where you are and command the moment a very big mistake is to get so lost in the weeds of the question that you miss the larger human value and moment behind the question being asked really what the debate is is a big national platform for you to make your most convincing message to a very large number of voters don't let yourself be on the defensive no matter how hard your apology comes at you you have to be able to connect with your audience don't forget to show your humanity because at the end of the day that's what people are looking for be super prepared be confident you're ready for whatever but have fun out there like this is an opportunity to seize the presidency Drive Message they're one-on-one based upon your ability to drive message it's whether or not you win the big ideas and whether or not you win the big moments it is a combination of getting out your message your key points and values on the key issue but also defining yourself as the person that you want to be these debates are always come down to the moments that are genuine and authentic at the end of the day the person who won who won is really going to be determined by how the american people perceive them and whether or not they saw a president in that moment or they saw a wannabe a successful debate is where you have a set of hits coming in that you want to do you're able to set them up your candidate lands them and then you're able to continue to push them for the following week debates are only useful to the degree they help you win or block you from winning what the debate meant and who won it and who lost it isn't formed necessarily in the moment of the debate it's formed by the coverage in the 24 to 48 to 72 hours after the debate what's played what's defined i think you wouldn't debate by coming off the stage and having people feel good about you about you as a person especially and about your willingness to take the nation to a better place so how can trump and biden apply these lessons as they prepare to meet on stage well joining me now are phillipe raines hillary clinton's former spokesman who played donald trump in her debate preparations and brett o'donnell who has helped prepare george w bush john mccain mitt romney among others for debates welcome to you both and folks we'll see both of you were um throughout our larger piece there but let's bring it to trump v biden brett o'donnell i want to start with you because i got to think if donald trump asks you to prepare could you prepare him and i reason i ask this is i've known you for a while you're you're a well-prepared guy donald trump is a seat of the pants guy can you prepare donald trump for a debate well every candidate is different and how they prepare and so you know every approach i've taken with the five presidential candidates i've worked with has been slightly different so you know i i think i could um it's just a matter of gauging what makes for most success uh and prep with him and it seems like from you know stories i've heard from his team it's it's not doing mock debates it's actually sitting around and talking about issues and and maybe rehearsing moments but but not doing full-on mock debates i've worked with some who are uh really a lot like that who don't want to do an exact mock debate for 90 minutes they want to sit around a table and talk about the issues and try to come up with stories that might fit the moment felipe you uh you famously played um donald trump in the hillary clinton mock debates what make what were mock debates helpful to secretary clinton and and if so why is that preferable to say doing what it sounded like what brett described as sort of in baseball i think they call it pepper ball where you just sort of you're just quickly trying to grab grounded you're hitting you're throwing balls quickly at them to see if they can field it well look what might be helpful to hillary clinton might not be helpful to joe biden i mean everyone has different ways of learning including the three of us um i if i were in the situation i would want to mock debate because while it's a pain and while it's not fun it is what you're going to be doing it's the most authentic and genuine and accurate performance and you know the moments you showed in that great package whether it was karen hughes talking about judd greg talking about george bush and the moment with al gore on stage or uh lloyd benson and dan whale those mike mccurry was very careful when he said those moments weren't scripted but they were anticipated and without going down the rabbit hole the specifics of those both of those moments were moments that they had done in a debate where the candidate said that's not gonna happen why are you wasting my time lloyd benton said i don't know why you're ever going to do this with me you're wasting my time he's not going to compare himself to church okay and uh george bush got upset with everyone because he said judd what are you doing he's not going to get that close to me and um you know it a point of debate prep and again every campaign and every candidate is going to have a different goal but i think what everyone would agree is that you want your candidate to have thought through everything every opportunity every pitfall every moment so that you're not winging it on stage that first time and i don't just mean memorizing stats right and the more you do it the more you immerse yourself the more it's going to happen um let me tackle this from the biden side of things brett it seems to me that joe biden's biggest challenge is going to be figuring out how to respond to various charges that the president may throw at him without going down the rabbit holes of the specifics you know ronald reagan had the great there you go again and it was this dismissive goodbye with the hand and it was almost like he didn't even have to address the topic how would you coach biden on how to handle what will be rapid fire from trump yeah this has been the the sort of hermeneutic key for donald trump it's a matter of figuring out how to handle uh what donald trump does and how he debates i mean he is the most unconventional candidate there is and candidates have yet to figure out how to do that if if i were coaching biden i i would tell him to stay on offense he he should stay on the attack and not take donald trump's bait because the president is going to stay on offense and so if you don't stay on offense against the president you're going to find yourself behind very quickly i mean that's what happened in the primary debates where the president was very effective at branding his opponents and it also happened uh with hillary clinton where you know the president sort of relentlessly pursued her on stage and she just was not able to uh to uh to handle that barrage i mean i think that happened in a couple of moments you know felipe it did sort of i think was very frustrating to the secretary on that because i think if you listen to those debates on the radio it's not a close call if you were at yale deciding who won the debate but the stylistic issues there did sort of get in the way how do you what's your advice to biden and how to avoid those moments well joe biden has one thing going for him that hillary clinton didn't that he's a man i think in that specific case in the second debate the town hall debate where he alert behind her that's another example of something that we anticipated uh but didn't necessarily script hillary in her own book said you know looking back i don't know what i should have done in my head i thought back off i think brett hit the nail on the head about staying on on offense but what donald trump does not do is does not spend any time defending himself even the most egregious moments and accusations like the hollywood tape he dispenses of very quickly and if you watch tape whether on radio it is amazing time candidates spend defending themselves and that is a moment that they could have been doing something else this is not a seven hour debate you don't get to talk as much as you want you're talking two and a half three minute gaps and you have to make the most of it right brett let's talk about a pattern that we've noticed in the modern era of presidential debates incumbent presidents seem to bomb on debate one ronald reagan 84 uh george w bush 0-4 barack obama 2012. um and the theory is it's the first time they've had to be treated as an equal how does donald trump avoid that first debate disaster that previous incumbents have encountered yeah it's the trap of presidential incumbency right you uh you say i've done this before uh you're you're you're not surrounded by folks who are you know but for the most part uh during a campaign uh there isn't that inequity of the office and so uh you feel free to speak freely about what the candidate uh needs to do but when you're talking to the president it's a whole different story and so um uh the president's got to get outside the trap of incumbency meaning he can't he can't focus on just talking about policy he can't worry about being attached to his record he's got to make this a choice and that was the failure of every one of those presidents they they fell into defense mode defending their record right philly brains brett o'donnell uh you guys were terrific uh thank you both we will find out just how well these guys take advice or don't take it anyway up ahead why i'm obsessed with calling foul on a game that nobody truly wins [Music] and finally this week i'm obsessed with The Biden Rule a hard and fast iron-clad unbreakable rule of governance that you will not actually find in print anywhere case in point in the week after justice ginsburg's death president trump and gop leadership have been scrambling to nominate and confirm a supreme court justice before election day if the shoe were on the other foot and the democrats had the white house and the senate they would right now be trying to confirm another member of the supreme court you don't know that proposing is completely consistent completely consistent with the precedent what happened in 2016 and let's go back we were following the joe biden rule this just sounds like a power grab pure and simple well it is the biden rule that was wyoming republican senator john barasso with me and meet the press the sunday after justice ginsburg's death he's talking about an idea suggested by joe biden back in 1992 when the then delaware senator was chairman of the judiciary committee under what's being called the biden rule if the presidency is controlled by one party and the senate is controlled by another and there's a supreme court vacancy close to a presidential election the president should not nominate a new justice until after the election but for more on what you really need to know about the biden rule we're going to go to matthew mcconaughey it's all the fugazi you know what from gaza is fugazi it's a fake it's crazy for ghazi it's a washi it's a woozy it's a fairy dust it doesn't exist it's never landed it is no matter it's not on the elemental chart it it's not real it sure isn't look long and hard but you will not find the biden rule anywhere the binding rule is just one entry in the phantom encyclopedia of unwritten rules of government pull off the shelf and dust it off whenever it's politically expedient washington sure seems to like its unwritten rules you know who else does major league baseball don't bunk to break up a pitcher's no hitter don't admire the home run ball you just hit don't steal bases if your team is way ahead each of those rules are unwritten too but here's the key difference most of baseballs seems to be about sportsmanship most of washington's seems to be about gamesmanship the unwritten rules of baseball protect the integrity of the game above all else the unwritten rules of politics seem to protect the winner and nothing else Outro next week we're going to look at what might have been the most consequential day of the 2016 campaign october 7th thanks for being with us meet the press reports debut join us on nbc news now or anytime on peacock hey thanks for watching our youtube channel follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the nbc news app you