The Art of the Scorecard

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2007 8:12 AM

I learned a long time ago that debate-watching is a very subjective business.

Just when you're positive than one candidate slam-dunked the other, a passel of pundits somehow concludes the opposite.

In 1980, for instance, I thought that Jimmy Carter had outpointed Ronald Reagan in their sole faceoff, outmaneuvering him on the facts time and again. (I had company--I just looked up David Broder's analysis and he wrote: "For most of their nationally televised debate, Carter's challenger was kept on the defensive -- explaining that his views on arms-control, military weapons, Social Security and domestic programs were not the 'very dangerous, disturbing' and even 'radical' notions that the president said they were." But Broder also credited Reagan's "Are you better off now?" line as effective.)

What I failed to see was that Carter came off as tense and Reagan as confident and relaxed, especially with his "There you go again" dismissal of one of Carter's charges.

I learned that you have to watch these debates the way the average viewer might follow them, and that style, body language and one-liners are as important as the substantive details. Remember how reporters at the first Bush-Gore debate thought the vice president had won because they didn't see the sighing that the cutaway camera was feeding to the country? Again, for many people the substance mattered less than the theatrics.

And, of course, viewers tend to overestimate the performances of candidates they like or who say things they agree with.

But journalists also find themselves slipping into subjectivity mode. How else to explain the wildly different interpretations of Tuesday's Republican debate in New Hampshire?

Slate's John Dickerson gives the nod to Rudy:

"He seemed commanding during the debate, at ease with facts on issues like health care and immigration. When asked by an audience member what defines an American, his answer, including a quote from Lincoln, was so complete it sounded like he'd been given the question ahead of time. He continued to throw out red meat, attacking Democrats more than his opponents did. GOP voters will like this, and they'll ignore where he went overboard as the mayor did when claiming the Democratic candidate's plans for health care are socialized medicine (they're not) and suggesting they didn't talk about the threat from Islamic terrorists in their debate Sunday (they did)."

Arianna Huffington has a different winner, and a different view of America's mayor:

"This was vintage McCain. Perhaps energized by being in New Hampshire, home of his greatest political triumph in 2000, he provided the two most emotional moments of the night. The first came in his response to a question asked by Erin Flanagan, whose younger brother had been killed in Iraq eight days before he was scheduled to return home in December 2005.

"McCain rose from his chair and, his voice choked with emotion, thanked her for her brother's service and offered 'a little straight talk' on the war, which he said had been 'badly mismanaged for a long time,' leading to 'unnecessary' deaths. Of course, he then went on to defend the current surge strategy, and warned of Iraq turning into 'a center of terrorism' if we withdraw -- but, however wrong his position, it was McCain at his passionate best.

"Indeed, he so clearly connected with the woman and the audience that every other candidate immediately followed suit and began getting off their stools for just about every answer given after that. . . .

"McCain also took what could be his greatest liability in the GOP primaries -- his sponsorship of the immigration bill -- and turned it to his advantage by connecting immigration to military service, his resume trump card. . . .

"By contrast, Rudy Giuliani seemed a tad unhinged. He tried to have it both ways when it came to terror and national security, claiming on one hand that the sacrifice of American lives in Iraq 'is one of the reasons we're safe now in the United States,' while on the other hand repeatedly raising the specter of Islamic terrorists who will do us all in if we don't put him in the White House."

So Rudy was either "commanding" or "unhinged." And while Dickerson says Romney didn't make much of an impression, Politico's Roger Simon rates him the winner and puts McCain in fourth place, behind Mike Huckabee.

"Analysis: He is not closing the deal. We might have put him in fifth, but he finally caught fire an hour and forty-five minutes into a two-hour debate. But he kept saying 'my friends' so much, you began to wonder if he had any . . .

"I interviewed McCain in February about the problem his immigration stance poses for him and he said: 'One of the biggest problems with immigration reform is that it takes so long to explain it. If I had a half hour with every Republican, they'd all say, "Oh, yeah, now I get it.'' Well, he doesn't have a half hour. He needs a better soundbite, which is what debates are all about."

But fourth place for McCain is kind compared to the judgment of Mark I at RedState:

"Sen. McCain's presidential campaign ended Tuesday night. I didn't see all of the GOP presidential candidates debate. In the parts I did see, however, I saw three things from Sen. McCain. I saw him talking down to the audience, the other candidates, and the nation on the issue of immigration. Second, I saw Sen. McCain being beaten up by everyone on stage over his position on immigration. Third, I saw and heard him in an insultingly thinly veiled fashion accuse every opponent of his position on immigration of being a racist.

"If that's not enough of an indictment of the state of his campaign, consider that after the debate, all of the CNN pundits analyzing the performances of the candidates thought McCain won."

So whoever CNN is for, he's against?

Giuliani made an impression on Power Line's Paul Mirengoff:

"The winner was Rudy. My only quibble was with his exuberance on the subject of (for lack of a better term at this hour) nation-building, as when he said that America's biggest challenge is exporting our values to the Middle East (or words to that effect). Though such pronouncements make for soaring rhetoric and may be defensible on the merits, they could come back to haunt him in a general election if he gets that far."

At the New York Sun, Ryan Sager seconds that view:

"Rudy Giuliani won that debate hands down . . .

"Whether it was Iraq, immigration, health care, or whatever, he just sounded so much more relaxed and in command of the situation than the other candidates that it was ridiculous. Even when the abortion question came up -- one might not have liked the substance of his answer, but he was confident in his convictions while giving it (he was also helped by that lightning strike during his answer, which lightened the mood).

"As for the other candidates, one would have to give John McCain second place. While the sheer amount of time spent on immigration wasn't good for him, he got to talk a lot about Iraq and service and the military -- and he's always good when he's on those themes. Even on immigration, it's hard to miss that this guy's doing what he thinks is right. That's the product voters are buying when it comes to Mr. McCain, I think they got a lot of it."

So McCain, buried at RedState, has been resurrected.

"Out of the Big Three, Mr. Romney was clearly the third. From prevaricating on the Iraq question at the beginning to prevaricating on the Spanish-language-ad question toward the end, he simply did himself no favors. I don't remember him getting off one good line. I do remember him seeming overly slick."

So much for Roger Simon declaring him the winner.

There was no blood on the floor, but McCain did very well, says Fred Barnes:

"There was a moment in Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate that must have caused a massive sigh of disappointment among the media. It came when former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney declined to attack Arizona senator John McCain on immigration. The day before, McCain had criticized Romney for failing to do something-or-other on that issue. Romney grinned, declared McCain his friend, and said, 'I'm not going to make this a matter of personal politics.'

"Why the heck not? That was my reaction. It's personal squabbling among the candidates that the press was looking for. It's what Wolf Blitzer, who ably moderated the debate on CNN, was looking for. And so was I. Serious bickering, preferably by the top tier candidates, is what makes these events interesting, fun, and worth watching. Any political debate described as polite, as Tuesday's was, is something less than exciting. . . .

"If was an especially good night for anyone, that was probably McCain. He was forceful without being overbearing."

Not a bad description of a successful pundit, either.

There was one big loser in the debate, as the Nation's John Nichols reminds us:

"Even the Republicans who supposedly like Bush played the president's failures for laughs.

"What may have been the best line of the night came when first-term Bush Cabinet member Tommy Thompson referenced his former boss's lack of diplomatic skills in his reply to the what-do-you-do-with-Bush question.

" 'I would certainly not send him to the United Nations,' said Thompson.

"Speaking of the Bush administration, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services told the Republican-leaning crowd at the debate in the first primary state of New Hampshire: 'We went to Washington to change Washington. Washington changed us.' At least Thompson said 'we.'

"The other candidates were less generous. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Bush 'bungled Katrina,' suggesting that not just the president but the Republican Party 'lost credibility' when White House failed to respond quickly or effectively when a deadly hurricane struck New Orleans in 2005.

"Running down a long list of Bush administration failures, Huckabee said of the mid-term election thumping the party took in 2006: 'We didn't do what we were hired to do and the people fired us. The Republican Party as a whole deserved to get beat.'

"McCain agreed. 'We let spending get out of control,' he said of the Bush years. 'We presided over the largest increase in the size of government since [Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's] Great Society. And our constituents and our Republican [backers] became dispirited and disenchanted.'

"What of Bush's signature issue: the Iraq invasion and occupation?

"Both McCain and Romney said the commander-in-chief blew it early on. 'I think we were under-prepared and under-planned for what came after we knocked down Saddam Hussein,' explained Romney.

"McCain, who made the amazing admission that he voted to authorize Bush to attack Iraq without reading the National Intelligence Estimate of risks associated with the invasion, said, 'This war was very badly mismanaged for a long time.' "

Now for some BREAKING NEWS:

"Bucking a ritual for Republican presidential candidates, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Senator John McCain announced Wednesday that they would skip participation in what has been a significant early test of candidate strength, the straw poll in Ames, Iowa, this summer," reports the NYT (along with many others).

"Their decision was the clearest indication of how much the changing primary calendar is upending presidential politics this year, as candidates grapple with the prospect of huge primaries in crucial states like Florida on Jan. 29 and California, New York and Texas a week later."

Praise the heavens! The Iowa straw poll is one of the most heavily hyped, media-created non-events on the planet, and now we can all ignore it. Rudy bailed first, and McCain was happy to follow him nanoseconds later.

The odds against Newt running are now 4 to 1. According to Newt, who I figure is a well-placed source.

To pardon or not to pardon?

"The fate of convicted former White House aide I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby has thrown a twist into the race for the Republican presidential nomination, forcing candidates to make an awkward choice between loyalty to a party stalwart and the GOP's long-held reverence for the rule of law," says the L.A. Times.

During Tuesday's debate, "Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, unleashing a fiery soliloquy, called Libby's sentence an "excessive punishment" and said U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton's order 'argues more in favor of a pardon.'

"Pressure also is coming from likely candidate Fred D. Thompson, a former Tennessee senator who said in a TV appearance that if he were president, he would 'absolutely' pardon Libby because the former aide was the victim of a 'gross injustice.' Thompson sits on the advisory board of Libby's defense fund.

"Revealing a rift in the GOP field, former Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore has flatly opposed pardoning Libby, arguing that doing so would undermine public confidence in the justice system."

At CBS's Public Eye, Matthew Felling suggests the host of "Countdown" may be getting too conspiratorial:

"Keith Olbermann has developed a reputation -- he's earned media capital, if you will -- by raising serious questions about the political climate in America. But Tuesday night, he squandered a bit of that account in a 16-minute segment in which he attempted to make the case that the JFK terror plot was little more than a cleverly-timed political ploy by the Bush administration. The segment went through chapter and verse of how curious the timing has been of many Bush terror alert announcements and arrests -- how they frequently seem to follow, and swallow, news that isn't friendly to the White House.

"There has been rampant discussion of the consistencies of these coincidences in the media over the years. It's a concern. But Olbermann stretched that concern to a very thin and tenuous extent last night. His point? That Saturday's press conference announcing the JFK terror plot occurred the day before the Democratic debate to take away from its impact. Also, that the arrests were announced by a Bush-appointed US Attorney amid the current scandal surrounding the apparently politically-motivated firings of US Attorneys. And -- hold on to your seats -- also present was the New York City Chief of Police . . . the father of a Fox News Correspondent! . . .

"Hammering away at things that aren't there -- or barely there -- is a surefire way to dilute your message."

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough defends himself for asking whether Fred Thompson's wife "worked the pole" -- he insists he's talking about some exercise regime, not stripping -- but Palmetto Scoop says he's making things worse.

The New Republic praises the aggressive David Gregory as a real-life Stephen Colbert.

In declaring that a Murdoch takeover would be fine by them -- they already have a Fox News show -- the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal takes a swipe at another media mogul:

"Everyone knows that the influence of Times Publisher and CEO Arthur Sulzberger Jr. extends to selecting not merely the editorial page editor but columnists, political endorsements and, as far as we can tell, even news coverage priorities. We don't see how this differs from most of what Mr. Murdoch is accused of doing with his newspapers. The same lack of independence also applies to most non-family media companies such as Gannett, a newspaper owner whose make-no-waves corporate ethic turns nearly all of its editorial pages into mush."

Here's the difference: Sulzberger, like all publishers, is supposed to be involved with the editorial page, columnists and endorsements. But I've never heard of him interfering with the news coverage, unlike the many documented examples involving Rupert. If the Journal editorialists have evidence that Arthur did meddle in the newsroom, they should present it.

One Journal columnist, Holman Jenkins Jr., wouldn't mind being bought by The Washington Post. Uh, not gonna happen.