-Whether you like it or not,
the 2020 presidential primary debates are already upon us.
Yay! Get ready for a lineup
of more Democratic primary candidates
than you can shake a stick at.
I for one love to ruthlessly scrutinize
a crop of presidential wannabes,
but I want to know if primary debates
actually make a difference to a candidate's chances.
So I talked to Philippe Reines,
a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton,
also known as the guy who played Donald Trump
in Clinton's 2016 debate prep.
So, as a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton,
I want to know how much you think debates matter
for any candidate.
-Tremendously. It's strange to think about,
because you talk about the candidates all the time,
and you see them on TV all the time.
They're never together.
So someone might sound great on the trail
but sound mad onstage or angry or stiff.
You're gonna have 10 people --
You're gonna have 20 people onstage.
It's a group dynamic where they've never been together,
and they're all feeling each other out.
I mean, that's a recipe for good TV,
but it's also a recipe for disaster.
-Of course, this potential for disaster
can be what makes debates so fun to watch.
You might get to watch the moment live
when a primary candidate goes from a hot
up-and-coming contender to the joke of the nation.
-You can't name the third one?
-The third agency of government I would do away with?
-Yeah. -The education, the, uh --
[laughter] -Commerce. -Commerce.
And let's see.
-Oh, my. -I can't.
The third one I can't.
Sorry. Oops.
-There's a few historic moments that people always refer to
when talking about the importance of debates.
There's the 1988 vice presidential debate
between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle
which produced this classic-sick burn.
-Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.
[cheers and applause]
-People don't only remember the sick burns, though.
There are also those gaffes that seem so small or avoidable,
but it is crazy to think
that they influence public perception at all,
like Richard Nixon looking like a Sweaty Betty in 1960
compared to a perfectly matched JFK, or George H.
W.
Bush in 1992, who had the nerve to look at his watch onstage.
The only way to hope to avoid being a sweaty,
oopsie, watch-checking mess is to do a lot of prep,
more than a candidate might even think that they need.
-It is time-consuming, and it is draining.
It is basically studying for the LSATs,
the, you know, GREs all in one.
This might take other people by surprise,
but they need to take it seriously.
You know, these are folks
who are very accomplished public servants.
They run states.
They represent states in Congress.
They might debate people, colleagues and committees,
or have tough interviews, and they think,
"Well, this is just another setting."
I think anyone who goes into a debate thinking
that is pretty much assured of losing.
I mean, they need to start out thinking, "This is new to me.
I've never run for president before.
Even if I've run for president before,
I've never stood with these particular people
or this many people.
Staff is probably telling these candidates,
starting a month ago,
"We need to start practicing for debate."
And the candidate's like, "What do you -- Come on.
It's May. We have, you know, until June.
Why am I doing that? I've got to go to Iowa.
I've got to raise money."
You know, you need to realize the margin of error
in a debate is pretty close to zero.
I mean, it's embarrassing to stand in front
of a roomful of people and be picked over on everything.
You know, "When you do that, don't blink so much.
You're saying 'uh' too often."
You know, who wants that?
What, you're running for the most powerful job in the world,
and you have a bunch of snot-nosed 20-
and 30-year-olds telling you how to do something
that they've never done themselves.
-Of course, the current crop of Democratic primary candidates
is still in "The Brady Bunch" phase.
There are so many candidates that for most Americans,
including me, you may be seeing
and hearing from some of them for the very first time.
-You've got the bulk of the field at less than 2%,
people not knowing who you are.
This is their first exposure to you.
You've got one shot to make a first impression.
-If the stakes weren't high enough,
this primary season also has the strange,
wild, new reality of having more than one woman on a debate stage
at the same time,
which means that the male candidates might for once
have to think hard about how to talk to girls --
in a debate setting, at least.
-If you are a male, if you are Beto,
Biden, Bernie, Buttigieg, Bullock --
there's a 50% chance whatever you say is directed to a woman.
Boy, is that fraught.
People don't always realize how they come across.
I imagine the male candidates are spending more time
in their debate-prep sessions thinking about style and tone
when engaging their colleagues who are women
than the women are worrying about men.
-It's like the reverse of who usually has
to think about gender. -That's an excellent point.
It is the reverse of what typically happens to gender.
And it's pretty safe to assume that Roe v.
Wade and what's going on in Alabama and Missouri
and in general, you're gonna have some white man
standing up there, talking about reproductive rights.
And, then, you're gonna have some women up there.
One of them's gonna say, "Dude, I know
a little bit more about this than you do."
-So if you are a presidential candidate who's made the cut
and will be appearing in the primary debates,
remember, nobody has ever prepared too much for a debate,
talk to women like they're people,
and whatever you do, don't look at your wrist.
We'll all be watching.