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- [Voiceover] This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra.
- Hello, and welcome to the Washington Week Webcast Extra
where we pick up online where we left off on air.
I'm joined by Michael Duffy of Time Magazine,
Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times,
Beth Reinhard of the Wall Street Journal,
and Phil Rucker of the Washington Post.
Just when you thought the year could not get any weirder,
one of this cycles presidential candidates
jumps from the debate stage to Dancing with the Stars.
I have to admit, I thought it was a mean Twitter joke
when I first read what former Texas governor
and two-time presidential candidate Rick Perry
would be joining the cast
of the popular dance-off this season,
but Phil Rucker, it turns out,
got it from the horse's mouth.
What was he thinking, Phil?
- Well, he's not a very good dancer.
He's actually only danced four times in his life,
or publicly, rather, in his life.
- [Gwen] You like to think he dances in private?
(laughter)
- We don't know what he does
in private. - We don't know.
- But he wants to promote veteran's issues
and he has a deal going with the show's producers
that he can talk about veterans when he's on the show,
and he's in the middle of rehearsals
trying to learn all these different dances,
but the thing he said that was so striking
in the interview,
is that it's not much different than politics.
He said politics is basically reality TV now,
you have to perform.
And the onus is on the politician.
- [Gwen] You don't have to have rhythm to do politics,
as we have witnessed many times.
- [Phil] Well, but he's developing rhythm.
(laughter)
- [Gwen] Developing rhythm.
- [Phil] He said the tango, the cha-cha,
he's learning it all.
- Has he watched the show before?
- He said he'd watched it about a half dozen times.
His wife Anita has watched it a little more than him,
but he's hardly a fan.
He did go back to look at tapes, though,
and Geraldo Rivera,
he said he would never want to dance like Geraldo.
(laughter) - Oh my.
- Or dress like Geraldo.
- Who was kicked off after the
first episode. - He was.
- Not that I watch the show,
I'm just saying. - Just heard.
- I read that somewhere.
Okay.
- I guess the back problems that plagued him
in the last campaign are solved, I hope,
for his sake.
- We'll find out. - Yes.
- In that first season premiere.
- I know you'll be there watching.
I'll read what you write, how's that?
(laughter)
Hey Beth, let's talk about some down-ballot questions
this week.
We were watching, at least earlier this year, very closely,
what was going on with John McCain in Arizona
and Marco Rubio, who changed his mind and decided
the Senate was a good place to be after all in Florida.
They both won by pretty healthy margins.
Neither of them are exactly in the Trump camp.
What does that mean, if anything?
- Well, they had flawed opponents.
Marco Rubio ran against someone
who was not known in Florida.
He's obviously very well known as a former House Speaker,
as a presidential candidate, as a Senate candidate.
And indeed, he crushed his opponent.
And has also been keeping his distance from Donald Trump.
It's interesting that you mention John McCain.
When Trump gave his speech in Arizona
and one of the warm-up speakers said,
"Hey, how about our hometown senator winning his primary,"
the crowd booed.
(Gwen laughs)
So that tells you something about the disconnect
between the Trump support and the Republican party.
- Let's talk a little bit about the debate prep.
We heard today, this is Friday, September 2nd,
about who the debate moderators are gonna be.
But I'm also curious about how these folks
prepare for these debates.
Not the moderators at all,
I may know a thing or two about that, it's very hard.
(laughter)
But the candidates, the candidates.
How do they do that?
Who do they show up?
Who plays the other people on the stage?
How do they pull this off?
- Well, like everything else in this campaign,
when you're talking about an asymmetrical situation.
They seem to be going about it in two different ways.
So let's start with Hillary Clinton.
She's doing it the classic way.
You start with all the briefing books,
you start with all the questions and the answers.
Hillary Clinton, the wonk extraordinaire,
basically has that all down.
So the main thing is, yeah,
you need somebody playing the other candidate
and you've got a whole murder board of people
figuring out what kind of questions
is the other candidate going to throw you?
As far as I know, we still don't know who's playing
Donald Trump in the Hillary Clinton debate prep.
That's been one of the best guarded secrets.
But the real problem is,
which Donald Trump is gonna show up?
Is it gonna be,
and last week's news in Mexico and Arizona
was a good example,
is it gonna be the statesman-like Donald Trump
of Mexico City,
or the ferocious attack dog of Phoenix?
My money's on the attack dog,
which means that Hillary Clinton has to be ready
for the sucker punch about her family finances,
or Bill Clinton's peccadilloes that come from nowhere.
- I keep thinking back to the Rick Lazio senate debate
when he decided he was going to be the attack dog
and go after her,
and she walked away looking like the victim.
There's an antsy thing to running against a woman.
- [Doyle McManus] Truth.
- Well, you have to be careful about overdoing it,
because you don't want to alienate women who are watching,
or men who find that sort of thing un-chivalrous.
And Hillary Clinton in a debate,
let's not underestimate her,
as they used to say in Little Rock, is murder.
(laughter)
In a courtroom, you just didn't want to face her.
So, that's the other thing that's gonna happen.
Whoever is going, whatever is going on behind the scenes,
we're gonna get, all of us, truckloads of expectations.
Well, she's not a very good debater.
Well, he's never. (Gwen laughs)
The expectations game is going to be in full swing
as we get close to that first debate.
- Now, we are talking about a 90 minute debate
without commercial interruption,
which she may have done before,
certainly he hasn't.
- That's right.
And what Trump is counting on
is that she's gonna come in totally prepared,
have her comments scripted, timed out,
the tone all prepared in advance,
and that he's gonna come in looking authentic
and unscripted and real and kind of straight talk.
In fact, the Trump advisors were telling me
and my colleagues this week,
that one of the reasons he's not preparing
is he doesn't want to have anything memorized
because he wants it to all feel natural to the viewers.
That seems risky.
I don't know if that'll work.
But that's the contrast they're going for.
- The big risk that Trump is running here,
if he follows that non-strategy,
is not with Hillary Clinton, it's with the moderator.
Because Trump did well in debates
with four or six or eight or 16 people on the stage
and you never had to pin him down,
he could never be pinned down on specifics,
but in a 90 minute debate where he's half of it
and there's one moderator, if he says,
Well, here's what I want to do about 11 million immigrants,
for example,
that moderator has a moral duty to say,
Now wait a minute,
I'm not sure you answered the question,
and go at him a couple of times.
And that's a problem.
- Does he, or she, have a moral duty,
or is that something that the other candidate
is supposed to do?
This is a question for the ages about moderating debates.
- That depends on the format,
but I actually think if a candidate
completely evades the question
or tries to smother it in bafflegab,
I happen to think the moderator has to say,
I'm not sure you answered the question.
- I think we have just a little under a month
before the first debate
and the one thing we know for sure after a week like this,
is about 82 things will happen between now and then
which will change our expectations mightily.
Thank you all very much.
We're off to brush up on our cha-cha
so we can watch (laughter)
Rick Perry.
You can too right after you take this week's
political news quiz.
You can find it at PBS.org/WASHINGTONWEEK.
And we'll see you next time
on the Washington Week Webcast Extra.
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