Great expectations as Obama and Romney prep for debate

Normally, political strategy dictates trashing your opponent and talking up your own policies. But this is all a bit different: when it comes to the presidential debates, it is all about playing down expectations.

That is because the mere fact of 90 minutes of live, unedited, prime time television could throw up, well, anything, in front of tens of millions of viewers. It will be their first chance to see Obama and Romney side by side, their first chance to see how the pair interact, and how they respond when they are put on the spot.

You will not have seen much of the candidates on the election trail this weekend, bar the odd rally and the occasional bit of press. Instead, they have closeted themselves away in deliberately remote locations, preparing like mad for the encounter which could change everything. Or nothing.

President Obama is certainly burdened with the weight of high hopes: a poll this weekend shows that the public overhwelmingly believe he will crush Mitt Romney in the first debate this week, and that has sent his team rushing out to explain his debating weaknesses.

Uniquely gifted

Obama is undoubtedly an experienced and gifted orator – just listen to what Romney aide Beth Myers was saying in a recent memo, calling him “a uniquely gifted speaker… widely regarded as one of the most talented political communicators in modern history.”

No pressure there, then. But a flair for rhetoric does not neccessarily translate into a sterling debate performance. Indeed, travelling press spokeswoman Jen Psaki was briefing reporters about Obama’s tendency to drone on with lengthy answers: “That’s clearly something we’ve been working on.”

In fact it has been four years since Obama was last involved in a debate, when he was up against the distinctly lacklustre John McCain in 2008. And as Politico put it, “he likes to hear himself talk”.

There is another potential pitfall for the president too: his tendency to appear irritated or impatient, drop a remark that might have seemed clever on paper, but comes out completely wrong.

Team Obama are desperate to avoid a repeat of his notorious “You’re likeable enough” retort to Hillary Clinton in January 2008, which many blame for his crashing defeat in the New Hampshire primary days later.

That, along with the very real fear that he is simply under-prepared, means Obama is being given a kind of three day crash course on Mitt Romney at a lakeside resort in Nevada, just a few miles from Las Vegas, apparently watching hundreds of hours of videotape showing Romney’s past debate performances going back to 1994.

Senator John Kerry has also been playing the part of the Republican contender in mock debates, while top aides including David Axelrod, the pollster Joel Benenson and strategist Anita Dunn will no doubt be doing everything to coach Obama into avoiding those uptight moments.

Likeable enough…

Former presidential contender Howard Dean had this advice: “He’s got to relax. He’s got to show a little sense of humour.” Perhaps that’s what is called being likeable enough.

This game of expectation-chess is no more straightforward for Mitt Romney. In his favour, he has had plenty of practice, what with the seemingly endless schedule of Republican slug-fests during that long and often fractious primary campaign.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie may not have helped matters when he rather hyped up the game on Sunday, declaring that Mitt had perfromed “extraordinarily well” every time he’d had to debate anyone in the past.

“I have absolute condfidence that, when we get to Thursday morning. You’re all going to be shaking your head, saying it’s a brand new race with 33 days to go”. No pressure there, either.

Except the moves are rather more complex for Romney’s advisers. They are already struggling to keep up momentum amid a constant stream of headlines about how badly the Republicans are slipping in the opinion polls and wobbles at the heart of the campaign.

Not a great idea, then, to talk down your man with quite so much enthusiasm. And let us not forget that Romney is a pretty handy debater: well briefed, well prepared, and in the main, on message.

He is reported to have spent hundreds of hours preparing to face Obama, his first one-on-one duel with a Democrat in over a decade. Ohio senator Rob Portman has been role playing the substitute Obama so often he must be starting to dream in Democratic talking points.

Romney’s potential stumbling block, though, is not his grasp of policy or his ability to remember the facts. It is those unscripted moments, when he is surprised by something out of left field. His tricky balancing act will be working out how to go on offence against the president without appearing mean or snobbish.

In a triumph of over-preparedness over spontaneity, it has also emerged that Romney has been trying to master the whole off the cuff humour thing, by rehearsing a bunch of pre-scripted one-liners. Since August. Let us just hope he manages to dredge them up at an appropriate moment.

Game changer? Not likely.

Whether or not Wednesday’s debate will be a true make or break moment – a “game changer”, to use the political lexicon – is quite another matter. Obama’s lead in the polls, and in most of the key battleground states, could well be thin enough for a really bad performance to make a difference.

And for many impatient GOP activists, frustrated by their candidate’s seeming inability to really enthuse his supporters, and find that crucial path to victory in November, this could be the last opportunity to turn things around.

For both men, then, in the world of insta-opinion and the inevitable rush to judgement, merely holding their own, even doing well, is not likely to be enough. Tough call, whichever side you are on. Or perhaps we all need a reminder to calm down: history shows, after all, that presidential debates have never changed anything very much.

Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News