Debates are a tough test for vice presidents running for president

Bush may not have been particularly impressive, but he was the more likable of the two.

Such a contest was far more difficult for Bush to win four years later, when he faced a young Bill Clinton on stage, then the savvy and smooth-talking governor of Arkansas, who was 22 years his junior – the largest age difference between major party candidates since before the Civil War.

Bush also debated H. Ross Perot, a billionaire who ran as an independent and had risen sharply in the polls after spending some of his wealth on television ads attacking both parties and Bush in particular.

As the sitting president, Bush was at the center of the debates of 1992, but not the center. At times he seemed to retreat, caught between the two more dynamic personalities of his opponents. He seemed to underscore this when he glanced at his watch and betrayed a certain degree of impatience.

When Clinton won the presidency that year, his running mate was Tennessee Senator Al Gore, who had little trouble being nominated to succeed Clinton in 2000. The economy was booming, personal computers were transforming work and school, and Gore had worked hard to distance himself from Clinton’s impeachment over an affair with a young White House intern.

Ironically, his opponent was another George Bush, the former president’s namesake son and himself the re-elected governor of Texas. Gore and Bush had three televised debates that fall, and while neither candidate was considered dominant, Gore’s efforts to dismiss Bush as a lightweight may have backfired. His habit of rolling his eyes in mock disbelief was seen by some as condescending. And while the younger Bush was not a brilliant debater, he had the quality that campaign advisers call “recognizability.”

The significance of the 2000 debates is in itself debatable, as is the significance of these events in previous election cycles. In the end, it was probably more important that consumer activist Ralph Nader split a portion of the Democratic vote as a third party in key states — notably Florida. That year, that state made the difference in the Electoral College after giving Republicans a majority-vote lead of just 537 votes nationwide.

The return of the double-edged sword

Even the last one-term president benefited and suffered from debating before the nation. The current occupant of the White House, President Biden, probably helped himself to some extent by withstanding the fury of his opponent in the 2020 debates.

That opponent, of course, was Donald Trump, who was still a formidable incumbent that fall, having survived a Senate impeachment vote and a Covid-19 crisis in his re-election year. Ultimately, his efforts to downplay the Covid-19 threat and blame others for its economic impact were the main cause of his defeat that fall. But he seemed determined to sweep Biden off the stage with his aggressive performance, especially in the first of those two sessions that fall.

Biden was not considered a world-class debater during his several presidential runs, especially on stage as a rival to eventual nominee Barack Obama in 2008. But he had served six terms as a senator and retained much of the positive impression he made during the next eight years as Obama’s vice president. He did not run to succeed his boss in 2016. His son Beau was battling cancer, and Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already secured the best chance of winning the nomination that year.

But in 2020, Biden, in his late 70s, ran for president and this time he had found the formula. He survived a weak start in the primaries and won the nomination easily – thanks in large part to strong support from African-American voters.

This fall, Biden had two televised debates with incumbent Trump. The first, in September, was notable for Trump’s extremely aggressive style: When it was Biden’s turn, he interrupted and made loud comments, and the moderators’ attempts to moderate were generally ignored.

The second debate between Trump and Biden in October was less turbulent, but Trump again eschewed the incumbent look that sitting presidents had valued so much in the past and continued to relentlessly attack Biden.

This fall, Trump will be the first former president since Grover Cleveland in 1892 to be re-nominated after losing.

And he will be facing the current vice president, who was elected with Biden four years ago. Harris and Trump have never met in person. But it’s not unlikely that Harris will watch the video of Trump’s performance at those debates four years ago.