Campaign Relief: In Debates, as in Sports, One Man's Fumble is Another Man's Forward Pass

By: John Hanchette Contention over who "really" won which televised political debate is often attributed to confusion on the part of political reporters who have succumbed to the honey-voiced spinmeisters after each contest.

During the six presidential campaigns I covered, I survived many a spin cycle, and I think there's something else going on here. Stark variables in opinion polls can be traced to a distinctly American propensity and cultural shibboleth: We watch way too much sports on the tube.

Then we allocate far too much importance to sports performance and measure almost everything in terms of sports achievement, even if we don't realize we're doing it. We now look at important political events through an athletic prism, and then we interpret the results through a rooting bias that comes naturally after years of partisan fandom.

I'm as guilty as anyone, and it leads to cloudy -- or wishful -- thinking.

When my pitiable Buffalo Bills suffered their third loss of the young season to the highly favored New England Patriots earlier this month, I ignored the convincing nature of the defeat, the much superior play of that hated rival, the resemblance of the Buffalo offensive line to Swiss cheese, and the probability that the Little Sisters of the Poor could field a competitive 11 against the decrepit Bills.

Instead I found myself babbling the next morning about how close the Bills came to knotting the contest in the second half before running back Travis Henry on fourth-and-one fell over his own feet. It unraveled after that. We were that close, and other Buffalo fans agreed.

No, we weren't. We tried hard, but we stunk.

The same thing can happen with debates. In the first one, President Bush sounded like Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man on a verbal loop in the second half of the contest, as he answered every other question Kerry put forth with observations on how tough it is to prosecute an unpopular war in Iraq or fight terrorism.

"It's hard work," he said, often. From opponents, this drew claims that Bush's brain is simply incapable of calling an "audible." Bush supporters, meanwhile, thought the repeated reference demonstrated the president was as immovable on Iraq as an all-pro football lineman.

See? One man's fumble is another man's forward pass.

The problem here is obvious. Unlike sports, there's no real way to keep score in presidential debates. The milieu is by definition too partisan for objective judgment. So let's do something about it. Let's change the rules. Let's keep score anyway.

Let's award extra points for successfully completing a metaphor. Let's deduct for plunging into the same line for the third or fourth time. Let's assess penalties for severe infractions.

If NASCAR can be Draconian enough to yank 25 racing season points away from Dale Earnhardt Jr. merely because he uttered a minor curse word in a victory jubilation, the Commission on Presidential Debates can certainly come up with a scoring system for the candidates trying to cross the finish line first in pursuit of the Oval Office.

The penalties could be signaled by the moderator tossing a red flag toward the lectern of the culprit.

How about this? If you boneheadedly refer 34 million viewers to the wrong Web site (which is then rerouting by its proprietor to one that criticizes the bejabbers out of your candidacy), you should be called for unintentional grounding and forfeit five minutes of speaking time.

If a candidate wanders across stage to get in his opponent?s face, as Al Gore did to Dubya in 2000 and as Kerry came close to doing last week, he should lose five minutes speaking time for "offsides."

If one of the candidates is caught by cameras scowling while his opponent tries to make a point, or rolling his eyeballs, or pursing his lips, or sticking out his tongue, or turning his hands palms up, he should be charged with a "personal foul" and lose three minutes speaking time for each gesture.

And if a candidate disputes it, you could go to the videotape, as they do in football.

Others recognized the sports-politics connection in this campaign long before I did. Keith Olbermann has been scoring all the debates like a boxing judge on his blog at MSNBC.com, giving and taking away points for below-the-belt blows.

Brian Tumulty of Gannett News Service, a former colleague, wrote last month of two Washington-based lawyers supporting Bush's re-election who registered an advocacy group called Football Fans for Truth as a Section 527 organization allowed to accept unlimited political donations.

The attorneys said they wanted to publicize their belief that Kerry is not worthy to be "sportsman-in-chief" after making repeated campaign trail blunders like calling the home field of the Green Bay Packers "Lambert Field" (it's Lambeau Field); offering praise to the Buckeyes, the nickname of Ohio State, while campaigning in the territory of their hated rivals, the University of Michigan Wolverines; and combining the names of his hometown Boston Red Sox stars Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz as one player.

Such a mistake in a debate should draw a flag and a penalty.

You may laugh, but remember, they laughed at legalizing the forward pass, and the arrival of the designated hitter rule in baseball, too. Think about how many jobs those innovations created.