Casing Presidential Debates: Nonverbal Communication in the Town Halls of 1992, 2000, and 2016

Sample

A “hot mess inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck,” was how CNN’s anchorman Jake Tapper described the first presidential debate of 2020 between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. “We’ll talk about who won the debate,” he added, “… but I can tell you one thing for sure, the American people lost tonight, because that was horrific” (Massie, 2020, para. 8–12). According to Jeremy Stahl (2020, para 1), Donald Trump interrupted his opponent or the moderator, Chis Wallace, a whopping 128 times, while Joe Biden, “trying to get a word in edgewise or correct flat lies by the president,” interrupted dozens. “Will you shut up, man?” Biden eventually said, closing his eyes and dropping his head in exasperation. “This is so unpresidential” (Carlisle, 2020, para. 5). When the moderator announced that it was time to move to another topic, Biden said, “That was really a productive segment wasn’t it?” (Carlisle, 2020, para. 5). Indeed, amongst an estimated 73.1 million viewers (Abbruzzese & Byers, 2020), those hoping for a substantive discussion on the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court vacancy, and race relations, were, instead, bombarded by nearly 90 minutes of antagonistic crosstalk, making it nearly impossible to follow the content of the candidates’ messages. But what about other aspects of the candidates’ communication? Specifically, if it is true, as the old saying goes, that actions speak louder than words, is there something valuable to learn through investigations of debaters’ nonverbal communication?