No matter when it takes place, there will be a first debate between the candidates. Here are 10 (naturally — this is America) tips for getting the most out of it and the debates that follow.

1. Ignore the “morning line” about how well each candidate is expected to do, what each candidate “needs to accomplish,” and so on. All that chatter is noise in the system — it has nothing to do with anything.

2. Tune in early and watch the pre- and post-debate programming on C-Span. Why C-Span? Before the debate, you’ll get a sense of the setting — what the scene is like, who’s in the audience, etc. Afterward, you can see how the candidates behave when they think the cameras are off.

3. Are the candidates you see and hear in the debates consistent with their commercials and their opponent’s commercials? If not, disregard the commercials. Remember those Head-On commercials—“Head-On — Apply...

Sen. John McCain has suspended his campaign so that he can return to Washington and help broker a legislative solution to the current financial crisis. The impulse that led him to do this is altogether commendable. During his long career in Congress, McCain has often has been instrumental in untying difficult legislative knots.

But why couple this commendable act with a call to postpone the first debate on Friday night? Understand: Postponement really means cancellation — readers of this blog’s posts on the preparations at the University of Mississippi will know that too much has been done to lay the groundwork for this debate at this day and time to reverse course now. If McCain wants to legislate all day Thursday and then get back at it on Saturday, that’s fine. But he’s the presidential nominee of a major political party, with duties that transcend being a senator. One of those...

Reagan and Mondale, 1984 (photo at pbs.org)

If you like presidential debates, thank Ronald Reagan.

Until Reagan ran for reelection in 1984, debates were a hit-and-miss thing. Only when both candidates thought it was in their interest to debate would debates take place. In 1960, the younger and less experienced candidate, John F. Kennedy, wanted to debate in order to close the stature gap with Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon wanted to debate because he was trailing in the polls and thought he was a really great debater.

In each of the next three elections, no debates occurred because one candidate believed he had more to lose than to gain. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was way ahead in the polls in 1964, and President Nixon, who was way ahead in 1972, saw nothing to be gained from appearing side by side on live television with their debate-hungry opponents. Nixon avoided...

Newsweek’s cover this week promises to explain “What Women Want.” The first sentence of its cover story begins: “When Walter Mondale chose New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984, he set off the briefest of crazes.”

Newsweek ought to know. Right after the 1984 Democratic convention, it placed Ferraro on the cover of its July 23 issue. One story was headlined: “Ferraro’s First Week: Men and Women Alike Wept and Cheered.” Another predicted: “Ferraro will tame most of the lions she confronts.” A Gallup Poll commissioned by the magazine showed that Mondale-Ferraro now trailed Reagan-Bush by only 2 percentage points. By a margin of 52 percent to 26 percent, voters said that Mondale’s choice of Ferraro made them more likely to vote for the Democratic ticket.

By Election Day, of course, the bloom was long off the rose. Ferraro’s thin credentials—less than...

Fox News is there already and CNN is on its way, to be followed in short order by NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, and a host of print and foreign news organizations. “The first salvo of news stories is going to be about race,” predicted University of Mississippi Chancellor Robert Khayat when I interviewed him on September 2, and he’s right. This morning’s Memphis Commercial Appeal (my local paper) has a four-page spread about Ole Miss, and the focus is on the university’s racial history from the violent past to the post-Confederate flag, post-Colonel Reb present. The Commercial Appeal’s story and editorials are entirely upbeat, just as Khayat hoped: “The media are going to come here and see the James Meredith statue and see our diverse and friendly student body changing classes and they’re going to want to tell that story.” By debate night—a week from this Friday—about 3,000 media personnel ...

The University of Mississippi’s decision in spring 2007 to send the Commission on Presidential Debates its $1.35-million application fee prompted a campus visit that summer by a commission team headed by producer Marty Slutsky. According to Andy Mullins, executive assistant to Chancellor Robert Khayat, Slutsky was taken by the beauty of the campus and the suitability of its Ford Center for the Performing Arts as a debate site. He was impressed by the school’s recent efforts to overcome its history of troubled, sometimes violent race relations. These efforts have been both symbolic—a statue of James Meredith adjacent to the Lyceum, the scene in 1961 of a white riot meant to keep Meredith from enrolling—and tangible: a large and growing African-American student population (about 16 percent). Rich Forgette, the chair of the political science department and a northerner, says, “The...

What happens in the aftermath of a sudden, shocking, man-made disaster like the terrorist bombings of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, and New York City’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001?

Students of the presidency know that, as a nation, all eyes turn to the president to speak the words that will bring meaning, consolation, and resolve to these events. To be sure, the president is chief of government, the leader of a political party and thus by definition a divisive political figure. But the president is also chief of state, the anthropomorphic symbol of national unity. (Think Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth II all in one.) America was sharply divided over Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at the time of the respective bombings, but in the aftermath that’s not what mattered to most people. Clinton and Bush were — just by virtue of...

(Crossposted at Campaign U.)

The idea of hosting a presidential debate on one’s campus may arise lightly, in a casual conversation or an e-mail. But the decision actually to seek one is not lightly taken.

In Ole Miss’s case, Curtis Wilkie, a journalism professor and former Boston Globe political reporter who had covered numerous debates, mentioned the idea to Chancellor Robert Khayat five years ago. Khayat asked his executive assistant, Andy Mullins, to find out what was involved. Mullins called someone at Wake Forest, the site of debates in 1988 and 2000, and discovered one thing not to do: host a debate involving a president running for reelection. “The security is just oppressive,” Mullins was told. For openers, no cars would be allowed within a one-mile radius of the debate site for a solid week, effectively shutting down nearby downtown Oxford. He and Khayat decided to for...

Look what they started.

On September 26, 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy debated Vice President Richard M. Nixon on national television. It was the first debate ever between two presidential candidates, and the most-watched political event in human history up to that time. The debate took place in a Chicago television studio.

On September 26, 2008, the first debate in this year’s contest between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama will take place, not in a studio but on the campus of the University of Mississippi.

The first on-campus presidential debate — the one between President Gerald Ford and Gov. Jimmy Carter at William and Mary — was in 1976. It didn’t start an immediate trend: In 1980 and 1984, debates were held, just not in academic settings. But in 1988 the newly-formed Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan group headed by the Republican and Democratic...

CNBC, Fox News, and now NBC are reporting that John McCain has chosen Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old, first-term (first year!) governor of Alaska, as his vice presidential nominee. What a terrible choice.

McCain’s mistake is not in choosing a woman, a governor, or a pro-life conservative—all of which Palin is. It’s in choosing someone whose resume is so short and thin. McCain has just forfeited his two major assets as a candidate—long experience in government and strong commander-in-chief credentials—for, well, for what? And don’t think he won’t pay a price on Election Day: McCain’s age means that, even more than usual, voters will be looking at Palin as a potential president as much as a potential vice president.

Candidates for president can get too clever by half in choosing their running mates. In 1968, Richard Nixon convinced himself that no vice presidential candidate would ...