The upcoming presidential and vice presidential debates will be critical to the outcome of the election and could become heated as the candidates struggle to connect with voters, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder expert in political communication.
"I expect there to be some very crisp exchanges between John Kerry and George W. Bush," said Gerard Hauser, CU-Boulder professor of communication and recipient of the Rhetoric Society of America's prestigious George E. Yoos Award.
"I'm reminded of the significance of the Clinton-Bush debate in 1992," he said, adding that the "Town Hall" debate that year did great damage to the first President Bush's campaign. "There is a rhetoric of the everyday, a vernacular. People understand and connect to it. The senior Bush had difficulty with that, and Clinton was a master of it."
Hauser thinks the vice presidential debate will be intriguing because of the opposing backgrounds of the contestants, Dick Cheney and John Edwards. "Edwards made his mark by going after corporations that were harming average citizens, and he won incredible settlements," he said. "Dick Cheney is a captain of industry, a former leader of a corporation, and is extremely good at laying out complex ideas in a way that seems matter of fact."
Hauser researches how interaction among citizens and officials forms public opinion. At the Rhetoric Society of America's biennial conference in May, the organization awarded Hauser its highest distinction and established a scholarship bearing his name. He delivered a keynote address titled "Moral Vernaculars and Rhetorics of Conscience."
"The issues in this election are becoming less focused on political parties, and more focused on issues of identity," Hauser said. "It's very interesting that both candidates are trying to forge a coalition of supporters who might not identify as Republicans or Democrats, but rather as individuals who very strongly favor or oppose one candidate based on some fundamental issue of identity." These identity issues include religion, gay marriage, stem cell research, the environment and the war in Iraq, he said.
Hauser expects the Republicans to build a case for the accomplishments of the Bush administration and to continue attacking Kerry. The attacks could present a problem for the Democratic challenger, he said.
"The problem is that everybody says, 'We're sick and tired of negative campaigning,' " Hauser said. "But negative campaigning works -- people respond. Even through my own informal personal observations, I'm surprised how many people form opinions based on political TV ads. When asked why they feel one way or another, they'll repeat something they heard in an ad."