Gov.’s Screen Presence Tips Scales in Dull Debate

TV viewers saw Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Treasurer Phil Angelides at their political best Saturday night. So they also saw why the governor is running far ahead in the polls.

Anybody tuning in to the only debate of the gubernatorial campaign got a close-up glimpse of how these two pretty much conduct themselves in small groups or even one-on-one.

Schwarzenegger: relaxed, confident, jovial. A better command of complex issues than one might expect of someone in public office for only three years.

Angelides: Intense, wound up. A policy wonk seemingly trying to cover every subject in one long sentence.

Barbara O’Connor, a communications professor and director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Cal State Sacramento, says “80% to 90% of communication is nonverbal.”

Nonverbal includes body language, she says. Eye contact and facial expression can be more important than words.

Angelides’ problem, I long ago concluded, is less the message he delivers than the delivery.

“Phil’s better than he used to be,” says O’Connor, a Democrat. “But he still tends to get shrill. His eyes dart. He gets that Cheshire cat grin. And he acts like the kid in school who knows a lot more than anyone else.”

The Republican governor, she adds, “is a performer. A master at the medium. He never met a camera he didn’t like. Reagan had that quality. Clinton had it.”

Angelides’ body language weakness was severely compounded for more than half the debate because he inexplicably stared into the wrong camera. From the TV viewers’ angle, he was looking about 80 degrees to the left -- an annoying profile that distracted from whatever point he was trying to make. It almost seemed like he was trying to avoid eye contact.

Who’s to blame? Everyone: The TV producer, the candidate’s staff and Angelides himself for not asking, “Hey, which camera do I look at?”

Finally, his veteran advanceman, Ed Emerson, sneaked up behind the live camera, wildly gestured and mouthed to Angelides: “Look here!”

There is a myth about TV debates that the underdog needs to land a knockout punch. What the losing candidate really must do is deliver a jarring blow or two that changes the course of the contest. Something that shifts the dialogue, creates new interest and prompts second looks.

That didn’t happen Saturday, although Angelides presumably will try to capitalize on Schwarzenegger’s assertion that while his special election last year was a political mistake, his “reform” measures were “good ideas.” The voters obviously didn’t think those ideas were so good.

There was one fleeting moment when Angelides, I felt, could have landed a solid jab that would have earned him a sound bite on every newscast and good play in newspapers. And that, in turn, might have begun to alter attitudes.

It came when Schwarzenegger gleefully tore into Angelides on taxes, implying -- as he has for months -- that the Democrat would love to raise every tax on the books: income, sales, property, car, alcohol.... Right there, Angelides should have looked him in the eye and demanded:

“Governor, stop lying about my tax plan!”

Instead, he merely quoted from one of my columns that said Schwarzenegger was either misinformed or “fibbing.”

Angelides’ current desperate predicament calls for the legitimate, if impolite, use of the word “lie.” Then continue:

“Governor, I’ll say this slowly so you’ll understand. My plan calls for cutting taxes for the middle class, small businesses and seniors by $1.4 billion, and rolling back college tuitions to where they were before you came to town. And I’ll close $2 billion in corporate loopholes big enough to drive your Hummer through while raising income taxes on the richest families, like ours, that earn more than $500,000 a year.”

But it might not have mattered anyway. I kept visualizing countless thousands of thumbs on TV remotes and hearing “click.”

This was a boring debate, despite the candidates’ best efforts. The format was a disaster that should never be repeated.

The fault lies with the Schwarzenegger campaign -- which sought softball questions and really didn’t want any viewers to watch for fear of the mythical knockout blow -- and the sponsoring California Broadcasters Assn., which devised the format after conferring with citizen focus groups. It’s sorry enough that focus groups are dictating campaign issues. Now they’re messing up political debates.

In fact, a focus group was operating during the debate, ordering up questions and kibitzing by earphone to the moderator, who in turn scolded the candidates that the focus group was unhappy.

The sole moderator, broadcasters’ President Stan Stathem, is a former small-town TV anchor, Republican assemblyman and current lobbyist. And he had laryngitis. The debate needed a Tim Russert, if not a traditional panel of questioning reporters.

It was billed as a “conversational debate” with no rules. No opening or closing statements. No time limits. Candidates had agreed to stick to the questions. Right.

Candidates are like racehorses that need jockeys and control. Rules or not, these candidates made their own opening and closing statements, talked about whatever they wanted to and were annoyingly, constantly lectured by the moderator to keep it short.

Here’s a suggested reform for the Legislature and Schwarzenegger, who won’t be running for governor again: Create a gubernatorial debate commission. Its goal would be to produce more and better debates.

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George Skelton writes Mondays and Thursdays. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.