Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

SPEAKER: The first debate between presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush will take place tonight at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Both men have gone through intensive preparations for this meeting, from holding mock debates with staffers to reading reams of briefing materials. Presidential debates are serious business, and one local man who knows that well is David Lillehaug, a Twin Cities lawyer and recent Democratic US Senate candidate. Lillehaug was one of Vice President Walter Mondale's campaign staffers, and he helped prepare Mondale for his debates with Ronald Reagan. Good morning.

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Good morning.

SPEAKER: That must have been something.

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Oh, the whole thing is just a high risk, high wire act. It's the ultimate in reality TV. And I was very privileged to be working for Vice President Mondale.

SPEAKER: How did you prepare Walter Mondale for those debates?

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Well, a lot of preparing Walter Mondale is just recognizing he doesn't need preparation on substance. We prepared some lengthy briefing books for him on every major issue of the day. But when push came to shove, he knew more about almost any subject than we could research. We started the preparation by going to boot camp.

SPEAKER: Boot camp?

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Yeah. That's what they call it. You've got to get the candidate away from everyone and let the candidate have some time alone with a small group of people to prepare. Now, that doesn't mean you disregard the good advice that you receive. I mean, everybody's brother-in-law's bowling partner wants to advise the candidate on debating.

I remember in 1984 Mondale's best line was "where's the beef?" And that came from the girlfriend of the campaign manager. So you want to listen to the advice, but get the candidate away so that he or she can prepare for this enormous, enormously significant moment in the campaign.

SPEAKER: Rehearsal. What's the role of rehearsal? Can you become almost too rote in your answers?

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Well, of course, the goal is to rehearse enough so that you don't look rehearsed. And we holed up in Walter Mondale's house in Washington and set up video cameras, set up the podiums the way that they were going to be and the real debate. And we just went over it again and again.

And even for an experienced candidate, to see yourself on video and see what you're doing is just excruciating. I'm sure TV news anchors find the same thing from time to time. And so you just need to go through a few days of that so the candidate starts to become very comfortable with the fact that this is not a person event. This is not dealing with real people. This is a reality-based TV show, and they've got to get that through their heads.

SPEAKER: Did you also, by the way, coach the vice president on posture, poise, various hand gestures, that sort of thing?

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Sure. We went through gestures. We went through connecting with the camera.

SPEAKER: That's a tough thing to do.

DAVID LILLEHAUG: --through turning toward the president, because you have to do that at the right angle in order to get what they call the two shot. So you get both Mondale saying what he's going to say and Reagan's reaction.

SPEAKER: How much does the candidate have to say about appearance in a debate?

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Well, about all the candidate has to say is what he or she is going to wear. And Fritz Mondale, I believe, before the first debate, didn't like the red tie that he had brought along. So he sent somebody out for ties. And I must confess, three of us, including the candidates, spent about an hour going over 27 different kinds of red ties and figuring out which would be the best one. It was probably just a good diversion from the tension and nervousness that occurs right before the event.

SPEAKER: Did you do much scouting on Ronald Reagan? I'm assuming you did.

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Oh, absolutely. And one thing I always advise candidates preparing for debates, read everything that your opponent has said over the last couple three weeks because usually, consciously or subconsciously, they're road testing the lines that they're going to use in the debates. And so you can pretty well predict what the candidate is going to say for each answer. And then you get to the strategizing and the game playing, determining what's the counter punch going to be, what's the likely response to the counter punch.

And in that regard, it's very much like a chess game. For example. In the first debate, we knew Ronald Reagan would probably say, "there you go again." He had done it in 1980, and I remember flying around Maine back in October of 1983, and Walter Mondale saying to me, you know, that Reagan's going to say, "there you go again." And you know what I'm going to say? I'm going to say, remember when you said that? It was when President Carter said you were going to cut Medicare. And you did, didn't you?

And then, all of a sudden, in October of 1984, Reagan does, "there you go again." And Mondale pivots to him and says exactly what he told me he was going to say back in 1983. So the candidates don't just go to boot camp. They think, for a long time, over a matter of months and sometimes years, what's going to happen in this enormously important event.

SPEAKER: Yet, you really can't plan for everything. And there was that memorable moment in 1984, in that second debate.

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Yes. Well, I'd rather talk about the first debate where Fritz Mondale did just fabulously. But the second debate is-- just to set this up, you may recall the first debate, there were a lot of questions raised about President Reagan's competence. Mondale came off the stage after that first debate and said, the president just left me.

And so the question was, was he too old? Was he starting to lose it? And so really, the test in the second debate had nothing to do with Walter Mondale. The question was, is the president really going to do well for the next four years? And he just had to show some competence. And here's what he did.

RONALD REAGAN: I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.

SPEAKER: Well, that was a memorable line. Now, what did Walter Mondale say after that debate to you?

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Well, he said privately that he thought probably the campaign was over. When a line like that is delivered, all you can do is smile and die.

SPEAKER: So how can you possibly prepare your candidate for something like that?

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Well, you can't. You can figure out pretty much what who's going to say what in the debates. But one of the interesting things about these high-stakes events, and one reason a lot of people watch them, is the same reason a lot of people watch car races. They want to see the crash. And in a lot of these presidential and vice presidential debates, there has been a defining moment where people's perceptions about one candidate or the other are very much solidified by just a few seconds of soundbite.

SPEAKER: The debate preparation you did for Walter Mondale, did that help you in your own debates when you were running for Senate and other office?

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Well, I learned it's a heck of a lot easier to be a coach than a candidate. And I learned as a candidate you get very nervous before a debate. Mondale said that walk to the podium from backstage in the first debate was the longest walk he'd ever taken in his life. And we do know to a certainty that both George W. and Al Gore are going to be very nervous tonight.

SPEAKER: David Lillehaug, I've enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.

DAVID LILLEHAUG: Thank you.