The drama of the campaign debates

In the current New Yorker, the magazine's Washington correspondent, Joe Klein, recounts an exchange from a 1992 campaign debate in which President Bush gave a fumbling answer to a question from the audience about how the national debt affected the "economic problems of common people." Because the woman who asked the question was black, Mr. Bush noted that he had been to an A.M.E. church recently. Then he veered awkwardly to the subject of teenage pregnancies.

When Bill Clinton's turn came, he stepped toward the woman and said, "Tell me how it's affected you again." In Mr. Klein's view, this demonstration of Mr. Clinton's superior empathic ability was a pivotal moment in their competition. The observation touches on the perennial questions of what voters look for in the candidate debates and how they process what they see and hear.

The explanation may be that people are looking for something that cannot be strictly measured by I.Q. or by checking a resume for the number of years in Washington. Debate audiences are trying to gauge something more mysterious and unpredictable, which is whether a given individual has a presidential temperament.

-- The New York Times