Seventy-two hours before 90 minutes to change the White House race, Democrats appealed for fairness. The Republican raised the spectre of media bias

It is 90 minutes that could change the world, but Hillary Clinton is already warning that Donald Trump may overwhelm their first presidential debate on Monday if his “habitual lying” is left unchallenged by the moderator.



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The “prebuttal” from Democratic campaign headquarters came as both candidates hunker down in preparation this weekend, nervously awaiting an estimated television audience of up to 100 million Americans at what opinion polls suggest is the turning point in their race for the White House.



Clinton’s concern stems from Trump’s fast-and-loose rhetorical style, which has been attacked by newspaper fact-checkers but proved devastatingly effective on TV, first against his Republican challengers in the primary and, more recently, in a candidate forum on national security in which he was allegedly allowed to airbrush his past support for the Iraq war.

“She will respond when he misrepresents her own record, but given the historic nature of how much Donald Trump lies, it cannot be only on her,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters by phone on Friday.

“If the moderator is not willing to stand up and challenge lies, [then] to not do that is to give him a very unfair advantage”.

Trump fired an early counterblast, urging debate moderator Lester Holt not to take sides. “We don’t want another Candy Crowley,” the Republican nominee said, referring to a famous incident in the 2012 debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, where the host corrected an embarrassed Republican, midstream.

Whether or not Holt attempts live fact-checking, the first full debate, at Hofstra University outside New York, is one neither candidate can afford to lose. Clinton must stem an apparent surge in Trump’s popularity; the Republican needs to prove he has the temperament to be commander-in-chief. Both sides are desperate to manage expectations.

“It is unprecedented to hold a conference call to talk about special precautions that need to be taken because your opponent is a habitual liar,” said Palmieri, who said she was worried about what it “means for the how debate may unfold and how viewers should judge [Trump’s] performance”.

Though ridiculing the disciplined rehearsal schedule of his opponent, Trump also suspended campaigning on Friday in order to prepare. He sought to outsource his strategy to a giant focus group, asking supporters to email in suggested responses.

With barely seven weeks to go until election day, Democrats are also pulling out all the stops. Even characters from a fictional White House were enlisted to the Clinton effort on Saturday, as members of the cast of the West Wing – “Toby, CJ, Josh, Charlie” – were due to campaign for her in Ohio.

Monday’s debate is not the only way Clinton hopes to restore a sense of inevitability to her candidacy, but the audience will dwarf those at rallies. “She takes it very seriously,” said Palmieri. “She’s going in front of tens of millions of Americans, maybe even 100 million Americans, to persuade them why she needs their vote.”

It is unprecedented to … talk about special precautions that need to be taken because your opponent is a habitual liar Jennifer Palmieri

Stan Greenberg, a Democratic strategist who has been a senior pollster for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Tony Blair and Nelson Mandela, agrees that the debates come at a crucial stage for undecided voters.

“In that period, people open up a little bit,” he said, “so in terms of when people make up their minds, when the last debate happens you can watch it almost visibly. I remember with [Ross] Perot and Clinton [in 1992] it was like within a few days, locked in. So the debates are important.”

Debate performance proved particularly decisive in the case of Al Gore, who, Greenberg says, went from five points ahead to seven behind over the course of three debates against George W Bush.

“He got back to like a half-point lead but it had a huge impact because the voters decided they didn’t like him in the first debate and then became more comfortable with Bush. In the third debate, Al Gore virtually tackled Bush physically.”

Debate performance is not always indicative of electoral success. Romney did well against Obama four years ago.

“John Kerry too,” Greenberg said. “He had great debates against [George W] Bush, polls showed him winning, and yet in the end neither had any impact on the vote. The academic studies suggest that even the vote at the time did not shift. It was more a question of who was excited and energised and answered surveys, not any real change in the electorate.”

Greenberg believes Clinton is on course for victory in the debate and the election either way: “Hillary Clinton has debated a lot. She’s very experienced and she does well.

“She’ll be prepared and I’m pretty confident that the race won’t change much. I obviously have no idea what Trump’s going to do, it’s so unpredictable, but I think she’s a pretty steady and strong debater.”

When Nixon met Kennedy: the first TV debate

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Richard M Nixon speaks as John F Kennedy watches. Photograph: Paul Schutzer/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Clinton is not the first candidate to face scrutiny over her health during the gruelling spectacle of a presidential race. Her debate with Trump will take place 56 years to the day since the first TV presidential debate, between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Viewers are said to have judged the charismatic Kennedy the winner, whereas radio listeners are said to have thought Nixon prevailed or at least forced a draw.

The Republican’s sweaty, pasty appearance and five o’clock shadow may have played a part. He had banged his left knee in a car door, contracting a Staph infection that migrated to the joint. He checked into Walter Reed military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, where he was seen by Capt Raymond Scalettar, chief of rheumatology.

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“I shook hands with him and said, ‘Hello, Mr Vice-President’,” Scalettar, 87, recalled this week in an interview with the Guardian. “We treated him with various antibiotics. He was in traction, he was in lots of pain. But he was a tough guy and he did well.”

Scalettar’s guidance was overruled, however, because Nixon was eager to get back on the campaign trail. He said: “My advice was that he should postpone leaving the hospital. That was not to be. If this was a private patient and not a political situation, one could be very insistent on him not leaving the hospital. But I was just a lowly captain.”

Nixon’s health continued to suffer and he arrived at the debate with a 102F fever. He refused to postpone the event. Scalettar said: “He was just not well. He lost 10lbs and his shoe size was too big. He was wan and pasty on TV. People who heard it on the radio thought Nixon won, because that’s show business, right?”

Kennedy won one of the tightest elections in history by just over 100,000 votes and Scalettar, now clinical professor of medicine at George Washington University medical center, thinks Nixon’s refusal to take his medical advice played a part.

“I’ll be watching Clinton and Trump,” he said. “It’s a sad time in our lives.”

‘Debates matter a lot and they really matter this year’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest George W Bush and Al Gore in the last of their three debates, at Washington University in St Louis in October 2000. Photograph: Jeff Mitchell/Reuters

Robert Shrum, an adviser to both Al Gore and John Kerry before their presidential debates, also believes this is a key moment.

“Debates have been good for the process,” he said. “They’re often substantive and I defend them. What would we do instead?”

Do debates affect the outcome of elections? The answer is mixed, according to Shrum. The 1960 debates were a “defining moment” for Kennedy that “basically erased the experience argument”. In 1976, Gerald Ford had been gaining on Jimmy Carter until he made a gaffe suggesting that Poland was free of Soviet influence and “the momentum was broken”.

But in 1980 and 1984, Ronald Reagan would have won anyway, Shrum believes, while “in 1992, the debates were very important for Bill Clinton and he did a very good job”.

The debates are the only faint hope that Trump can assure people that he is capable of being president Robert Shrum

Shrum added that in 2000, focus groups initially thought Gore had beaten Bush, but the post-debate narrative focused on Gore sighing and “invading Bush’s personal space”. In 2004, in Shrum’s view, Kerry beat Bush in all three debates but still lost the election.

He added: “I would argue they matter a lot and they really matter this year. They are the only faint hope that Trump can assure people that he is capable of being president.”

Lanhee Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was also a consultant on the Romney debate team in 2012, with the candidate a couple of days before the first debate with Obama.

“He had a full mock debate on stage in Boston,” Chen said, “with Rob Portman playing Obama. He had a great mock debate and I knew he was dialled in. He was very focused and ready. He gave one of the best debate performances in modern history.”

Obama, by contrast, was widely seen as disappointing. Chen reflected: “Part of it was that being president every day, you’re not used to being told no. Part of it was that he underestimated Mitt. Part of it was that he didn’t want to be there.”

But Romney still lost on election day, raising doubts over whether debates actually change anything.

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“All of these are part of a bigger question as to whether campaigns matter at all,” Chen said. “Some political scientists say yes, other say no, it’s down to external factors. My view is that they definitely affect what’s happening within the campaigns.

“If you look at the polling before and after Obama v Romney, it tightened substantially. Obviously it didn’t affect the outcome, but a lot of other things happened. Debates definitely have an impact on public opinion and both Clinton and Trump have a lot to gain and a lot to lose.”

For all its theatre, Chen believes the process has democratic value: “I’m a big fan of the debates. It’s the only opportunity that voters have to see the candidates engaging each other directly and to draw comparisons.

“This year I think they’re going to be great debates. They’re going to be a lot of fun and we’re going to learn a lot about the candidates.”