As I was in Punta del Este earlier this week, I wasn’t home to watch the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I did keep an eye on the agitated Twitter response via which highlights-slash-lowlights were comprehensively conveyed -- with added commentary and snark.
Since coming home, I’ve watched the first part over on YouTube and plan to get through the rest at some point before the next debate comes around on October 9. I’ve also perused some of the post-debate commentary, the exhaustive fact-checking of transcripts, and other response including the semi-hilarious spinning regarding who “won” the sucker (most of which is coming from the side most seem to agree did not “win”).
Meanwhile, it’s again interesting to see the pundits evoke poker when discussing debates. It’s almost inevitable, I suppose, given the way both debates and poker games involve an interplay of actuality and impression -- of real, tangible actions and reactions and of the image produced by those actions and reactions in the minds of those observing them.
For example, the New Republic is writing this week about how “Donald Trump Is About to Go Nuclear on Hillary Clinton,” evoking a different, more unsettling analogy (and obviously meant to grab web surfers’ attention).
The article begins with reference to another commentary on the first debate that Clinton easily outperformed Trump in the first debate “without even playing some of the heaviest cards against him.” The New Republic writer takes that as encouragement to speak of Trump likewise not playing all of his “cards,” in particular the one Trump immediately would bring up after the debate regarding Bill Clinton’s marital infidelities.
Then again, now that I think about it, this talk of holding back certain, especially powerful cards to play and choosing the right spots to produce them isn’t really poker at all, is it? It’s more like bridge or spades or hearts, games in which players play their cards one by one and do often “hold back” strong ones like the high cards and -- inevitable pun coming -- the trump cards.
The poker analogy is additionally being evoked as well by the suggestion that the “players” are keeping cards hidden from others’ view as they might in a game of five-card draw. It’s all so much theater, though, since all of these “hidden” cards are already in full view of everyone, it seems, making one or the other’s decision to “play” them just another bit of theater meant to produce an effect on those watching and commenting.
Are they bluffing us? Will we be bluffed? That’s the real poker game.
Following last night’s debate between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, CNN aired what will be the first of a series of shows called Race to the White House looking at past elections, in this case focusing on the 1960 race between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon.
I’m currently teaching my course “Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics,” and in fact we were just reading about and discussing the 1960 race, including watching lengthy excerpts from the first JFK-RMN debate. I made sure to let my students know about last night’s program, then, for a couple of reasons.
For one, since we had only just gotten through discussing the race I thought they’d find it interesting to compare what we’d learned with what was included in the hour-long show. Secondly, I like reminding them how even though we’re studying people and events from a half-century ago, many are still interested in these things and believe them to be relevant today -- as indicated by CNN giving an hour of prime time to the ’60 race.
The ads for last night’s show made it seem as though the focus would be on the historic first debate (of four) between Kennedy and Nixon that took place on September 26, 1960, a notion furthered by the fact that the show was being paired with the Dems’ debate. In truth, though, the debate only earned a tiny bit of attention during the hour, fleetingly discussed for just a few minutes during the latter half of the show.
The rest of the hour was spent covering the respective candidates’ campaigns via commentary from a few academics and others, the showing of numerous clips from 1960, and some fleeting reenactments employed to enhance the story. Kevin Spacey -- evoking his House of Cards role as U.S. president -- is the narrator for the series, and was heard at the start of the hour suggesting (somewhat misleadingly) that Nixon was hopelessly outmatched by Kennedy as a politician and campaigner.
“You think you know the rules,” he says as we watch an actor portraying Nixon in shadowy profile. “But what happens when you discover you don’t even know how to play the game?”
Following such a line, it isn’t surprising to see a lot of emphasis thereafter on Kennedy’s right moves and Nixon’s wrong ones during the campaign. That said, the show provides some balance as well, illustrating in a necessarily cursory way pros and cons for both candidates. Near the end it is emphasized that JFK was as adept as RMN was when it came to “dirty tricks,” although the show doesn’t really dwell on too many examples (other than alluding to possible voter fraud in Illinois and Texas tilting the election JFK’s way).
Nixon’s eagerness to debate Kennedy is correctly presented as a misstep. During the quick presentation of the first debate, Nixon’s five-o’clock shadow and flop sweat is of course highlighted, and in fact there’s even a quick pre-debate clip of Nixon saying “think I better shave.” The much-repeated line about those listening on radio thinking Nixon “won” the debate while TV viewers favored JFK is uncritically repeated again, something that started as a few anecdotes and got blown up into some sort of ultimate signifier of not just the debate but the entire campaign and election.
Other more meaningful moments from the 1960 campaign are highlighted, including JFK’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Martin Luther King’s arrest in Georgia and JFK’s phone call to Coretta, and a couple of Nixon’s “bad luck” moments including being hospitalized for two full weeks at the end of August and beginning of September.
Nixon’s hospitalization resulted from an infection that resulted from his banging his knee on a car door during a stop in Greensboro, NC in mid-August, part of his foolhardy effort to visit all 50 states during the campaign -- something he insisted on doing even after his injury and hospitalization.
In his discussion of the 1960 campaign in Six Crises (written shortly afterwards), Nixon concludes with a list of 16 things he “should have” done, all decisions which in his mind likely contributed to costing him the election. He does not include campaigning in all 50 states among the list of items, though he does lead it off with “I should have refused to debate Kennedy.”
For the second item on the list, and perhaps the second-most important one in retrospect, Nixon says “I should have used Eisenhower more in the campaign.” There is brief reference to Ike having been largely absent from the campaign near the end of the CNN program. With less than a week to go before the election, Spacey’s narration suggests the Nixon campaign had been cleverly waiting to use Eisenhower at the very last to produce a greater effect.
“Nixon has one last card to play,” he says, “his old boss, ex-General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.” Despite the card-playing metaphor, no indication is made to the fact that both Ike and Nixon were poker players.
We see shots from the ticker tape parade of November 2nd in which Ike finally appeared with Nixon, an event which is said to have given Nixon a late boost as Election Day drew near. I anticipated another turn in the story here -- one explaining how this “one last card” wasn’t nearly as effective as it might have been. But the program moved in a different direction.
This might have been the biggest omission from the show, actually. Not only was Eisenhower mostly absent from the campaign, but in late August 1960 (just a week after Nixon bumped his knee in Greensboro), Eisenhower infamously concluded his weekly press conference with a line that would greatly hurt RMN in the weeks leading up to the debate.
“We understand that the power of decision is entirely yours, Mr. President,” began a reporter, leading up to what would be the last question of the presser. “I just wondered if you could give us an example of a major idea of his [i.e., Nixon's] that you had adopted in that role, as the decider and final, uh....”
About to leave, Eisenhower said “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember.”
Afterwards Eisenhower would say he didn’t mean to suggest he actually needed a week to come up with an idea of Nixon’s his administration had found useful. Rather he was just referring to the fact that he’d be giving another press conference a week later and they could continue the discussion then.
But the damage was done. In fact, in that first debate a month later Nixon would be asked early on about Eisenhower’s statement, putting RMN on the defensive right away. And not long after that, the Kennedy campaign built a television ad around Ike’s line -- take a look:
I was a little surprised CNN didn’t touch on this part of the story of the 1960 campaign, the moment when Nixon’s “ace in the hole” suddenly turned into a useless blank. Still, for those unfamiliar with the 1960 race there was enough in the program perhaps to whet your appetite to learn more.
Image: Graphic from CNN advertisement, Race for the White House, 3/6/16 episode.
Tonight comes another of the Republican presidential candidates’ debates, the seventh one so far. This one is in Des Moines, with the Iowa caucuses -- the first votes of the major parties’ primary season -- just a few days away on February 1.
The GOP debate would’ve been in the news this week, anyway, but is getting some extra attention thanks to current frontrunner Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this week he wouldn’t be participating due to his ongoing feuding with the host network, FoxNews.
The decision by Trump not to debate has inspired some discussion of campaign strategy, with pundits sharing all sorts of ideas regarding whether his non-participation will amount to a positive or a negative for Trump both in Iowa and going forward.
I find these discussions interesting to follow mostly because of how much time I’ve spent reading about and studying Richard Nixon’s various campaigns from the first 1946 Congressional campaign all of the way through his last 1972 run for reelection.
The “game” (as it were) has changed markedly, of course, with all of the old strategies mostly being inapplicable to today’s political landscape. That said, there are still analogues here and there, including the role of debates and whether they are good or bad for particular candidates.
Nixon, of course, famously welcomed the opportunity to debate John F. Kennedy in 1960, having experienced much success doing so versus various (less savvy) opponents in earlier campaigns. Then later in both 1968 and 1972, Nixon chose against participating in debates with Democratic candidates versus whom he was ahead in the polls, with most seeing those decisions as correctly made as far as risk-versus-reward was concerned.
As if to inspire such comparisons even further, at this very moment I’m seeing Evan Thomas, author of the recent Being Nixon: A Man Divided, popping up on FoxNews being asked what he thinks Nixon would think about Trump not debating. (Thomas unsurprisingly says he thinks Nixon would approve.)
Regarding Trump’s “strategy” (or lack thereof) as it relates to his decision not to attend the Iowa debate, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight tweeted a comment a couple of days ago that perhaps betrayed his own online poker-playing background:
“Still not sure if Trump is the most brilliant political tactician of his era or just a guy randomly mashing buttons,” opined Silver.
The comment evokes the idea of an amateurish or untutored poker player making what seem “random” decisions that don’t add up to a coherent understanding, contrasting that with a knowledgeable player (or “tactician”) whose unorthodox moves you’d have to trust as being part of a larger, complex design.
“Button-masher” perhaps seems to fit Trump (here involved deeply in his first serious political campaign) more readily than does “brilliant political tactician,” but I think like all of the candidates he probably falls somewhere in between these two extremes.
As did presidential candidates in earlier decades, too, for that matter.
I tend to read a lot of poker and/or gambling news each day, mostly because I myself am often writing about poker, but also thanks to the people I follow on Twitter linking to articles sharing such news on a regular basis.
Among the sites to which I find myself clicking through now and then is the Las Vegas Review-Journal, more often than not because I follow Howard Stutz who covers the gaming industry for the paper, and he’s frequently sharing articles he’s written and other items appearing in the LVRJ.
I’m pretty sure it was through Stutz I learned the news that the paper had been sold a few days ago. Here’s the story he wrote along with Jennifer Robinson reporting on the sale, which is actually the second time this year the paper has changed ownership. The interesting part of the story this time, though, is the fact that the new owners have not yet been identified, only described as “undisclosed financial backers with expertise in the media industry.”
Some who write for the LVRJ (including Stutz) have already begun voicing discomfort over the fact that the new owners are remaining anonymous. All that is known is that the News + Media Capital Group LLC bought the paper, and that they paid a hefty $140 million for the paper, way more than the $102 million price tag it had back in the spring when bought by the New Media Investment Group.
It’s unusual, since most major news outlets -- those that seek to be accepted as trustworthy and non-biased in their reporting, anyway -- are typically more open about who ultimately is responsible for the publication/dissemination of the news they are delivering.
“The new owner’s decision has put Review-Journal staffers in a tough spot,” writes Michael Calderone for the Huffington Post. “They could inadvertently create conflicts of interests by reporting on the undisclosed backers of their businesses. And Review-Journal reporters seeking more openness from government and the business community will have to contend with questions about lack of transparency in their own shop.”
The latter point is just one reason why keeping the owners’ identity hidden can be problematic. Meanwhile the point about writers unknowingly reporting in ways the owners might not desire doesn’t have to be a problem -- at least in theory -- if the new owners were to stay out of the way and let them report as usual.
Indeed, in the LVRJ story about the sale, the CEO of the subsidiary that operates the paper is referred to saying “no changes are planned in the current operations of the newspaper.” And the paper’s publisher is also in there affirming that the sale won’t “change any of the newspaper’s strategic plans for 2016.”
However, apparently this very report on the sale already might be reflecting some editorial influence being exerted by the new owners. Missing from the original story are four short paragraphs which focused on the owners’ not being identified, including a quote from LVRJ Editor Michael Hengel highlighting the omission. Those paragraphs imply underlying ethical concerns with the owners remaining unknown, but while they appeared in the print version and on the original web version of the story, they’re now scrubbed.
With the reporters themselves starting to grumble louder and louder about the situation, now others are speculating about who the new owner might be. Today POLITICO reported outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid indirectly suggesting online gambling opponent, big time GOP donor, and Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson to be the LVRJ’s new owner.
“We have a few rich people in Las Vegas, one of whom is well known, so we’ll see,” Reid is quoted as saying, adding how “he owns newspapers in other places.” Burgess Everett, author of the POLITCO piece, points out that Adelson does own other newspapers in Israel.
Fortune also weighed in just a short while ago with more Adelson-related speculation. This would mark an interesting twist given how the LVRJ -- like other news outlets -- has reported in sometimes critical fashion on Adelson. That the Republicans will be having their last debate of presidential candidates tonight at Adelson’s Venetian perhaps will bring a little extra attention to the situation as well.
Definitely feel for the LVRJ writers caught in the middle here. In any event, I know I’ll be curious to learn more about this story as it develops. And to see how it gets told.
(EDIT [added 12:00 a.m., 12/16/15]: Just saw this new item over at LVRJ addressing increasing speculation about the newspaper’s owner, in particular whether or not Adelson was indeed the purchaser. The article also shares the position of The Society of Professional Journalists as well as many on the LVRJ’s staff that there is “‘no excuse’ for the newspaper’s owners to hide their identities.” Interesting stuff.)
Watched some from those GOP debates last night. I had the early “undercard” on for the last half-hour, kind of passively following. Then I watched more attentively the second one -- the one with 11 candidates all vying with one another for air time -- for an hour-and-a-half or so before growing weary enought to shut down the teevee for the night.
Thanks in large part to this “Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics” course I’m currently teaching, I’ve been more aware than usual of parallels between poker and political campaigns. Thus did I sit up for a moment after Scott Walker tossed out that line that he’d “love to play cards with [the president]... because Barack Obama folds on everything with Iran.”
That’s a line the Wisconsin governor’s been using for a while now, and it didn’t necessarily earn him much in the way of “chips” last night, given how several other candidates immediately stepped on it by, pleading “Jake! Jake” to get moderator Jake Tapper to pick them next.
Meanwhile -- thanks again to the class -- I continue to be more focused on the presidential races from 1960, 1968, and 1972 than on the 2016 one.
In 1968 Nixon won the presidency with 301 electoral votes, not a lot more than the 270 needed to be elected. Hubert Humphrey finished with 191 and George Wallace 46; if those two had picked up a couple of states between them, Nixon would have come up short and the decision would have been thrown to the House of Representatives.
The popular vote was also close between RMN and HHH, with Nixon finishing with about 31.78 million to Humphrey’s 31.27 million, while Wallace picked up about 9.9 million votes.
The polls were kind of remarkable during the last few days leading up to the 1968 election, with Nixon leading relatively comfortably until Lyndon B. Johnson’s “October surprise” announcement of a halt on bombing in North Vietnam on the Wednesday before the election.
For a day or two, the prospect of peace seemed imminent, and Humphrey surged. Then all was thrown into doubt when word emanated from South Vietnam that they weren’t necessarily on board with the agreement. “Saigon Opposes Paris Talk Plans, Says It Can’t Attend Next Week” went the headline in The New York Times that Saturday. Voters didn’t know what to think.
(Nixon, of course, is alleged by many to have had a direct role in South Vietnam’s sudden about-face, with Nixon campaign contributor Anna Chennault acting as an agent in what LBJ would describe as a treasonous act by RMN.)
The polls went kind of wacko from day-to-day, with Nixon up, then he and Humphrey even, then Humphrey even up briefly before Tuesday arrived. If the poll numbers were extrapolated to estimate the ultimate number of votes each would receive, the totals would resemble chip stacks at a tournament final table, with each enjoying the edge briefly until the vote finally froze the “stacks” once and for all.
The analogy only works, really, if we think of these final “players” as engaged in a cash game from which they have to leave at a preappointed time, with Nixon having finished up just enough to be declared the game’s winner. It’s hard not to resist thinking of the race in tourney terms, though, with one player effectively finishing with all the chips (even if that player doesn’t even enjoy a majority of the popular vote).
Right now the Republicans have 15 players left. (There are more declared candidates, but it appears only 15 have “chips” at present, with several of those on very short stacks.) Meanwhile Democrats have five candidates who are being recognized as “in the game,” with Biden sounding as though he may be taking a seat after all.
That’s still multiple tables’ worth of players. It’s the early levels, though, and so, like in a tournament, the stack sizes don’t mean very much as yet.
Ended up sitting through the entirety of the debate last night -- that is, the “prime time” one in which 10 Republican presidential candidates took turns filing one-minute speeches (more or less), with an occasional bit of accusatory back-and-forth between a few of them now and then. I had on the earlier “happy hour” one, too, featuring seven candidates put through a similar format.
In other words, like most presidential debates (these days), these weren’t really “debates” per se but something else... something resembling, say, shows like The Voice or Big Brother or Survivor or American Idol. I’m referring to the dynamic of having the show’s contestants perform in some manner and then endure some form of judgment, including the ceremonial voting off of some as the field winnows down to finalists and then a winner.
The candidate getting the most attention both during the two hours and afterwards was, not coincidentally, the host of his own reality competition show, The Apprentice (and its popular offshoot Celebrity Apprentice). Or at least he used to be, as apparently NBCUniversal cut ties with multi-billionaire Donald Trump in late June following his controversial statements about Mexicans made not long after announcing his presidential candidacy.
Trump made more, similarly outrageous remarks last night, as those who watched saw and heard, revealing along the way a mostly untutored, almost adolescent-seeming frustration with everything that at times recalls outrage of the mentally-unstable news anchor Howard Beale in 1976’s Network. The more Trump repeats his fallback mantra that the U.S. is in “serious trouble” and “we don’t win anymore,” the more it sounds like Beale’s similarly non-specific cry that he’s “mad as hell” and is “not going to take this anymore!”
Setting aside all of what was said on the stage at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland by the 17 hopefuls yesterday, the most remarkable takeaway I have is the report that 24 million watched the later one on Fox News Channel, kind of a staggering total.
It was apparently the most-watched show ever on Fox News. Reuters says that previously the most-watched primary debate drew less than half that total, with 10.7 million tuning in for a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama one in 2008. Jon Stewart’s Daily Show finale that aired just afterwards drew 3.5 million, the second-highest ever for that show (just a little less than the viewership for an Obama appearance in late October 2008).
For further comparison, for a WSOP Main Event final table to draw 2 million viewers was considered a big audience in the past, although it has been several years since that total has been reached. An article on Sports Business Daily offers the following numbers for WSOP ME final table viewers: 2.364 million (2008), 2.199 million (2009), 1.563 million (2010), 1.223 million (2011), 735,000 (2012), and 1.234 million (2013). (The last two years were for the 15-minute delayed “virtually live” shows; previously the ratings were for the edited FTs.) Meanwhile I’m seeing various references to the 2014 WSOP Main Event final table drawing about 1.15 million viewers.
Presidential debates -- i.e., between the major parties’ candidates (not before or during the primaries) have traditionally drawn significantly more viewers. More than 60 million watched those Nixon-Kennedy debates in 1960 I was referencing yesterday, as was the case for the Obama-Romney debates in 2012. The biggest debate audiences ever, apparently, came in 1980 when around 80 million watched the only debate between Carter and Reagan in late October.
Obviously Trump’s chaotic role in the debate lead-up helped create conditions for the huge viewership. We’ve all seen tournaments where a novice player manages to accumulate a huge stack and the chip lead early without demonstrating much skill at all beyond repeatedly making a similar, aggressive move and managing to survive over and again. We’ll see how far Trump similarly gets along.
The longer he survives, though, the more evident it will become that his mantra regarding America being in trouble is in fact true -- although perhaps not in the way he intends it.
