Matthew Shields knows what he’ll be doing after work on the last Monday in September. “It’s going to be hilarious,” the Los Angeles hairstylist says. “I can’t wait.”
That may not be the appraisal a republic would prefer regarding any aspect of a campaign for the highest office in the land, but Shields speaks for many who are already breathless about the presidential debates. They’ll likely pit Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, against Hillary Clinton, who has sewn up the Democratic delegate count. He has called her a “fraud” with “zero natural talent” who should be in prison. She has said he is “temperamentally unfit” with “dangerously incoherent” ideas and “not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes.” That was all in about 24 hours. They haven’t even stepped onto the same stage yet.
“People are expecting a brawl,” says Allen Adamson, a former executive with the branding firm Landor Associates. “Nothing attracts viewers like a brawl.”
The Ali versus Frazier-level match-ups could rival the Super Bowl and bust the presidential-debate viewership record set by Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1980. It’d be hard to imagine that happening if one of the contenders was, say, John Kasich, instead of a former reality-TV star with an arsenal of put-Twitter-in-overdrive bon mots. There are other factors, such as Clinton’s shot at becoming the first female commander-in-chief and the fact both are registering unheard of negative-favorability ratings. There’s irony in that -- they’re so despised in some quarters they’re mesmerizing.
“It’s just got everything going for it,” says Jim Lehrer, the former PBS NewsHour anchor who moderated his 12th debate in 2012.
Drinking Game
Networks including NBC and Fox have delayed debuts of some shows so as not to lose out on ratings. Marketers are scratching heads over how to monetize the affairs -- they’ll run with no commercials -- but entrepreneurs like Vicky Brago-Mitchell haven’t wasted time; she’s selling T-shirts with images of Trump and Clinton engaged in a boxing match, with the tagline, “The most violent fight in the world.” Dan Mueller, creator of an online debate-drinking game, is compiling a list of words to populate the 2016 version.