On October 30, 1974, Muhammad Ali, the deposed Heavyweight champion, attempted to regain his crown from the then-reigning champion, George Foreman, in a boxing match in Zaire, Africa. Foreman, the bigger, stronger, and younger of the two men, was heavily favored in the fight that became known as The Rumble in The Jungle, but he did not win. Ali employed a strategy called "Rope-a-dope" in which he feigned passivity by repeatedly sagging against the ropes and allowing Foreman to attack him. The strategy worked: Foreman became fatigued in the jungle heat, and Ali was able to prevail in the late rounds.
In each of the three 2008 presidential debates, Barack Obama played Ali to John McCain's Foreman by employing his own version of Rope-a-dope - in fact, double Rope-a-dope. Although McCain is not the bigger or stronger, and certainly not the younger of the two candidates, they went into the first debate virtually tied in the public opinion polls. Yet over the course of three short weeks, Obama, undoubtedly helped by the financial crisis, but also by his behavior in the three debates, vaulted into an ever-widening lead.
John McCain, by reputation and by announcement (he said that he intended to whip Obama's "you-know-what" in the third debate), assumed the role of the attacker in all of them, and did so with a battery of angry verbal charges he delivered with accompanying vocal firepower and visually contentious body language. Many of his outbursts, frowns, sneers, and eye rolls became YouTube videos. Barack Obama countered all of them with both verbal and non-verbal deflections.
His verbal tactic was to use the "yes, but ..." approach. In their first debate, Obama frequently said that he agreed with McCain and then went on to show how he differed from his opponent. This strategy posed a potential risk that the McCain camp pounced upon, editing a string of video clips of Obama saying "I agree with Senator McCain ..." - without the "but" conclusion - and ran them as negative ads.
At first, even Obama's supporters reacted with alarm, concerned that Obama was being too passive. Yet Obama persisted with the same tactic in the second and third debates. Given that Obama is a skilled orator and wordsmith, (he wrote his own autobiography as well as many of his important speeches) from the frequency of his many "I agree with Senator McCain ..." statements, it is highly doubtful that they were slips of his lip. A far more likely conclusion is that he chose this tactic intentionally to demonstrate conciliation. Politicians, including John McCain, call conciliation "reaching across the aisle," referring to cooperation between Republicans and Democrats in the senate chambers; Barack Obama made his reach manifest in the debate chambers. But he also stood his own ground.
Obama's non-verbal deflections were even more effective. In reaction to McCain's angry charges, Obama looked his accuser straight in the eye and often smiled disarmingly or shook his head incredulously. The latter gesture was clearly a non-verbal echo of Ronald Reagan's tactic of shaking his head incredulously at Jimmy Carter in their 1980 presidential debate as he said, "There you go again."
It worked for Ronald Reagan: in that single debate, he was able to reverse Carter's lead in the polls and go on to win the election in a landslide. It worked for Barack Obama: in the CNN/Opinion Research poll following the third debate, Obama beat McCain 58 to 31. In the CBS News/Knowledge Networks poll, he beat McCain by 53 to 22.
Throughout the primary and presidential campaign, Barack Obama's uncanny ability to stay calm in stressful situations earned him the label, "No-drama Obama." David Brooks of the New York Times (who seems to be drifting leftward) summed up Obama's cool today, "there hasn't been a moment in which he has publicly lost his self-control. This has been a period of tumult, combat, exhaustion and crisis. And yet there hasn't been a moment when he has displayed rage, resentment, fear, anxiety, bitterness, tears, ecstasy, self-pity or impulsiveness."
As the first black man running for the presidency in a predominantly white country, Obama's behavior had to be cool. If he had let his emotions show in public, he would have appeared either defensive or angry; instead, he left the anger to John McCain.
Arianna Huffington's post summed up the difference between the two candidates in her reaction to the third debate: "It was like watching a split-screen double feature - Grumpy Old Men playing side by side with Cool Hand Luke."
Andrew Sullivan, writing in London's Sunday Times, extended the difference to its impact on the electorate: "That's what voters want now. In an economy that is melting down, with two wars still raging, they want calm above everything else. They want to know that the man in charge will not panic, will not be flustered; will not blow up."
No drama, no problem.