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I was young, but even at the time I recognized this as a joke. Did Mondale really not have any argument other than "Reagan is too old"?
by jessaustin 5y ago
I was young, but even at the time I recognized this as a joke. Did Mondale really not have any argument other than "Reagan is too old"?
- WalterBright 5y agoMondale was unable to respond to Reagan's quip. BTW, Reagan was a master at reframing difficult questions into a joke, thereby disarming their payload. I remember the Democrats at the time complaining in bitter frustration at how adroitly the "Teflon President" did this.
- tomjakubowski 5y agoNot to take away from the joke, but it was a televised debate and Reagan was responding to a question from the moderator, one he probably had an inkling was coming -- not an "argument" from Mondale.
- jessaustin 5y agoLike I said, I was young at the time. Still, one would expect any candidate to offer multiple arguments for voters to consider. If this simple joke really "sank Mondale's campaign" as claimed above, one would wonder just what form that alleged campaign might have taken. It could be that other factors led to the 49-state drubbing, which factors would have decided the matter even in the absence of a particular canned response to a softball from the moderator.
- WalterBright 5y agoIt's not just my opinion that that joke was the turning point. Although Mondale was clearly outmatched by Reagan, that incident pretty much encapsulated why.
- jessaustin 5y agoWhy are these stories so important to us? Upthread we learn that this debate was as staged as any of Hillary's. Anything planned in advance can't have been an actual turning point. USA popular discourse was shockingly dumb in the 1980s, so it's possible that Jodie Foster had already clinched Reagan's reelection a couple of months after his inauguration.