Newswise — "The unusual thing about the current reduction of expectations for Governor Palin's first television interview is that the people predicting she isnt up to the task are her opponents," says University of Maryland political communication expert, Kathleen E. Kendall. "By reducing the expectations for her performance so low, they are unwittingly helping her. That's why I'm sure her interview will be perceived as a big success."
Kendall Contact information, bio and an essay follow.
The Palin ABC Interview, Sept. 11, 2008By Kathleen E. Kendall, Research Professor, Department of Communication, University of Maryland
Tonight, on ABC, Governor Sarah Palin will have her first television interview since being selected as Senator McCain's vice presidential running mate. It is bound to be a big success. How do I know that? Because the expectations of her performance have been reduced so low. News commentators, Democratic campaign staffers, and political columnists have suggested that the Republicans are hiding Palin from interviews, that the McCain campaign is afraid that she won't hold up well to direct press scrutiny. She won't have a script, and thus they assume she will stumble and do poorly in answer to tough questions.
Reducing expectations for candidates is a standard practice in preparing for the presidential debates. A few days before the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, we can expect the Obama campaign to praise Senator McCain for all his debate experience in the Senate and in the primaries, and to claim that Senator Obama hopes to hold his own. The McCain staff will note that Senator Obama is a truly eloquent speaker, and say that Senator McCain hopes to be able to get his points across, but has no expectation of surpassing his talented opponent in the debate.
The unusual thing about the current reduction of expectations for Governor Palin's first television interview is that the people predicting she isn't up to the task are her opponents. By reducing the expectations for her performance so low, they are unwittingly helping her. That's why I'm sure her interview will be perceived as a big success.
The news story will be that she did much better than expected. That result will build curiosity about her next interview, and ABC has wisely broken the interview into several parts, so that there will be sequels soon. The result may be a series of large audiences for these Palin interviews, with people expressing surprise that she does so well.
SHORT BIO
http://www.comm.umd.edu/faculty/kkendall.html
Dr. Kendall's research focuses on political campaign communication, particularly in the presidential primaries and in presidential debates. She has produced a DVD/video on the primaries ("Primaries: Defining the Battle in New Hampshire," ). Dr. Kendall has received awards for her teaching and scholarship from the Eastern Communication Association, and was a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University in 1997.
Representative Publications:
Kathleen E. Kendall, Communication in the Presidential Primaries: Candidates and the Media, 1912-2000 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000).
Kathleen E. Kendall, ed., Presidential Campaign Discourse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
Kendall, who has trailed the candidates through New Hampshire since 1988, maintained a blog this past January. http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/sociss/release.cfm?ArticleID=1571
RSS