As the nation gears up for the 2004 presidential debates, campaign workers and political scholars have their own views on how the debates will pan out.

The first debate between President Bush and Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., will take place at 8 p.m. Thursday at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. Issues to be addressed during the debate are foreign policy and national security.

Dan Ronayne, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said in an interview, that the presidential debates will prove to voters that Bush’s unchanging vision for the country is more valuable in a leader than Kerry’s willingness to say anything he feels will gain him political advantage.

“Kerry has taken 10 distinct positions on the war in Iraq and multiple positions on a myriad of other issues,” he said.

“It’s difficult to prepare for a debate against someone who has yet to complete a debate with himself.”

Colin Van Ostern, Kerry’s Iowa communications director, said the debates are especially important for Democrats this year because non-partisan observers determined that Bush defeated former vice president Al Gore in the 2000 debates.

“But this year, unlike in 2000, it’ll be more about substance than style,” Van Ostern said. “Now the country has been attacked, and we have more troops overseas … people are looking for substantive answers, and, so far, Bush really hasn’t given any.”

Ray Dearin, professor of political science and English, said candidates are usually well-prepared for the debates, armed with scripted responses to questions they know reporters will ask. He said that since both Bush and Kerry probably already know what they are going to say, they’ll be concentrating on their speech delivery and body language.

“People pay more attention to that than what is said about the issues,” Dearin said. “Since we basically know what they’re going to say, the news will come from anything unexpected.”

The outcome of the debates can be important to a presidential race because people have raised their expectations of the candidates, Dearin said. When the candidates fail to meet or exceed them, he said, the public really takes notice.

“No one really wins debates like this anymore, but you can still lose them … they’ll be apologizing for weeks if people find out they don’t know certain facts about issues,” he said. “Also, public perception of what candidates say is important.”

Dearin said an example occurred in 1976, when President Gerald Ford said, “I don’t think the Polish people are being dominated by the Soviet Union.”

“I think he was trying to say Poland was a valiant country that couldn’t be dominated — but they were in fact being militarily dominated,” Dearin said. “The reporter who asked the question looked stunned at his reply and even asked the question again, only to get the same response.

Kim Smith, professor of journalism and communication, said the presidential debates often don’t have as big an impact as the news media say they do, however.

“The audience for the debates tends to be disproportionately composed of people who are highly involved in the political process,” Smith said. “Such folks are highly likely to know how they’ll vote already, so in some ways Kerry and Bush are going to be preaching to the converted.”

The fact that these debates happen every election, he said, has also lessened their importance. Even calling these televised events debates is questionable, Smith said.

“The term debate is a misnomer — it’s basically two side-by-side press conferences where reporters ask questions and they respond,” he said. “If it were more spontaneous, candidates couldn’t have scripted responses to questions they know they will be asked, because then they’d have to be reacting to what each other has to say about issues and topics rather than responding to reporter’s questions.”