Debate Performance Quotes

Newt Gingrich would cream Barack Obama in a debate.

There's no question that many factors contribute to voters' perceptions about debates and who wins and who loses.

Donald Trump can't even handle the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he has gotten a tough question from a reporter, when he is challenged in a debate. When he sees a protester at a rally. Imagine, if you dare imagine, imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons. And in the end, it comes down to what Donald Trump doesn't get, America is great because America is good.

We had the election won. Debates couldn't help us and might hurt.

I have serious doubts about the value of debates in a presidential election. They tend to be a test of reaction time rather than a genuine exposition of the participants' philosophies and programs

A candidate challenging an incumbent president has the advantage [in a debate]. The president of the United States is an awesome figure. Merely to share the platform with him on equal terms is to gain in stature: a good performance will be judged even better.

As was demonstrated back in 2012, [Barack] Obama was thought to be in big trouble after that first debate, and he wasn't, was he? That first debate didn't end up hurting Barack Obama at all, did it? I know he had incumbancy on his side, but still. He was horrible that first debate. It didn't matter because there were two more, and there are two more here.

Acceptance speeches can make or break presidential candidacies. It was Al Gore's 2000 acceptance speech that relaunched his candidacy and nearly saved him. John Kerry's speech and overall ineffective convention nearly sank him in 2004 (though he was almost saved by the debates).

Al Gore adopted three utterly different personas in three national presidential debates.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all...It was pitiful...I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him 'Mr. President,' and then I felt ashamed.

Ronald Reagan's advisors know that if he goes to sleep for even five minutes during the second debate, he'll be in trouble.

How Donald Trump has come so far with so few words - how he even managed to keep up conversationally with all those beauty queens - is a question I don't expect ever to be solved.

Remember the first debate between [Mitt] Romney and [Barack] Obama? Let's revisit it for a second. It's interesting to note the way the Drive-Bys played it. The first Romney-Obama debate, there was real concern after that debate that Obama didn't show up.

[Donald Trump twitts] "Lightweight Marco Rubio was working hard last night." This is true. "The problem is he's chalker and once a chalker, always a choker," I guess that's what he meant to say. He spelled choker, c-h-o-k-e-r.

The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate.

I thought we would be concerned if he knew how to stay on message, if [Donald] Trump knew how to make the most of an argument against Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, by using some of the things that have been put on the news.

Have you noticed that every one of these candidates for Presidency say: "Barack Obama's weak, Vladimir Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's gonna straighten out. Just looking at him I'm gonna - he's gonna be - " and then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators at a debate. I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are gonna be too worried about you.

People are taking a closer look at Donald Trump. I think the best look they got was at the last debate. I think Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio prosecuted their case effectively. Donald doesn't have some great answers. When they talk, for instance, about immigration and releasing those tapes from The New York Times, we began talking about flexibility and immigration.

George W. Bush cannot out-talk Al Gore. Period. Mr. Gore thinks faster on his feet and is much more verbal. So if that is the criteria, Gore won the debate. But if that is the criteria, Don Rickles should be President.

Each of the participants [in a Presidential Debate] has a major objective and a minor one, in addition, of course, to appearing presidential. The major one is to get his messages across even if the questions don’t ask for them. The minor one is to avoid seeming unresponsive. That is why you will see the debaters answer some of the questions quickly, leaving time for what the candidate wants to talk about.

Every candidate goes into every debate hoping that they can own a particular moment.

The problem with these presidential debates like this is that you can't really prepare for them, because the questions are so individual and personal or even idiosyncratic. Secretary Hillary Clinton has a lot richer and deeper experience in doing these, obviously, than Donald Trump.

And by the way I don't object if people want to attack me, that's their right. All I'm suggesting that it's not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast. And the guys who attacked each other in the debates up to now, every single one of them have lost ground by attacking.

When you look at that debate stage, Mitt Romney could have dominated it maybe.

[on debates] Accomplished a bit more for Bush than for Gore only because there were more question marks for Bush. I think he established that he possesses at least the minimum qualifications for being president.