My plan also says it's going to require a new approach in Washington, D.C.

The touting of track records, the criticizing of competitors.

But a lot of times, they can be a demonstration of the power of political theater. Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Like this one-liner from President Reagan back in 1984 when asked about his age. "You already are the oldest president in history.

I will not make age an issue of this campaign.

I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." Walter Mondale would later say that moment felt like the end of my campaign, in his words. Sometimes, an apparent slip of the tongue catches fire, like when President Ford, at the height of the Cold War in 1976, made this baffling claim about the Russians. "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration." "I'm sorry, could I just follow?

Did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians..." The moment, sticking with voters and with Ford, who lost that election to Jimmy Carter, saying years later, "There's no question I did not adequately explain what I was thinking." What ends up in the headlines isn't always what the candidates might want. "All the applicants seem to be men.

I went to a number of women's groups and said, can you help us find folks?

And they brought us whole binders full of women." Barack Obama taking that on the trail through Election Day. And even without words, body language can say a lot on a debate stage.

Just look at the first ever televised debate in 1960, a youthful John F.

Kennedy up against Richard Nixon, just out of the hospital after an illness, a visible contrast.

In 1992, President Bush was seen checking his watch.

The moment becoming infamous, as did a slightly more audible interjection.

Al Gore's loud sighing in 2000. Then there's this moment in 2016 when Donald Trump loomed over Hillary Clinton as she answered a question.

Clinton later writing in her memoir, she wished she'd told Mr. Trump, "Back up, you creep, get away from me." All of it brings us to tonight's debate, historic.

And if past is precedent. "Radical left." "Will you shut up, man." "Radical left." "Stand back and stand by." Its most memorable moments may be unpredictable.

Thanks for watching.

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