Can a debate make or break a candidacy?

You bet.

With this year's first presidential debate on Friday, here's a look at goofs and gaffes of face-offs past, taken from interviews with senior campaign officials conducted by the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. The excerpts were selected by program chairman Russell Riley. View the complete texts at www.millercenter.org.

(ital) Stuart Spencer on President Gerald Ford's 1976 gaffe proclaiming that there was "no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe": (end ital) (I) was sitting next to (National Security Adviser) Brent Scowcroft in the holding room watching this. I heard (Ford) say it, and I didn't think anything about it. Brent, in his style, punched me and said, "You've got a problem." I said, "What's the problem?" He said, "What Jerry just said about Poland. He means 'emotionally.' ... There are x-number of divisions in Poland." ... I said, "How many is that?" He said, "Some 240,000." I go, "Oh God, these are Russians, 240,000 Russians, and they don't have control of Poland?" I go out. By this time, (White House Chief of Staff Dick) Cheney and I were spastic. We get back to the house. Henry (Kissinger) is already there, secretary of state. He's saying, "You were wonderful, Mr. President. You did a wonderful job." He gets through, and Dick and I say, "Goddam, what are you talking about, Henry?" ...

We get on the plane the next morning, we're beating (Ford) up, and he says, "What do you expect me to do, go out and say I was wrong?" We said, "Yes." ... I think we came within two inches of getting canned, Cheney and I. ... (Finally,) after two ... news time frames, he came out and made some statement straightening the whole thing out.

(ital) Peter Wallison on Sen. Robert Dole's controversial reference to "Democrat wars" in the 1976 vice presidential debate: (end ital) I had traveled with (Dole) for three or four months. In these little sessions that we would have in people's living rooms ... he would occasionally say that "These are Democrat wars, and I sustained a wound" and so forth. Before the debate with (Democratic vice-presidential candidate Walter) Mondale, I wrote down ... a long list of things I wanted to talk to him about. I wrote down "Democrat wars." ... He was having his makeup put on just before he was to go out. I had my list of things, and I was checking them off and saying, "Now senator, this is what Alan Greenspan says you should say when they talk about the economy, and this is what Henry (Kissinger) says you should say when — " Then I had something about "Democrat wars," and I thought, "No, no, no." I skipped over that and went to the next thing, because I just didn't think he would say anything like that (to a national audience). When he did ... I just felt like crawling under the table.

Politicians live in a kind of a cocoon, because nobody ever says anything negative to them. ... Politicians occasionally do this because an unreal world has been created in their minds.

(ital) Stuart Eizenstat on Jimmy Carter's preparation for the 1976 presidential debate: (end ital) (The) briefing books were sent down to (Carter), and ... he read every single page and corrected typographical errors and grammatical mistakes in what had to be, I would say, easily two hundred pages of written material. ... As the time got closer, I went to Hamilton Jordan and said, "You know, we've got to talk about these things. We can't let the man just read this enormous briefing book and go in and wing it." (In Plains, Ga.) I said, "Governor, we have some questions here, and perhaps what we ought to do is throw some questions at you and let you answer, and then we'll critique it." Oh no, that was not going to be done. He didn't need that. (He) either said or implied that that would be contrived, and that was just not the way he was going to do it. He didn't mind talking through some points, but he was not going to go through any sort of rehearsal. ...