Jim Lehrer

by From Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates

  That was from Les Crystal, The NewsHour’s executive producer. He reported that the two campaigns were hopelessly deadlocked over who was acceptable to moderate those debates. “They’ve already agreed on you to do the first one, so in order to end the arguing and get on with it …”

  Otherwise, the 1996 debates were remembered mostly for what did not happen. No one, including the Republican nominees Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, went after Clinton on the so-called character issue—a code phrase for the Women Problem.

  As moderator, I did toss a few neutral opportunities that way, but nobody caught them.

  The Hartford debate at the Bushnell theater was a podium event with strict rules: two-minute opening statements, ninety-second answers, sixty-second rebuttals, thirty-second responses, and two-minute closing statements.

  That buttoned-up game plan was insisted on, I was told, by the Dole campaign. They wanted to play to Dole’s strength as a quick-wit short responder and away from Clinton’s as a voluble, long-form charmer. The trade-off was Dole agreeing—at Clinton’s insistence—that the second debate would be a town hall format.

  As Hartford approached, Dole was down twenty points in the polls. It was now or never for the former World War II hero and U.S. Senate leader from Kansas. He either went for broke against Clinton in Hartford at their first debate, or the 1996 presidential election was over.

  My own preparations centered on the belief that if Dole was going to do something that mattered it had to happen in the first twenty minutes to hold the big national television audience.

  This was pre–Monica Lewinsky but there was already much in the public discourse about Clinton’s alleged womanizing, especially related to a twelve-year affair with a singer/actress named Gennifer Flowers.

  I assumed that if Dole tried to break things open, he would use it.

  I also thought it was possible that Dole, with nothing to lose, could declare right at the beginning of the debate that what he had to say could not be said in structured short chunks. Let’s forget the rules and go at it one-on-one and have a real bloodletting.

  If such a thing occurred, I planned to let it play out for a few minutes, then I would stop the debate and announce to the candidates that I would—right there—help negotiate a new set of rules.

  My trek toward a zone-out state about it included imagining—literally, word for word—what I would say, how Dole and Clinton would each respond.…

  Nothing happened. The debate proceeded quietly, routinely for the first twenty minutes and beyond about tort reform, Social Security, taxes, the deficit, drugs, and guns. There were no fireworks, not even any sparklers.

  It was time for me as the moderator to shake things up.

  More than fifty minutes in, I finally asked Dole: “Senator Dole, we’ve talked mostly now about differences between the two of you that relate to policy, issues, and that sort of thing. Are there also significant differences in the more personal area that are relevant to this election?”

  Dole answered with a comment about tax cuts, economic reform, and how he thought the government could do better.

  Then he asked, as if to confirm my original question, “Are there personal differences?”

  Yes, I said, that are relevant to the election.

  DOLE: Well, my blood pressure’s lower, my weight, my cholesterol. But I will not make health an issue in this campaign. So—I think he’s a bit taller than I am. But I think there are personal differences. I mean … I don’t like to get into personal matters. As far as I’m concerned, this is a campaign about issues.

  And that was about it—not only the debate but, maybe, the election.

  What I did not know at the time was that The Washington Post and other news organizations were working on a story about an alleged adulterous affair Dole had had twenty-eight years before while he was married to his first wife.

  If I had known about it, would I have asked Dole about it during the debate?

  No. Not until—and unless—it had been reported in the credible public press. Or Clinton himself had brought it up.

  Making such a decision would have been a perfect example of the walk down a knife blade that goes with being a moderator—presidential and all other kinds.

  THAT DOLE STORY still had not been reported two days later when I gave the Dole campaign a second chance to engage the Clinton character issue.

  It occurred at the beginning of the October 9, 1996, vice presidential debate between the Democratic incumbent Al Gore and Jack Kemp, a former Republican congressman and pro football quarterback, at the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg, Florida.

  LEHRER: Some supporters of Senator Dole have expressed disappointment over his unwillingness in Hartford Sunday night to draw personal and ethical differences between him and President Clinton. How do you feel about it?

  Kemp, inexplicably, seemed unprepared for what, according to every preview story in the press, would be a first question along those lines.

  KEMP: Wow, in ninety seconds? I can’t clear my throat in ninety seconds. Jim, Bob Dole and myself do not see Al Gore and Bill Clinton as our enemy. We see them as our opponents.

  This is the greatest democracy in the world. People are watching not only throughout this country, but all over the world as to how this democracy can function with civility and respect, and decency and integrity. Bob Dole is one of those men who served in the United States Senate; his public life is a public record. He fought on the battlefield. He has worked with Democrats and Republicans. In my opinion, it is beneath Bob Dole to go after anyone personally. Clearly, Abraham Lincoln put it best when he said you serve your party best by serving the nation first. And I can’t think of a better way of serving this nation in 1996 than by electing Bob Dole as the president of the United States of America. These issues are fully capable of being understood and reflected upon by the American people. This is a democracy in which we have the freest press and the greatest First Amendment rights in the history of mankind. And Bob and I respect that. These issues will be aired, but they’ll be aired with dignity and respect, and, ultimately, leave it to the American people to make up their minds about who should be the leader of this country into the twenty-first century.

  LEHRER: Mr. Vice President?

  GORE: Thank you, Mr. Lehrer. And I would like to thank the people of St. Petersburg for being such wonderful hosts. My family and I are very glad to be here and I would like to thank Jack Kemp for the answer that he just gave. I think we have an opportunity tonight to have a positive debate about this country’s future. I’d like to start by offering you a deal, Jack. If you won’t use any football stories, I won’t tell any of my warm and humorous stories about chlorofluorocarbon abatement.

  KEMP: It’s a deal. I can’t even pronounce it.

  GORE: What I do want to talk about tonight is Bill Clinton’s positive plan for America’s future.…

  Again, so much for the character issue.

  There is no evidence that the election result would have been any different had Dole—or I or anyone else—concentrated on Clinton’s personal problems in the 1996 debates.

  Presidential debate historian Sidney Kraus of Cleveland State University added a PS to my own Gore-Kemp experience. In his book Televised Presidential Debates and Public Policy, he noted that I had not had a “sweet day” because “Lehrer had five uncomfortable experiences.”

  Kraus cited a story in the St. Petersburg Times that reported Secret Service and dressing room problems, a too-small desk on the set for my various papers, a buzzing earpiece, and a crashing computer on which I was writing debate questions.

  “Having had such a disappointing day, it must have been his easy-going manner that allowed him to go on and moderate the debate without a hitch,” Kraus concluded graciously.

  My Secret Service discomfort actually began at the Clinton-Dole event in Hartford three days earlier.

  I was placed in a tiny holding room next to the men’s room in the basement of the Bushnell theater—
alone—for almost two hours before debate time. I was told all other space in the building was reserved for the candidates and their campaign staffs. So be it.

  Finally, with less than fifteen minutes to go, I was taken into another tiny basement room nearby for makeup. A technician came and told me to remove my coat and the security passes that hung over my neck so I could be fitted with a wireless microphone. I put the passes in my coat pocket and returned to my cubbyhole.

  Then, Les Crystal, The NewsHour’s executive producer and my chief debate helper, and I went up a flight of stairs for the debate. Crystal was holding my coat for me as we walked. There were now less than five minutes to go before I was to be introduced to the audience and get the show on the road.

  We arrived at the top of the stairs behind the curtains on the left wing of the stage, only a few feet from where it would all happen.

  “Stop!” said a young man with an earpiece in his ear and a bulge on his right hip under his suit coat. He stepped in front of me and blocked my way with his body. Clearly he was an agent of the U.S. Secret Service.

  “Where is your ID—your security badge?” he demanded. His voice was tight, his eyes were lit.

  “I’ve got it in my coat pocket, which is right over there—”

  He made a move that, in my agitated state, seemed to be step one toward my being grabbed and maybe thrown to the ground and handcuffed.

  “I’m the moderator!” I shouted like an angry child and pointed to a spot through the curtains less than ten feet away. “There are three people who have to be out there on the stage, and I am one of them!”

  Crystal kept saying, “He’s the moderator, he’s the moderator,” as he desperately tried to fish my credentials out of my coat.

  Two other earpieced men appeared at my front and back. They seemed to know who I was and why I was backstage.

  With only seconds to go for a few settle-down breaths, I was finally allowed to proceed to my desk and moderate a debate aimed at resolving who should be the next leader of the Free World.

  A high-ranking Secret Service official later called and apologized to me and promised nothing like that would happen again. And since I still had two more debates to go, he said photos of me would be provided to all agents involved.

  And then I went off to St. Petersburg to do the Kemp-Gore debate seventy-two hours later.

  Guess what? While being taken on a run-through by debate commission staff that first afternoon, I was locked out of the Bayfront Center. A Secret Service agent on the door refused me permission to re-enter. My security badge was the wrong color—or something. It took a very loud call to a supervisor somewhere in bureaucracy-land to get me back inside.

  Clearly, in the world of profiling, among other handicaps, I did not look like a presidential debate moderator, at least to two pairs of U.S. Secret Service eyes.

  Fortunately, Mike Brewer, husband of Janet Brown and a debate commission volunteer, among many other wonderful things, made it all better—and fun. He somehow talked the St. Petersburg police into providing a flashing-lights motorcycle escort for my limo ride from the hotel to the Bayfront Center the next evening for the debate itself. The distance was barely a city block.

  A phalanx of smiling Secret Service agents escorted me into the hall and directly through security without even a cursory check. (This was pre-9/11.)

  I was taken to my very own personal holding area, which was the size of a large hotel ballroom and fully stocked with snacks and drinks galore.

  FROM ST. PETERSBURG I went immediately to San Diego, California, for the second Clinton-Dole main event. It was to be in the so-called town hall format.

  And I use “so-called” deliberately.

  Many of those exercises do not remotely resemble the original town hall meetings that began in early New England. Residents would assemble at prescribed times and places to publicly exchange views on how their town should be governed and to question those in charge. In a few towns, votes were taken that were binding, but mostly the meetings provided an opportunity for talking, asking, and answering.

  That purpose remains, but, through the years, the term “town hall meeting” has come to mean different things.

  For some, it is a mob scene with people shouting down speakers, as happened during the anti-Vietnam events of the 1960s and, more recently, when members of Congress came home to their districts to discuss health care reform in the summer of 2009.

  For others, a town hall meeting is a partisan way to stage an appearance of public questioning with attendance limited to only those who agree with the speaker/politician/premise.

  For still others, it is a way to get seemingly “ordinary” people with varying views to question a political or other kind of public figure with prepared and prescreened questions, mostly for the benefit of television. In fact, some are staged almost solely for television purposes and more closely resemble game shows than real town hall meetings.

  Some, I regret to say, are also obviously designed as platforms for TV news personalities to ask their own questions or show their stuff, rather than trigger serious dialogue.

  The first time any kind of town hall format was used in a presidential debate was the 1992 Richmond event moderated by Carole Simpson. Bill Clinton, through his campaign negotiators, pushed hard for it to be the format for one of the three debates, but Ed Fouhy told me that, surprisingly, the representatives of George H. W. Bush—mistakenly, it turned out—favored it as well.

  Because of his polling numbers, Perot was brought into those debates after they were set and was not involved in any of the debate negotiations, including the selection of formats.

  The 1996 town hall event was at the Shiley Theater on the campus of the University of San Diego. Some 113 people representing a cross section of the San Diego area, selected and screened for the debate commission by the Gallup organization to be “uncommitted,” would ask the questions.

  Just before the event, I gave them a brief procedures rundown and a polite sermon about no speeches, please, questions only—the shorter the better. I also told them the time restraints and rules were such that no more than about 20 of the 113 were actually going to get an opportunity to ask a question.

  I expanded on my instructions in the “good evening” opening to the debate itself:

  They [the citizens] were told to come tonight with questions. Nobody from the debate commission or the two campaigns has any idea what those questions are. Neither do I. We will all be hearing them for the first time at the same time. I met with this group three hours ago, and we spoke only about how it was going to work tonight. They are sitting in five sections. I will call on individuals at random, moving from one section to another with each new question, alternating the questions between the two candidates.

  After opening statements from Dole and Clinton, the first difficult moments came when I realized that, no matter what, I had to make sure there was a good race, age, and gender mix in the questioners.

  With that in mind, I scanned the audience sitting in the bleachers that circled the two candidates and me, and I began calling on people.

  Uniting the country was the first topic, followed by health care. A soldier/small business owner asked about the gap between military and civilian pay scales. A man challenged a Dole statement that nicotine was not addictive. There were questions about funding Medicare, reforming welfare, and reducing capital gains taxes.

  Then came a zinger for Dole from a college student.

  “All the controversy regarding your age, how do you feel you can respond to young voices of America today and tomorrow?”

  Dole responded.

  “Well, I think age is very—you know, wisdom comes with age, experience, and intelligence. And if you have some of each—and I have some age, some experience, and some intelligence—that adds up to wisdom.…”

  Clinton one-upped him.

  “I can only tell you that I don’t think Senator Dole is too old to be president. It’s the age
of his ideas that I question.…”

  Nearing the end, I realized after the seventeenth question that all but one on the Middle East had been about domestic issues. I asked if anybody had another foreign affairs question.

  That brought a concern about how to deal with Japan’s trade deficit.

  Then came the last two questions—one was about the responsibility of the president to inspire young people; the other was on gay rights.

  After the closing statements I thanked everyone, said good night, and felt as if I had at least dodged another moderating bullet.

  Dole and Clinton had both done all right and, on the most important scoring column, neither had made any game-changing mistakes.

  Clinton went in still way ahead of Dole and came out the same.

  BOTH BILL CLINTON and Bob Dole talked fully and openly about their debates.

  I sat down with Clinton at the Oval Office in August 2000, five months before he left the White House. He spoke with delight and detail about his experiences, almost like a football star going back over some of his big plays, but from the coach’s as well as a player’s point of view. Here was a master politician talking shop.

  Bob Dole was just as forthcoming when I spoke with him at his downtown Washington office in November 1999.

  He revealed that there was considerable discussion within his campaign about whether to get into what he called “the character thing” and, if so, how far to go. “I decided not to do that, even though I was being pushed by some. I said, well, you get into that, I think everybody loses. That was my view.”

  I wondered whether Clinton had been expecting Dole to go after him on character issues—particularly after I gave Dole an opportunity to do so halfway through the first debate in Hartford.

  “Oh, yes,” answered Clinton, adding that he was most surprised Dole did not hit him harder.

  I did not press Dole on what effect, if any, the possibility of a news story about his long-ago affair may have had. Apparently, according to the public record, nobody else ever did either.