by From Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates
Mondale happily agreed with the debate consensus that he had won the debate. But he said there was more to it than his prepared comeback. “The main thing, I think, that hurt him was he seemed to be ill-focused, seemed to lose his way, stumble, roam around in irrelevancies, and it was a pretty—it was an impressively unimpressive personal performance.”
Others had noted that Reagan seemed tired. I asked him about that.
“No, it wasn’t tired. I was overtrained.… I want to tell you, I just had more facts and figures poured at me for weeks before than anyone could possibly sort out and use, and I call it overtraining. When I got there, I realized that I was racking my brain so much for facts and figures on whatever subject we were talking about that I knew I didn’t do well.”
But two weeks later in Kansas City, things changed. Reagan said later he definitely did not go into that one overtrained. And panelist Henry Trewhitt of The Baltimore Sun asked a question that enabled him to turn a potential liability into a strength:
TREWHITT: You already are the oldest president in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall yet that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuba missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?
REAGAN: Not at all. And, Mr. Trewhitt, I want you to know that also 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.
When I asked if he had been lying for that one, Reagan said it just came to him right off the top of his head.
Whether the line was preprogrammed on not, Mondale knew he had just taken a hit.
“Well, I’ll tell you, if TV can tell the truth, as you say it can, you’ll see that I was smiling. But I think if you come in close, you’ll see some tears coming down because I knew he had gotten me there.… That was really the end of my campaign that night, I think. That’s what I thought.”
That night?
“Yes, I walked off and I was almost certain the campaign was over, and it was.”
Did you say that to anybody?
“My wife.”
MY INTERVIEW WITH Ronald Reagan took place five years after the 1984 debates in his Century Plaza office in Los Angeles. There was already talk that the former president was having memory problems and, in fact, one of his own aides suggested to me not to expect a full accounting of every little thing that had happened in every debate.
Reagan implied that himself as we chatted before the cameras started taping. It was clear that somebody had to force him to talk about the debates in the first place. Let’s just get it over and be done with it, his body language suggested.
Making small talk, Reagan mentioned that he had just autographed—for the makeup artist—an old copy of Photoplay magazine that featured him and Paul Muni on the cover. Reagan amused everyone by recounting how Muni had always insisted on standing on the left-hand side for all group studio stills, as it offered a “better angle.”
I brought up that just a month before, by chance, I had watched his 1940 movie Santa Fe Trail on television.
Reagan gave me one of those famous smiles and recounted with considerable detail how he had posed for a Santa Fe Trail group cast photo that included Errol Flynn, Raymond Massey, Olivia de Havilland, Alan Hale, and Van Heflin. Reagan played Custer; Flynn was Jeb Stuart.
He told me that Errol Flynn, “as always,” had insisted on posing in the front row in the most prominent position. Both were tall, but Reagan, behind Flynn, wanted to appear to tower over him. So he stood on a small box of some kind. Reagan held up his hands to show the size of the box and raised his head as he had to appear even taller.
He continued talking like that for several delightful minutes, and I think we both had private regrets that we had to move on from his movie memories to presidential debates.
CHAPTER 2
Killer Question
George H.W. Bush, the man who hated debates, had his first against Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.
Ferraro had her own reasons for not looking forward to their vice presidential debate. When considering the possibility of being nominated, “I said the only thing that would scare me in a campaign or running the country is that debate that you’d have to do during the campaign,” she said in our post-debate interview.
She was a New York Democratic congresswoman making history as the first woman on either major party’s presidential ticket, and she felt it.
“The responsibility that I had at that point, Jim, was I think rather unique. It was more than the fact that I was the vice presidential candidate on a ticket that was challenging the incumbent person, the vice president, but here I was as the first woman and, you know, I was standing in for millions of women in this country. If I messed up, I was messing it up for them.”
Bush was also mindful of the enormousness of what was happening on that October 11, 1984, evening at the Civic Center in Philadelphia. He later claimed that of all his six debates, that one was the most tense.
Why? I asked.
“Well, I think the press was automatically divided. I think a lot of the females in the press corps said this was one of us. You could hear them clapping [in the] room behind.”
“Press people were, press people were applauding?” I responded in disbelief.
“Absolutely, the spinmeisters were behind the scene listening as the journalists were clapping and it was … a tough one.”
Ferraro went into the debate concerned about her knowledge of world affairs. In fact, that was what eventually led to a Major Moment in the debate. Bush had criticized Carter’s handling of the Iran crisis and Ferraro knocked Reagan’s response to the marine barracks bombing in Beirut.
BUSH: Let me help you with the difference, Mrs. Ferraro, between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon. In Iran, we were held by a foreign government. In Lebanon you had a wanton, terrorist action where the government opposed it.…
MODERATOR SANDER VANOCUR: Congresswoman Ferraro.
FERRARO: Let me just say, first of all, that I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy.
Was “patronizing” part of a rehearsed line? Bush thought so: “Don’t patronize, don’t patronize me.… I think she was ready. She’d probably been rehearsed for that, and I can’t even remember what it was.… I said let me help you with that or something. And all that brought the crowd to its feet.”
Ferraro denied it was rehearsed. “Absolutely not. No. I was forced into it. I was forced into it because … he was trying to teach me about foreign policy but I was knowledgeable, and I didn’t need a man who was vice president of the United States and my opponent turning around and putting me down.”
I MODERATED BUSH’S next debate, against Michael Dukakis for president in 1988, with the Jennings-Groer-Mashek panelist team in Winston-Salem.
“Those big-time things … it was tension city, Jim,” was the way he described his entire debate experience.
The moderating moment I most remember from Winston-Salem was my really lousy opening question:
“Our questions this evening will be about equally divided between foreign and domestic policy matters. The first question by agreement between the two candidates goes to Vice President Bush. It is a domestic question. You have two minutes to answer, sir. The polls say the number one domestic issue to a majority of voters is drugs. What is there about these times that drives or draws so many Americans to use drugs?”
It was pure wonk—a perfect start for a think-tank panel discussion but hardly a terrific way to open a presidential debate. The sounds I heard of groans and of television sets switching off all over America were probably not just imagined.
My dismay was compounded by the fact that I was the first moderator ever allowed, by the negotiated rules, to ask a question on his or her own.
Mashek of The Atl
anta Constitution soon showed up my question for what it was—puny. He asked Bush, “Mr. Vice President, the Democrats and even some Republicans are still expressing reservations about the qualifications and credentials of Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana, your chosen running mate, to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. What do you see in him that others do not?”
Now it was the sounds of “Ouch!” being heard throughout the hall—and the land.
BUSH: I see a young man that was elected to the Senate twice, to the House of Representatives twice. I see a man who is young, and I am putting my confidence in a whole generation of people that are in their thirties and forties.… So judge the man on his record, not on a lot of rumors and innuendo and trying to fool around with his name. My opponent says J. Danforth Quayle. Do you know who J. Danforth was? He was a man that gave his life in World War II. So ridiculing a person’s name is a little beneath this process, and he’ll do very well when we get into the debate.
DUKAKIS: Well, when it comes to ridicule, George, you win a gold medal. I think we can agree on that.
BUSH: Just the facts.
DUKAKIS: But did I—did I sense a desire that maybe Lloyd Bentsen ought to be your running mate when you said there are three people on your ticket?
BUSH: No, I think the debate ought to be between you and Lloyd.
DUKAKIS: I think the American people have a right to judge us on this question—on how we picked our running mate, a person who is a heartbeat away from the presidency. I picked Lloyd Bentsen, distinguished, strong, mature, a leader in the Senate, somebody whose qualifications nobody has questioned. Mr. Bush picked Dan Quayle. I doubt very much that Dan Quayle was the best qualified person for that job. And as a matter of fact, I think for most people, the notion of President Quayle is a very, very troubling notion tonight.
Hits had been coming thick and fast since Bush announced Quayle as his running mate. Everything from the Indiana senator’s grades in college and his limited National Guard service as well as his political experience and qualifications to be vice president had been raised—and raised again.
There was another bad moment for me during that Winston-Salem debate.
Bush was answering a Peter Jennings question about the Reagan-Bush record on foreign policy when I interrupted to say his time for answering was up.
BUSH: I still have a couple of minutes left. And there’s a difference principle—
LEHRER: Sorry, Mr. Vice President.
BUSH: It’s only on yellow here. Wait a minute.
The vice president was right. I had misread—mis-seen, to be more accurate—the time cue. There were small colored lights on the cameras for the candidates and a matching set on my desk in front of me. They always started green, then a timekeeper switched them to yellow when a few seconds remained and red when the time was up.
I apologized and told Bush to continue. But he had lost his train of thought—thanks to me.
“I’m finished!”
Bush was understandably annoyed.
But all of that was small potatoes compared to what happened at the second Bush-Dukakis debate at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion eighteen days later.
POLITICAL WRITERS JACK Germond and Jules Witcover gave it a name that stuck—“the killer question”—in their book Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars?: The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency, 1988.
Moderator Bernard Shaw of CNN was the second moderator ever permitted to ask an original question. He began: “The first question goes to Governor Dukakis. You have two minutes to respond. Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”
There is now a universal recollection that everyone who was watching had a breath hitch or some kind of “Oh my God!” reaction.
And they reacted again—in disbelief or surprise—as they heard Dukakis calmly, without even a hint of emotion, answer:
“No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime. We’ve done so in my own state, and it’s one of the reasons why we have had the biggest drop in crime of any industrial state in America, why we have the lowest murder rate of any industrial state in America.”
Kitty Dukakis complained to reporters afterward that the question was outrageous, but her husband continued to view it as fair.
“Oh sure,” he told me later. “Sure. I mean anybody like me, who is opposed to the death penalty … should be subject to that kind of a question. I think it is a perfectly legitimate question.”
Why did he answer the way he did?
“Well, if you have been against the death penalty as I have, and this has been an issue in virtually every campaign I’ve ever run in, you are asked that question, or a variation of it, about a thousand times. And I had been. Unfortunately, I answered it as if I’d been asked it a thousand times.”
You answered it as an issue question?
“Yeah.”
Bush saw it the way most viewers did. “Mike Dukakis seemed flustered by it, and instead of saying I’d kill him if I could get my hands on him, there was some kind of politically correct answer. And I think that hurt him.”
Did Dukakis wish he had handled it differently? “Yeah, I guess so. On the other hand, I’ve listened and watched myself respond to that, but I have to tell you—and maybe I’m just still missing it or something. I didn’t think it was that bad. You know. But maybe it was. And again, I think you have to be aware of the fact when you are debating, and you have, say, a couple of debates, that a huge number of people are watching you and although you’ve been answering these kinds of questions all during the campaign, or for that matter all during your political career, for many people, it is the first time they have had a chance to look at you. And so, I think you have to be sensitive to that. And obviously, I wasn’t.”
I also asked Shaw about his question. Did he have any second thoughts now about that Kitty Dukakis question—twenty-one years later?
Shaw answered immediately: “I don’t have first thoughts about it. I spent two days working on that question. I tried to mesh the question’s thrust with some key issues of the campaign—capital punishment, crime, law and order.”
I reminded Shaw that Kitty Dukakis had said right afterward that it was an outrageous and inappropriate question. Others had criticized it, too. He took that in stride.
“When you moderate a presidential debate, you become the center of a bull’s-eye. Criticism is expected because of the partisanship involved in the vying for the White House. It didn’t surprise me. It didn’t bother me. I was concerned that a lot of people didn’t take time to look at the thrust of the question.”
And then he recounted what happened ten years later—in 1998—when he was coanchoring a political debate for CNN at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.
Shaw said he didn’t know it at the time, but Kitty Dukakis was in the audience. After the debate, a CNN executive brought her over.
“He introduced us as if we didn’t know each other,” Shaw continued. “And while we were there talking—on her own—she said, ‘You know … that question you asked ten years ago was a fair question. Mike didn’t handle it well.’ That was away from the angst of the battle.”
From there I stumbled across an interesting backstory involving Shaw and the three panelists—Ann Compton of ABC, Andrea Mitchell of NBC, and Margaret Warner, then of Newsweek, now a PBS NewsHour colleague of mine.
I asked him about reports that the three panelists had tried to talk him out of asking the Kitty Dukakis question as he had written it.
Shaw said that was true. It happened in a pre-debate session aimed at making sure his and the panelists’ questions didn’t overlap.
“I’ve never confronted any of the three panelists. But I was outraged at the time that a journalist would try to talk a fellow journalist out of
asking a question. I think you can tell I am still doing a burn over it. I just wouldn’t think of doing that.”
I could indeed tell from the rising force in Shaw’s voice that the burn remained.
“They had their reasons. I think as women they were concerned about the question. They did, collectively, ask if I could drop her name. ‘Do you have to mention her name?’ And, of course, mentioning her name was essential to the whole question.”
Compton, Mitchell, and Warner said to me in separate 2009 interviews that while some memories of the exact details had faded with time, Shaw’s story was essentially correct.
Compton recited what she called her “Kodak moments” from that 1988 experience.
One was when she, Margaret Warner, and Andrea Mitchell first heard Shaw read them the question. It was in Compton’s room at the Westwood Marquis Hotel near UCLA where they had gathered to compare notes on questions each might ask. At first, she said Shaw had declined to come to the meeting on the grounds that “we are all professional journalists and we do not need to write each other’s questions.”
Shaw said to them that he decided to attend just to listen, but as the discussion went along he revealed that his Dukakis question was on the death penalty and his one for Bush was on taxes.
Compton said, “We go on talking and, finally, he says, ‘Well, let me tell you my question.’ And he says, ‘If Kitty Dukakis was raped and murdered …’ I remember the reaction. We all went ahhh! Margaret said ‘That gave me chills.’ It was the use of the name ‘Kitty’ that made it … such a dramatic question.”
“I was stunned—and I recoiled,” Warner said to me twenty-one years later. “I have thought about it since then as to why. I think it had to do with being a woman and what it would be like to hear your name said with that kind of question asked about you while sitting there.”
