Jim Lehrer

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

  I did ask about his polling numbers: “When you went into those two debates, the Hartford and then San Diego, you were behind in the polls. Did you feel that, hey, this is an opportunity to turn this thing around? Did you think they were that important?”

  “You feel that way, but then you’ve got to determine how am I going to turn it around. That’s the hard part. You know, if lightning strikes and he may hit a home run somewhere, but it doesn’t happen in debates.… We couldn’t figure out any way, at least I couldn’t, how … to open it up without getting nasty, mean, personal, whatever. And I didn’t want to do that.”

  Would it have mattered to the final outcome if he had?

  “I don’t think it would have made much of a difference,” Dole answered. But I detected a whiff of something in his tone and body language that added a forlorn “maybe” to his response.

  There were no character questions from the citizens at the San Diego debate, of course.

  Clinton assumed that would be the case. “It’s a little harder in those debates to go after your opponent unless people serve you up the right question. Otherwise the picture is of a debater being disrespectful to the citizens.”

  He, unlike most other candidates, acknowledged that he had used some prepackaged lines, particularly when he said, “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.”

  Said Clinton, “[About the only thing you can do is] leave a memorable line or two in the public consciences [like when] President Reagan said, ‘There you go again’—that kind of thing. So … you try, at least I did … to take two or three or four of those lines in my head into all these debates, and then if I got the chance to use them, I did, and if it didn’t seem appropriate, I didn’t.”

  Jack Kemp, who, like Dole, took a pass on bringing up the Clinton character issue in his debate with Gore, had a slightly different take on what happened. He said he had misunderstood my first question and thought I was talking only about personal issues rather than ethical.

  “I clearly missed the opportunity to take on the fact that President Clinton had said he was going to have the most ethical administration in the history of America, and he was vulnerable there.… I got heavily, heavily criticized for that, and it was probably weakness on my part.”

  Kemp said Gore didn’t help matters.

  “He played a dirty trick on me—called me a nice guy and that just totally unnerved me and ruined my political career.”

  That was not literally true, of course. Jack Kemp, a gregariously accessible man to journalists as well as voters, lived a life that was way beyond normal politics. He had represented Buffalo, New York, in the House of Representatives for eighteen years after doing so as a star quarterback for the Buffalo Bills in what was then the American Football League.

  “Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics,” Kemp once said. “I’d already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy.”

  That quote is from a superb May 2009 New York Times obituary by Adam Clymer that appeared upon Kemp’s death from cancer at age seventy-three.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Big Sighs

  Newspaper city room lore says the best-ever lead sentence on a murder trial story went something like this:

  “Accused mob killer Jimmy ‘Potatoes’ Gardner took the witness stand in his own defense today and talked himself to death.”

  Novelists as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut and Booth Tarkington have used that “talked himself to death” line in different contexts.

  Similarly, a derivative summary of the first 2000 presidential debate could go:

  “Vice President Al Gore debated Texas governor George W. Bush at the University of Massachusetts in Boston last night and sighed himself to death.”

  But I, the moderator, missed the sighing—as Carole Simpson had done with George H. W. Bush’s watch-watching in 1992.

  While walking out of the hall with family after the debate my daughter Amanda commented, in passing, about that being “really something” what Gore had done.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. I had a rule about watching the candidate who was talking, never the one who was listening. I didn’t want any candidate to use eye contact with me as a way to transmit his own reactions.

  So, despite being the physically closest person in the room—just ten feet away from both candidates—I ended up missing what turned out to be the most important story of that debate.

  Through the television device of a split screen, the world watched as Gore on that October 3 evening expressed disgust and displeasure with Bush’s answers.

  Gore sighed heavily and repeatedly. He shook his head, frowned, rolled his eyes, and sneered. And—one thing I did know for sure—he also violated the time limits for questions and responses, ignored the polite pleas of the moderator, and, generally, came across as overbearing—unlikable.

  That, at least, was the consensus reaction from even his own supporters as well as much of the public. Gore was judged the clear loser in the debate, based almost entirely on his body language and not on what he actually said. As with the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, radio listeners came away with an entirely different impression from that of those who watched it on television.

  The parallels are consistent. Gore and Bush, like Kennedy and Nixon, were running from their respective lefts and rights toward the centrist middle where general elections are won and lost. They were also carefully rounding off and away from sharp differences.

  The overall theme of the Boston debate, agreed to by the candidates and the debate commission, was domestic policy. But nothing said by either Gore or Bush caused any ripples except a few lines using “fuzzy math” on taxes and “lockbox” in exchanges over Medicare and Social Security.

  Based on a coin toss, the first question went to Gore.

  “Vice President Gore, you have questioned whether Governor Bush has the experience to be president of the United States. What exactly do you mean?”

  Gore responded by thanking the debate sponsors and the people of Boston and then said: “I have actually not questioned Governor Bush’s experience. I have questioned his proposals and here is why.…”

  He then went on for his opening two minutes to summarize his own campaign agenda.

  After a back-and-forth on Gore’s answer, I asked Bush what I had designed to be an apples-to-apples companion inquiry:

  “You have questioned whether Vice President Gore has demonstrated the leadership qualities necessary to be president of the United States. What do you mean?”

  Bush answered: “Actually, what I’ve said, Jim, I’ve said that eight years ago they campaigned on prescription drugs for seniors. And four years ago they campaigned on getting prescription drugs for seniors. And now they’re campaigning on getting prescription drugs for seniors. It seems like they can’t get it done.”

  Bush then added that it was time to get some people in Washington who would work with both Republicans and Democrats to get results when it comes to seniors.

  Thus, right at the beginning, here now was the mutual no-elbows approach in action. Neither Bush nor Gore took up the invitation to go on the attack against the other’s principal soft spot—at least as seen at the time by the polls and other measurements of the conventional wisdom.

  That left mostly only the Big Sigh criticism in the wake of the Boston debate.

  This led Gore’s advisers to work on ways to repair the damage in the next two debates. As a result, Gore played quiet and nice a week later seated at a table with Bush at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

  Then, after being criticized for being too passive in Winston-Salem, he went on the offensive again in the third debate, a town hall format in St. Louis. He wore boots and a long-cut suit to make him look bigger and stronger than Bush and, in a most bizarre move, during one exchange walked right at Bush as if he were going to conf
ront him physically.

  Gore came across as three different personalities in three different debates. His chameleon-like changes were disconcerting to some voters. But the bottom line may be that Gore was already a goner in Boston before the other two debates and long before anything happened later in the precincts of Florida or at the U.S. Supreme Court. That is for historians to resolve.

  The three Gore-Bush debates happened over fourteen days. The invitation to moderate all three had come early to me from the debate commission. I was told there was little consultation about my selection with the candidates’ representatives.

  What I know for certain is that the pace was punishing for everyone involved—including me.

  THE SECOND PRESIDENTIAL debate, a sit-down event in Wake Forest University’s Wait Chapel on October 11, 2000, focused on foreign policy.

  Nothing occurred during those ninety minutes that would qualify as a Major Moment, either in spoken or body language. But, in light of later events, there was a most interesting pre-9/11 exchange about Iraq.

  The candidates discussed how best to use the enormous power of the United States, with Gore conceding that there weren’t that many differences between him and Bush.

  BUSH: That’s hard to tell. I think that, you know, I would hope to be able to convince people I could handle the Iraqi situation better.

  LEHRER: Saddam Hussein, you mean, get him out of there?

  BUSH: I’d like to, of course, and I presume this administration would as well. We don’t know—there are no inspectors now in Iraq, the coalition that was in place isn’t as strong as it used to be. He is a danger. We don’t want him fishing in troubled waters in the Middle East. And it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be important to rebuild that coalition to keep the pressure on him.

  LEHRER: You feel that is a failure of the Clinton administration?

  BUSH: I do.

  GORE: Well, when I got to be a part of the current administration, it was right after—I was one of the few members of my political party to support former president Bush in the Persian Gulf War resolution, and at the end of that war, for whatever reason, it was not finished in a way that removed Saddam Hussein from power. I know there are all kinds of circumstances and explanations. But the fact is that that’s the situation that was left when I got there. And we have maintained the sanctions. Now I want to go further. I want to give robust support to the groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and I know there are allegations that they’re too weak to do it, but that’s what they said about the forces that were opposing Milosevic in Serbia, and you know, the policy of enforcing sanctions against Serbia has just resulted in a spectacular victory for democracy just in the past week, and it seems to me that having taken so long to see the sanctions work there, building upon the policy of containment that was successful over a much longer period of time against the former Soviet Union in the Communist bloc, seems a little early to declare that we should give up on the sanctions. I know the governor’s not necessarily saying that but, you know, all of these flights that have come in, all of them have been in accordance with the sanctions regime, I’m told, except for three where they notified, and they’re trying to break out of the box, there’s no question about it. I don’t think they should be allowed to.

  LEHRER: [to Bush] Did he state your position correctly, you’re not calling for eliminating the sanctions, are you?

  BUSH: No, of course not, absolutely not, I want them to be tougher.

  I took the discussion on to the troubles over the breakup of Yugoslavia and whether the ouster of Milosevic as president should be seen as a triumph for U.S. military intervention.

  Many words later Bush and Gore agreed—yes, it was such a triumph.

  Then, at the very end before closing statements, there was a brief exchange that led to my most precarious—and hellish—few days as a debate moderator. In the language of my walking-the-knife analogy, I slipped off the blade and got cut.

  I questioned Bush about post-Boston charges from his campaign that Gore “exaggerates, embellishes, and stretches the facts.” I asked the governor if he saw this as a serious issue.

  BUSH: Well, we all make mistakes. I’ve been known to mangle a syllable or two myself, you know, if you know what I mean. I think credibility is important. It is going to be important for the president to be credible with Congress, important for the president to be credible with foreign nations. And yes, I think it’s something that people need to consider. This isn’t something new. I read a report, or a memo, from somebody in his 1988 campaign—I forgot the fellow’s name—warning then Senator Gore to be careful about exaggerating claims.…

  I am going to continue to defend my record and defend my propositions against what I think are exaggerations. Exaggerations like, for example, only five percent of seniors receive benefits under my Medicare reform package. That’s what he said the other day, and that’s simply not the case. And I have every right in the world to defend my record and positions. That’s what debates are about and that’s what campaigns are about.

  Gore admitted he got some details wrong in the Boston debate and promised to do better.

  GORE: There are seniors who pay more for their prescriptions than a lot of other people, more than their pets, sometimes. More sometimes than people in foreign countries. And we need to do something about that. Not with the measure that leaves the majority of them without any real basic help until the next president’s term of four years is over. But right away. And that means doing it under the Medicare program. I can’t promise that I will never get another detail wrong.…

  A moment later I asked Bush if that resolved the exaggeration issue for him.

  BUSH: That’s going to be up to the people, isn’t it?

  LEHRER: Does it resolve it for you?

  BUSH: Depends on what he says in the future in the campaign.

  LEHRER: Your folks are saying some awful things.

  BUSH: I hope they’re not awful things. I think they may be using the man’s own words.

  LEHRER: Well, what I mean is calling him a serial exaggerator—

  BUSH: I don’t believe I’ve used those words.

  LEHRER: No, but they have in your campaign ads.

  BUSH: Maybe they have.

  Then I turned to Gore.

  LEHRER: And your campaign officials have … your campaign officials, Mr. Vice President, are now calling the governor a bumbler.

  BUSH: Wait a minute.

  LEHRER: I mean, my point is, should this—is this—

  GORE: I don’t use language like that and I don’t think that we should.

  LEHRER: It’s in your commercial.

  GORE: I understand. The—I haven’t seen that, in my commercials?

  BUSH: You haven’t seen the commercial?

  LEHRER: Your—

  GORE: I think that what—I think the point of that is that anybody would have a hard time trying to make a tax cut plan that is so large, that would put us into such big deficits, that gives almost half the benefits to the wealthiest of the wealthy. I think anybody would have a hard time explaining that clearly in a way that makes sense to the average person.

  BUSH: That’s the kind of exaggeration I was just talking about.

  GORE: Well, I wasn’t the one having trouble explaining it.

  “IT’S IN YOUR commercial.”

  That line stuck with me like tar from Winston-Salem to St. Louis, site of the next debate, and through Gore campaign operatives to The New York Times.

  First, a Gore representative complained through NewsHour executive producer Les Crystal, claiming that no Gore commercial ever made the charge that Bush was a bumbler. It was a campaign spokesman who said it.

  The Gore complainant also itemized other alleged mistakes I had made in the first two debates.

  The next thing I knew, a political reporter for the Times was calling me for comment—for my reaction to several complaints about my moderating, including the ones from the Gore peopl
e.

  The resulting story appeared under the headline THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE DEBATES; CRITICS ACCUSE MODERATOR OF LETTING DEBATE WANDER.

  The text concentrated on my not being aggressive enough, not “accentuating the differences” in my questions. A former Democratic presidential adviser accused me of not pressing the candidates and, most colorfully, “running the debates as though they were some kind of sherry hour at the institute of politics at Harvard.”

  The jab that mattered the most to me, however, came from Bob Kerrey, then a Democratic senator and Gore surrogate, who said: “You could have picked 10 people off the street who didn’t know Jerusalem from Georgia and they would have had better questions.”

  I had known and interviewed Kerrey many times, going back to his pre-politics days in Nebraska as an angry Vietnam War veteran.

  After the Times story ran, Kerrey left a recorded message on my home phone in Washington apologizing for what he said, claiming he didn’t really mean it and spoke only because “Rick Berke [the Times reporter] called me and said he needed a ‘hot quote knocking Lehrer’ for his story.”

  I don’t know the truth of Kerrey’s claim because I have never taken the time to run it down. But I have no doubt that the same Gore campaign operatives who successfully pushed Berke to do the story also suggested Kerrey be interviewed.

  There were other critics of those 2000 debates. National newspaper columnists as varied politically as Bob Herbert and William Safire of The New York Times and Richard Cohen of The Washington Post also took pokes at me. The cheapest of the shots was a one-liner in Time magazine, made cheaper because it was anonymously fired.

  It is possible that every word of criticism, including Kerrey’s, was spoken honestly—and was justified. I didn’t think so at the time and, mostly, I still don’t. But so what?

  Such stories, of course, are more likely to be pursued and printed than all others—particularly in the field of political journalism, where the rules for using anonymous sources range from loose to nonexistent.