Jim Lehrer Read online

  LEHRER: Just for the record, make sure I understand what your answer means and there is no ambiguity about it—

  CLINTON: There is no ambiguity.

  There was then an exchange in which Clinton said again he had not urged Lewinsky or anyone else, including his friend Vernon Jordan, to say anything that was not true. He repeated the “There is no improper relationship” line and said all he knew about what was going on was what he had read in the newspapers. He said he’d been up late that night before talking about the Middle East and there were many serious matters on his presidential plate at the moment.

  I finally decided Clinton was not going to go any further on the Lewinsky matter, so I moved on to the fact that the pope, along with the three network television anchors, were in Cuba.

  “Has the time come maybe for the United States to also bury some economic and political hatchets with Cuba?” I asked.

  And I reluctantly left the subject of one of the biggest political stories of our time and moved on to Cuba and other foreign policy issues in the Middle East and Bosnia, and then on to domestic matters.

  I did come back to the Lewinsky story at the very end.

  LEHRER: We’re sitting here in the Roosevelt Room in the White House. It’s 4:15 eastern time. All of the cable news organizations have been full of this story all day. The newspapers are probably going to be full of it tomorrow. And the news may—this story—is going to be there and be there and be there. The Paula Jones trial coming up in May. And you’re going to be—

  CLINTON: I’m looking forward to that.

  LEHRER: Why?

  CLINTON: Because I believe that the evidence will show what I have been saying; that I did not do what I was accused of doing.

  There was a final minute during which, personal allegations aside, Clinton said he believed the American people should keep in mind all that he had done as president in the best interests of the country.

  Then came the it’s-over! words:

  LEHRER: Mr. President, thank you very much.

  CLINTON: Thank you.

  Back at my office twenty minutes later, I called my wife, Kate. She said good things about my interview and then, after a whisk of a pause, told me that Amanda, one of our three grown daughters, had called to say the same.

  “But she also wanted you to know that Clinton was using the present tense through much of what he said to you. He said ‘is’ in answering your relationship questions.”

  I had never before felt such a sense of calamitous failure and embarrassment. As in the case of the fictional question about bombing Havana, I had missed it. Yes, I was under much pressure and I had a lot on my mind, but there was no excuse for not having heard the word “is” in Clinton’s answers.

  A simple “Why are you using the present tense, Mr. President?” would have been a terrific follow-up.

  Clinton’s famous “It all depends on what you mean by ‘is’ ” line came out the next day, as well as later during his impeachment and an unsuccessful attempt to remove him from office.

  My mistake, blessedly, escaped attention because it got lost in the enormousness of the story itself. That was also before there were things called blogs.

  For most everyone, that January 1998 day was about history. For me it was about not being relaxed and/or confident enough to listen.

  THEN THERE ARE the questions themselves.

  I believe there’s only one principal guideline for anyone who asks questions in public: Keep it simple.

  The best example is what CBS correspondent Roger Mudd asked Senator Edward Kennedy in a November 1979 documentary. Kennedy was preparing to oppose President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination.

  “Why do you want to be president?” Mudd asked Kennedy.

  Kennedy’s face first went blank, then he remained absolutely silent with a puzzled look for a count of one, two, three. Finally, he said:

  KENNEDY: Well, I’m—were I to make the announcement to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country that it is—has more natural resources than any nation of the world, has the greatest educated population in the world, the greatest technology of any country in the world, the greatest capacity for innovation in the world and the great political system in the world.…

  We’re facing complex issues and problems in this nation at this time, but we have faced similar challenges at other times, and the energies and the resourcefulness of this nation, I think, should be focused on these problems that we face, primarily the issues on the economy, the problems of inflations, and the problems of energy, and I would basically feel that it’s imperative for this country either [to] move forward, but it can’t stand still or otherwise it moves backward.

  MUDD: What would you do different from Carter?

  KENNEDY: Well, in which particular areas?

  MUDD: Well, just take the question of leadership.

  KENNEDY: Well, it’s—on what—on, you know, you have to come to grips with the different issues that we’re facing. I mean we can—we’d have to deal with each of the various questions that we’re talking about, whether it’s questions of the economy, whether it’s in the areas of energy.

  Kennedy’s candidacy against Carter never quite recovered from that exchange with Mudd.

  James Fallows, in a September 2008 piece for The Atlantic, critiqued the three months of presidential primary debates as a prelude to what might be coming in the general election that fall. There were twenty-six among the Democrats, twenty-one for the Republicans.

  And there were forty different moderators.

  Fallows offered a list of the “Five Questions That Should Never Be Asked” that included two that I would give a special underlining—gotcha and loaded hypothetical.

  Forget gotcha altogether. They are mostly for kids and amateurs.

  Hypothetical questions can trigger a revealing answer, but they are easy to dodge and often result in criticism of the questioner. Bernard Shaw’s killer question to Michael Dukakis remains the cardinal example of it playing out both ways.

  I have already highlighted my own apples/oranges issues and long preface problems.

  Also, forget multiple-choice or multiple-subject questions and those that are designed to show off how smart you are.

  More generally, I would advise interviewers/moderators to treat the questionee with the same courtesy and respect you would want if you were being questioned. I would tell anyone who wishes to prosecute people on television to stay out of journalism and away from moderator chairs/tables. Instead, go for a job as an assistant district attorney—in the real or fictional worlds.

  And I would urge all to never forget that one listener’s stupid question can be another’s brilliant one. Unfair? Not to me. Too long? Not long enough. Too incendiary? Not hot enough. Too gotcha? Not gotcha enough …

  One critic’s “sherry hour” way of questioning people could be another’s ideal.

  Some of the worst of all public questioners are members of the U.S. Congress. In particular, senators at televised hearings are too often in a subprime class by themselves.

  New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote a satirical piece on the 2009 hearings for Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then a federal appeals court judge. Collins went through the hearings day by day giving examples—only barely fictional—of what the senators said.

  “Senator Arlen Specter: Before we get to my questions, I would like to tell you several anecdotes about my own interesting history. Did I mention that I used to be chairman of this committee?”

  “Senator Sessions: Judge, to get back to that ‘wise Latina’ speech, I want to know if you think judges should allow their prejudices to impact decision making. For instance, if I were a plaintiff before your court, would you be less inclined to rule in my favor because my middle name is Beauregard?”

  “Senator Graham: Judge, before I read a string of anonymous comments about your temperament problem, I’d like to make you repeat tha
t wise Latina remark again just for the heck of it.”

  Generally, the Democrats on the committee asked only questions that were helpful to Sotomayor, the nominee of a Democratic president, while the Republicans stayed on critical themes. In the 2005 hearings for Republican president George W. Bush’s high court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito, the reverse was true. Democrats asked the tough ones; Republicans tossed the lobs.

  According to the Los Angeles Times and several blogs, a word count of the four days of Sotomayor hearings showed 66 percent of them—95,592, to be exact—were spoken by senators, 34 percent—49,176—by the nominee.

  There was a post-Sotomayor cartoon by William Haefeli in the August 10, 2009, issue of The New Yorker that said it all. A congressional hearing witness says to a questioner:

  “I’m happy to answer your question as soon as you stop asking it.”

  SEVERAL TECHNIQUES WERE tested during the many television debates among Democratic and Republican primary candidates, particularly in 2008. Most, but not all, were on cable television.

  They ranged from variations of the open approach to the use of taped citizen questions from YouTube. They even encouraged competing screams from rally-like audiences and gave birth to a series of “Raise your hand” candidate questions by moderators. (“Raise your hand if you believe there is such a thing as a global war on terror.”)

  James Fallows, in his Atlantic critique, said the most amazing thing about the Raise-your-hand stunt questions was the sheer indignity of it for the candidates.

  “While candidates are subjected to almost everything during a long primary season and are used to skepticism and outright hostility from the press,” he wrote, “serving as game-show props represented something new.”

  Among the other inexcusable situations during those 2008 primary debates, to my moderator eyes and ears, were when the candidates were not treated the same. The big names got center position onstage and more airtime than the others. The basics about the viability of any given candidate should be resolved during the invitation phase, not onstage.

  Any candidate who meets the test to be invited deserves to be treated as all others.

  The best primary debate I ever witnessed was in 1992 among six candidates for the Democratic nomination—Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin, Jerry Brown, Douglas Wilder, and Bill Clinton. Robert MacNeil and I sat around a large round table in our Washington television studio with the candidates in what was essentially an open discussion that was lively, fairly enforced, and naturally fascinating.

  THE LONG-HELD dream of a moderator-less debate remains unfulfilled. Since even before Kennedy-Nixon, there were advocates of what some labeled the “pure” format for presidential candidates.

  All would give some kind of opening statement and then go directly at each other with questions and responses for ninety minutes or so, with the expectation that the candidates would be civic-minded enough to keep the times and tones fair and civilized.

  It hasn’t happened yet except in some early primary debates. But don’t hold your breath that it will happen at the general election level, although a tiny—minuscule, let’s say—step toward that was proposed and approved for the first Obama-McCain debate in Oxford. Its unprecedented rules permitted the candidates to address and question each other.

  As debate scholars have pointed out, the advocates of the so-called real debates usually cite the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates as the purist model. But myths have grown up about those seven encounters.

  They were organized by two Chicago newspapermen—Joseph Medill and Charles Ray—who were open supporters of Lincoln. After each debate, Medill and Ray made sure the press coverage was full and favorable to Lincoln. In other words, it was a 2008-like media-run exercise, complete with post-debate spinning and pre-debate negotiations.

  On format, Lincoln and Douglas each gave an opening statement of either an hour or an hour and a half and then asked each other very long questions that drew very long answers.

  Whatever the mythmakers say about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in today’s world they would probably be called back-to-back speeches, not debates.

  There was a brief sideshow among some in journalism a few years ago over whether the televised presidential debates should even be called debates. Dan Rather, when he was with CBS, made a public point of always calling them “joint appearances” on the grounds that they were not real debates.

  Regardless of what the event is called, the format, or the rules, democracy is always served any time candidates for the presidency or vice presidency of the United States are on the same stage at the same time talking about things that matter.

  I feel the same way about public debates and discussions of every kind and level.

  My advice to all with the power to choose is to fit the format to the specific event and its purpose. Sitting at a round table may be the best way to go. Or do it at podiums. Or have several people ask questions. Or only one or two. Perhaps open it up to the audience.…

  Such decisions really can make a difference on how effective the experience can be for the participants as well as the audience.

  Debates, with a variety of formats, are now a fact of presidential politics. And that is a good thing, according to what most of the candidates said in our documentary interviews.

  The big exception was George H. W. Bush, the man who called the debates “ugly.”

  I asked if he thought they should be a required part of the process.

  “No, I think you ought to do what’s best to get you elected. And if that’s best that you have no debates, too bad for all you debate-lovers because I really think a candidate should be entitled to that.”

  A similar attitude dominated the politics of Britain, a country with a grand tradition of debates—from Parliament and college unions to street corners. Prime ministers repeatedly dismissed televised debate challenges from opposition party leaders on grounds that they were stunts from losers. Incumbents and winners had nothing to gain by such encounters.

  Then came 2010. Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Gordon Brown, à la Gerald Ford against Jimmy Carter in 1976, was behind in the opinion polls. Brown agreed to three ninety-minute debates with Conservative leader David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the head of the Liberal Democrats. The rules of engagement, like the provocation, were based on the American model. The three moderators were television anchormen who did mostly traffic-cop duties. The questions were asked by carefully chosen audience members in a town hall atmosphere.

  Brown ended up losing his Labour majority and resigning as prime minister. Would it have turned out differently if there had been no televised debates? That debate will likely continue until there is another national election debate challenge.

  Some of the heavy British press buildup to the 2010 debates centered on the American experience. In the course of a few interviews, I was asked for advice I might have for the British participants.

  For the moderators, I recommended that their success be judged by how invisible they were. For the candidates: Whatever you do, answer the question.

  FINALLY, A FEW of my own very personal words.

  Whatever attitudes I have as a moderator/interviewer did not come from the crib. I learned them the same way I learned to throw a baseball as a kid and change a diaper as a father: I learned the old-fashioned way—by doing.

  At the University of Missouri School of Journalism in the 1950s, I learned that the major missions of journalism are to collect, report, and explain.

  I took no classes in judging answers and people, column writing, commentating, being a pundit, or expressing opinions. I honed an even-handed approach to interviewing and reporting through ten years as a daily newspaper reporter/editor and ever since in my practice of journalism on public television.

  Thus, “fair and balanced” is not a slogan to me. It’s a professional way of life.

  I have been forever blessed by the fact that Robert MacNeil, my great friend who really inven
ted our program, The NewsHour, felt the same way. His early education and discipline came from working on the desk at the Reuters wire service in London and, later, at NBC News and the BBC here and overseas.

  Neither MacNeil nor I, as individuals or together as a team, ever saw asking civilized questions, listening politely to the answers, and treating public figures and ideas with courtesy and respect as anything other than simply doing our jobs—being professional.

  There was no magic, no heroism, no saintliness involved.

  I know that there are folks out there still waiting for me to do something along the lines of the South Carolina congressman’s shouting “You lie!” to President Obama. In my case, it would be in response to an answer during a presidential or vice presidential debate—or some other kind of public event on television or elsewhere.

  They wait in vain.

  One prominent cable talk personality once attacked me on the air for not being aggressive enough during a presidential debate, spitting, “Lehrer’s not a real journalist!”

  To borrow the phrasing of Bill Clinton, I guess it depends on what you mean by “journalist.” And by “aggressive.”

  Debates have qualities that require journalistic skills, tone, and approach, but a journalist participates as a facilitator, not as a gatherer of information. The moderator, journalist or not, must also keep the event fair and moving while staying out of the way.

  I think it is safe and proper to note that all reporters—print or electronic—are not automatically suited to be moderators. Asking questions to get information for a story can be quite different from asking them to help voters understand what a candidate believes and stands for—and why.

  I believe strongly that anyone asked to contribute his or her skills to an exercise as important to the country as a presidential or vice presidential debate has a duty to do so or have a very good reason for not doing so.

  To me, it’s on a par with pro bono legal or medical work. The only exemption would be for someone whose ego does not permit moving past the idea that a debate is about the moderator. That person should—must!—decline on his/her own to participate.