Jim Lehrer Read online

  The rise of new technology and the decline, within some elements, of journalism standards have resulted in a lot of loose-mouthed opinionating on television, blogs, and elsewhere by people who haven’t done their homework, don’t care about the facts, and disdain balance and fairness—and good taste.

  I have no serious problem with any of that. The more voices and views, the better. Always, the better. I do not want anybody shut up. The addition of new and varied and multiple voices in the public mix is terrific for our democracy. I am, in fact, a purist on the First Amendment guarantees of everyone’s right to speak, no matter how disagreeable or ridiculous the words may be.

  But.

  The First Amendment is about a right, not a requirement. It says nothing about requiring people to attack or inflame others to get ratings or to be noticed, or to take positions only for votes or to insult people for entertainment value. Or to do whatever any given moderator or questioner/candidate or officeholder may feel compelled by beliefs or ambition to do.

  In the new media environment in which presidential elections are conducted now, there is no shortage of opinions—including those of the questioners, in some cases and venues.

  I urge everyone involved not to let these opinions slip into the presidential debates.

  The only opinions that matter are those of the candidates. Nobody cares what the person asking the questions thinks about anything.

  Formats matter but not nearly as much as the conduct of the moderator does, most particularly in any type of the sole moderator format. This goes not only for presidential contests but for moderators and participants in all kinds of public debates.

  There are readily available examples for how to exchange ideas, disagree, and discuss those disagreements with grace, intelligence, and respect.

  The gold standard model is “Shields and Brooks,” the Friday night analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks on our PBS NewsHour. Shields is a syndicated columnist; Brooks is a New York Times columnist.

  There is nothing quite like them and what they do on television.

  I was involved in the beginning more than twenty years ago, and I have been a happy moderator of their weekly twelve minutes of quiet analysis ever since.

  Shields was one-half of the original duo of “Gergen and Shields” that premiered in 1988. His first teammate was David Gergen, then of U.S. News & World Report. The segment became “Shields and Gigot” when Paul Gigot, The Wall Street Journal’s Washington columnist, replaced David Gergen in 1993. Gergen had joined the staff of President Bill Clinton, his fifth presidential boss, the first four having been Republicans. Gigot left our Friday night Washington table in 2001 when he moved to New York to become editor of the Journal’s editorial page.

  David Brooks, then of The Weekly Standard and other publications, replaced Gigot, and it’s been “Shields and Brooks” from then on.

  Mark Shields is a liberal with Democratic political staff ties that go back to William Proxmire, Robert Kennedy, Edmund Muskie, and Morris Udall, among others.

  David Brooks is a conservative who came up the journalism/commentary ranks with William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Times, among others.

  On PBS NewsHour, neither Shields nor Brooks has ever taken a cheap shot against the other.

  They do not talk over each other. Or get personal. They do not shout. Or insult. They laugh and smile with each other—like real people. And listen to each other. They report and do their homework. They respect each other’s opinions and are both secure enough occasionally even to agree with the other. They also can and do discuss ideas.

  Here is a sampling from a January 2010 Shields and Brooks exchange about the new words of “populism” coming from Barack Obama.

  BROOKS: He went to Harvard Law School. He went to Columbia University. He appointed Tim Geithner, Larry Summers. You know, that’s not who he is. He is a member of the establishment. He talks like it. He thinks like that.

  I happen to have great respect for his analytical abilities and all that. That’s who he is. Don’t fake it. The lesson of Mitt Romney, don’t fake it. Be who you are. And it’s just not going to work to fake it.

  SHIELDS: I—first of all, all great revolutions are led by aristocrats. That is the reality of history. So, the idea that he went to Harvard Law School does not in any way preclude his leading a populist revolution. Populist has taken on a word among several of my colleagues in the press, not—at least one of whom is here, that it’s faintly disrespectful. It’s disrespectful.…

  BROOKS: Listen, populism and elitism are the same thing. They are class prejudices, crude class prejudices that so-and-so, because they are uneducated, is less worthy, or so-and-so, because they are richer or more educated, is unworthy.

  They are both crude, crass class prejudices which people can play into or not play into. Redistributing money down is not necessarily populist. But saying all bankers are evil is populist. And, so, it’s the crude class prejudice that I think that people are now beginning to play into.

  And the only people, by the way, who play into it are phonies. People who are genuinely coming from the working class or representing or feel in their bones working-class values generally don’t play those games. Their attitudes are much more complicated and much more real than the fake, “Oh, all those Wall Street types.” That is just too generalized.

  SHIELDS: I disagree with David’s counterfeit distinctions here. I mean, remember that this—this establishmentarian, this president of the [Harvard Law Review], what did he do? He became a community organizer. I mean, that’s what he did. He turned down Supreme Court clerkships. I mean, he really did go back and try and make a difference. There is that in him.

  I would just like to see—Robert Frost once said about Jack—to Jack Kennedy, be more Boston and less Harvard. And Barack Obama is equally as complex and complicated as anybody else.

  And I would like to see him be more Chicago and less establishmentarian.

  Mark Shields and David Brooks are gentlemen and scholars of civility and discourse. I salute them both for what they do and the way they do it.

  That is because I believe as a moderator and as a citizen in the virtue of civil discourse as strongly as I believe in the right to uncivil discourse.

  To repeat the Chautauqua words of Jupiter, Thomas Jefferson’s manservant:

  “There is nothing more that I can give you today, sir, than I have given you, and that is the truth.”

  Thank you and good night.

  To Kate, and Jamie,

  Lucy, and Amanda

  Acknowledgments

  Many people helped me. Most are mentioned in the book, so I will not rattle off their names again. I will just thank them all for what they have done to make possible what I do. Debates are collaborative enterprises similar to those of combat and team athletics. Nobody fights, competes—or debates—alone.

  I would like to pay a special tribute to two fellow debate panelists. John Mashek was a personal friend who died in 2009. We began our reporting careers together at adjoining desks in the city room of The Dallas Morning News in 1959. Peter Jennings, also a friend, lost a fight with cancer in 2005.

  There’s appreciation due NewsHour colleagues Dan Werner and Jim Trengrove. Dan was the producer of the National Issues Convention in Austin, among other breakthrough events of televised civil discourse. Jim produced the Debating Our Destiny documentaries, which won many awards. I owe Dan and Jim, as well as Robert MacNeil and all others in the NewsHour world, much gratitude for the creative force and grease they have provided me. The same goes for friend Colin Campbell, the head man at Colonial Williamsburg.

  Annette Miller assisted in the research for this book. So did the solid information from three earlier debate chronicles: Televised Presidential Debates and Public Policy by Sidney Kraus, Presidential Debates: Forty Years of High-Risk TV by Alan Schroeder, and Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future by
Newton N. Minow and Craig L. Lamay.

  Bob Loomis, my editor at Random House, remains the best there is. Tension City would have been an unreadable mess without him.

  It wouldn’t have been even that if it were not for Kate and our three daughters, Jamie, Lucy, and Amanda, to whom the book and everything else in my life that really matters are dedicated.

  ALSO BY JIM LEHRER

  Viva Max!

  We Were Dreamers

  Kick the Can

  Crown Oklahoma

  The Sooner Spy

  Lost and Found

  Short List

  A Bus of My Own

  Blue Hearts

  Fine Lines

  The Last Debate

  White Widow

  Purple Dots

  The Special Prisoner

  No Certain Rest

  Flying Crows

  The Franklin Affair

  The Phony Marine

  Eureka

  Mack to the Rescue

  Oh, Johnny

  Super

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  This is JIM LEHRER’S first nonfiction book in more than two decades. He has also written twenty novels, two memoirs, and three plays and is the executive editor and anchor of PBS NewsHour. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his novelist wife, Kate. They have three daughters.