The Last Debate Read online

  Copyright © 1995 by Jim Lehrer

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82445-5

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Part 1: Who, When, Where

  1: First Light

  2: The Williamsburg Four

  3: Mock-ups

  4: Saturday Night Live

  5: Jack and Jill

  6: The Decision

  Part 2: What

  7: Twenty-seven Minutes

  8: Riots

  Part 3: Why and How

  9: Citizens First

  10: Go, Tom, Go

  11: Historic Firsts

  12: Inauguration

  13: Chapman v. Howley

  14: Carl Bob

  15: In Summary

  Appendix: Statement by Michael J. Howley

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Those are the facts. Deal with them as you will.

  —Sophocles, Antigone

  Author’s Note

  I was in Colonial Williamsburg for the Meredith-Greene presidential debate on an assignment from The New American Tatler magazine. I was compelled to stay full-time on the story for the next eighteen months by my passionate belief that it was an event that changed forever the practice of journalism in America.

  I have tried in this book to re-create in fullest possible detail the circumstances, environment, and process surrounding what happened that night. Some people are certain those four journalists—famous now and forevermore as the Williamsburg Four—committed American journalism’s most heroic act. Others charge with equal fervor and certainty that they perpetrated American journalism’s most heinous crime. I offer my own conclusions at the end of the book, but I do so with the full and humble acknowledgment that in matters of this magnitude all opinions and impressions are mostly equal.

  The reporting and writing route I traveled was the traditional one charted by the six basics of journalism—Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. I was fortunate in that I had access to the recollections and perspectives of most of the principal players. Three of the four journalist-panelists cooperated fully. The fourth, debate moderator Michael J. Howley, followed a stonewall strategy toward me. That was unfortunate, because he emerged clearly and cleanly from my reporting as the central figure of the story. But I had only one restricted and unpleasant interview session with him. He later asked for the right to submit a written response once my work was finished. I agreed, and you will find Howley’s unedited and unabridged words as an appendix at the end of the book. I urge you to read them carefully.

  Howley was one of 178 persons I interviewed at least once. Many of the interviews were recorded on audiotape, and I intend to turn over the tapes as well as my notes to a suitable academic depository for use by scholars at some future date—probably no sooner than fifty years from now.

  There are only a few instances in the text—mostly involving differing memories and versions of what happened—where I have tied individuals directly to specific quotes or pieces of information. There are also no footnotes or endnotes in which sources are identified. I avoided specific attributions wherever possible to protect my sources—for now, at least—but it was also a matter of technique. I chose to present the story of the Williamsburg Debate in a narrative form rather than in the more traditional journalistic style. I thought the needs of story flow and of delving into the more difficult and complex areas of mind and thought, character and motive, required that method. James Atlas, writing recently in The New York Times, described such hybrid forms of reporting as “Journalism as Novel, the Novel as Journalism.” Whatever the label, I am prepared for the criticism my approach may bring.

  I am also reconciled to coping with the attacks of Michael Howley. In his closing statement, he already accuses me of several journalistic sins—the worst and most absurd being the outright invention of people and events. Coming as it does from a man who could go down in history as American journalism’s most notable sinner, this may give new meaning to the old look-who’s-calling-the-kettle-black line.

  But that, of course, is only one of many things that each of you readers must decide for yourself.

  —Tom Chapman

  New York

  Part 1

  Who, When, Where

  1

  First Light

  It had a quiet beginning.

  Six people were present, the most important being the two campaign managers—Brad Lilly for Democratic nominee Paul L. Greene and Jack Turpin for David Donald Meredith, the Republican nominee. Each came, as agreed, with another campaign official. General counsel Calvin Anderson was there for Greene; deputy campaign manager Freddy J. Hill was the second Meredith person. The other two participants were Chuck Hammond and Nancy Dewey, the director and assistant director/executive producer, respectively, of the National Commission on Presidential Debates.

  They were in the K Street Washington offices of the debate commission behind the closed doors of a conference room decorated with large colored photographs of scenes from past presidential debates. Turpin and Hill sat on one side of a large dark-wood table, Lilly and Anderson directly across on the other. Hammond and Dewey sat side by side at one end.

  It was shortly after two P.M., October 7—eight days and four hours before the debate was scheduled to begin in Williamsburg, Virginia.

  They first took a vow of silence. Never would any of the six talk publicly about what was said over the next few minutes or hours it took to pick the four journalists who would be on the debate panel.

  Then Nancy Dewey passed out two pieces of white typing paper clipped together. The first page had four names typed on it. There were at least fifty other names on the second page.

  “We recommend the four there on the top page,” she said. “On any slots we can’t agree, there is a pool on page two from which we can draw.”

  Lilly looked at the four names, consulted in whispers with Anderson, and said: “They look fine to us.”

  All attention moved to Turpin. After a few tight, silent seconds in which he gazed only at the first page and did no consulting with Hill, Turpin slammed the papers down on the table and said: “This is an outrage!”

  Nancy Dewey took a breath and held it and her tongue.

  “What’s the problem?” Hammond said.

  “There’s no diversity!” Turpin shouted.

  “Bullshit. There are two women, a black, and a Hispanic,” Hammond said. “I don’t know how much more diverse it is possible to be.”

  Lilly, Anderson, Dewey, and Hammond say Turpin then stuck his right hand out in front of him, let his wrist go limp, and said effeminately, “Like where are they?”

  Turpin and Hill deny it happened.

  They also deny what the others say happened next. Turpin made his right hand into a fist and pumped it against his mouth and said: “There are none of them redskins either. Whoop, whoop, tom, tom, scalp, scalp.” Then he squinted his eyes and said: “And what about some slants? They’re 11.2 percent of the electorate in California, you know. Chop, chop, chink, chink, jap, jap.”

  Turpin, while denying it happened, claims that if he had said or done anything along these lines it would have been meant as good-humored satire, designed to make fun of the excesses sometimes found these days in the area of political correctness.

  Everyo
ne remembers Turpin saying: “Just kidding. Don’t turn me in to the thought police.” There was a round of smiles and laughs. No one remembers anyone speaking up to protest Turpin’s conduct.

  Turpin came to the meeting prepared for the serious business that followed. He and Hill brought with them a two-inch-thick loose-leaf note book of background reports and other material on most of the leading journalists in Washington.

  “He’s a Democrat,” Turpin said of Don Beard, the CNS News anchorman whose name appeared first on the commission’s paper. “There is no way we are going to sit still for him moderating this debate.”

  Lilly said: “Don Beard’s no Democrat. He’s spreading one helluva lot more crap on us than he is on you every night at six-thirty Eastern Time.”

  “Maybe there’s more of it to spread every night at six-thirty Eastern Time,” Turpin said. Then reading from a page in his notebook, he said: “Beard’s mother and father have always registered as Democrats in Arizona. He is a personal friend of Mo Udall. Beard’s wife worked as a volunteer in the Kennedy, Johnson, McGovern, Carter, and Mondale campaigns. The poor soul even labored for Dukakis. His daughter is engaged to a young lawyer who works in the Manatt law firm in Los Angeles. He has lunch regularly in New York with Moynihan. He has never had lunch with D’Amato.”

  “OK, OK,” Lilly said. “Scratch Beard.” Lilly resisted the temptation to say passing up lunch with D’Amato was a provable act of nonpartisanship.

  Dewey and Hammond nodded their agreement on Beard.

  “I hereby move that we also scratch Jessica Mueller,” Turpin said. Jessica Mueller was the second name on the top list of four. She was White House correspondent for World News magazine. “She’s a lib, through and through.”

  “She does straight reporting for the magazine,” said Nancy Dewey.

  “I assume you have seen her on Washington Talk-Talk-Talk?”

  “Certainly. My God, yes. It’s the best of the TV food-fight shows. Yes …”

  “She’s the house lib on that show, pure and simple. She expresses her opinion, she attacks.” Looking down at his book again, Turpin said: “In seventy-three separate statements she has made on Talk-Talk-Talk about my candidate during this campaign, only fourteen were positive. All of the others—all fifty-nine—were negative. So, please.”

  “They used to not let straight reporters also give their opinions like that,” Lilly said. “It started with Broder, then Eleanor Clift and that clown from the San Francisco paper—I’ve already forgotten his name—and then the other bureau chiefs and newsmagazine types. Now it’s any- and everybody. You can’t tell the reporters from the commentators and comedians anymore. The clownalists, as they’re called …”

  Turpin said: “Broder’s different, but I know what you mean. Nobody knows about it more than me and my man and my campaign. Can we agree to scratch her is the question.”

  Lilly and the others, each in his or her own way, put a line through the name of Jessica Mueller.

  “Now to the two dark ones,” Turpin said, in what can only be interpreted as a reference to the fact that the last two of the four names on the commission’s top list were those of a black and a Hispanic. Ray Adair, a political reporter for The Washington Post, was the black. Maria Chavez-Jones, National Public Radio’s chief congressional correspondent, was the Hispanic. Turpin told me he did not remember saying “dark ones,” but that if he did he did not mean it in a racial way.

  “Ray Adair’s father signed an ad in the New Orleans Times-Picayune calling my candidate ‘a modern-day Klansman,’ ” Turpin said. “Adair the kid has written nothing but negative stories about the impact the election of my man would have on the so-called African American community.”

  “All he’s been doing is telling the truth,” Lilly said. “You can’t keep a person off this panel for telling the truth.”

  “I’m also not sure what someone’s parents do is relevant,” Chuck Hammond said.

  “Relevance is in the eye of the beholder,” Turpin said. “I am the beholder in this case, Chuck, not you.”

  Lilly appealed to Dewey. “Nancy, I do not approve of this way of doing things. It’s right out of the fraternity blackball system.”

  “All we can do is recommend,” Hammond said. “We cannot force either of you to accept anybody on the panel.”

  “That is exactly right,” Turpin said. “You force, we walk—there’s no debate.”

  “Let’s not talk about force,” Lilly said to Turpin. “If you are going to treat each one of these four panelist slots as if they’re nominations to the Supreme Court, then we are never ever going to get this done.”

  Turpin, using words and phrases he had worked out in advance, said: “Let’s review the situation we are involved in here, Brad. Negotiations for debates between you and me and our respective brethren went nowhere for weeks. You accused us of being the stumbling block, of not wanting to debate. We denied that, accusing you of wanting only the most rigid, controlled kind of joint appearance—not a real debate. That argument aside, the end result is this one event. Only one debate. It is impossible to overstate the potential impact that debate could have on the outcome of this election. You know that. I know that. So let’s not play games about it. I care very much about who the four people on the panel are going to be. So do you. You must. I want Ray Adair off this panel.”

  Brad Lilly, distracted by a myriad of problems in his faltering campaign, truly had not seen the selection of the Williamsburg Debate panelists as being that important. It wasn’t until Turpin made his little speech that he realized the explosive potential for this particular exercise. By then it was too late. He acceded to Turpin’s complaint. Ray Adair was history.

  Next!

  Turpin’s notebook identified Maria Chavez-Jones as a “typical anti-Republican leftist NPR reporter” who had come out of a strong labor-union background. Her father had been a paid organizer in the San Diego area for the retail clerks’ union. Her mother worked as a caseworker for the California Department of Public Welfare. She had a brother who was a Democratic member of the California Assembly and a sister who taught English to recent immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Good-bye, Maria Chavez-Jones.

  And over the course of the next forty-five minutes it was also goodbye to scores of others on the Hammond and Dewey second page, the B-list. They included for moderator all of the principal anchorpeople for the commercial networks, cable and public television, the morning and magazine programs, as well as the nightlies. Turpin gleefully shot the anchors down one at a time with anti-Meredith news-story counts from their newscasts, complaints about an anti-Meredith tone in their interviews, and tidbits of family or personal history that marked them unacceptable as liberals, Democrats, or hostiles. Not only was Lilly unprepared to offer any resistance, but so were Hammond and Dewey. Chuck Hammond did not think it was the commission’s job or right to do screening investigations of potential panelists. “We compiled our list from our own long experience with and observations of various journalists in Washington,” he said. “It was a subjective list, I will admit.”

  The turning point, known at the time only to Turpin and Hill, came when Turpin offered no objections to Joan Naylor, the CNS News weekend anchor, serving as one of the panelists. He had rejected her earlier as moderator.

  “She’s OK for the panel,” said Turpin. “She’d be in over her head as moderator. She’s no Barbara Walters.”

  “I don’t think women should be compared only to women,” said Nancy Dewey.

  She was left out there by herself. Lilly was so grateful by then to have someone agreed to he signed off on Joan Naylor without any further discussion.

  Henry Ramirez and Barbara Manning, despite being in their late twenties, also passed quick and easy muster with Turpin. The quickness and easiness should have raised warning flags to the others, but apparently it did not.

  Lilly’s primary interest by then was, in his words, “finding four live humans.” He wa
s only vaguely aware of Barbara Manning because of some pieces she had written for This Week. He had never even heard of Henry Ramirez and considered his employer, Continental Radio, to be a “third- or fourth-tier” media outlet. But. She was black, he was brown, so fine. Yes, they were young. But she was black, he was brown.

  Hammond and Dewey, too, knew of both only because of their respective races. They were put on the list because of the need to have a good representation of black and Hispanic candidates. Manning’s name was one of twelve submitted at the commission’s request by the National Association of Black Journalists. Ramirez was on the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ list of twelve.

  Now it was three down, one to go. The one was the important job of moderator. By the time Turpin got through, only Mike Howley of The Washington Morning News remained on the list. Lilly voiced some objection before he said OK.

  “The sunavabitch has done nothing but trash my man’s campaign,” Lilly said.

  “He’s trashing you, in other words, if he’s trashing the campaign,” Turpin said. “I don’t blame you for not wanting him as moderator.”

  “That’s not the point,” Lilly said.

  “It’s always the point,” Turpin said.

  Turpin assumed everyone in the room knew what he meant by that, i.e., that many professional political campaign managers—the best ones, mostly—eventually saw all of their campaigns as contests between them and the opposing professional campaign manager. That was always the point.

  The point of the meeting had also been reached. They had four panelists—four live human beings. Mission accomplished, meeting over.

  Quiet beginning over.

  The next morning in a suite at the Holiday Inn in Rapid City, South Dakota, Brad Lilly tried his best to make it all look good to Governor Greene. Or at least not as bad as he was so afraid it really was.

  First, there was the NBS–Wall Street Journal poll. Lilly told Greene that he had heard it was coming and that the news was apparently not going to be great.