The Last Debate Read online

  “They’re on the house. The management and employees of Colonial Williamsburg and the Williamsburg Inn and Lodge want you to have them as a token of our admiration and good luck.”

  Henry, still the welcomer at the door, said: “Well, sure. Thanks and olé.”

  “Is it against our journalist code of ethics to accept free hot-fudge sundaes?” Howley asked.

  “At my place the rule is anything worth less than ten dollars doesn’t count,” Henry said.

  “My magazine specifically exempts hot-fudge sundaes from all rules,” Barbara said.

  With flourish and commotion, the man in the green blazer served a sundae to each of the four. Then he stood back and off to the side as if he were settling in to watch them eat each and every bite. Henry said it was clear he had something else on his mind. And in a few seconds he got it out.

  “I have a favor to ask of you, if it is not too much,” he said.

  “We are not going to tell you our questions, sir,” Henry said quickly.

  “No questions. A picture. I wonder if I could have my picture taken with you? I have a camera.” He pulled a small Canon Sure Shot camera out of his jacket pocket. “I asked one of the waiters to come with me. He is out in the hall.…”

  Henry looked at his colleagues. “No problem?”

  And soon the supervisor in the green blazer was standing against a wall surrounded—two on each side—by Michael J. Howley of The Washington Morning News, Joan Naylor of CNS News, Henry Ramirez of Continental Radio, and Barbara Manning of This Week magazine. One of the two waiters who had been in the room clicked off three shots.

  “This picture will make me famous in my neighborhood,” said the supervisor. “Thank you.”

  Henry, escorting the two men to the door, said: “It was nothing. We love to have our picture taken.”

  “Ask good questions,” said the supervisor.

  “Do you have a question you think we should ask tonight?”

  “Yes, I do. Ask why they lie about everything.”

  Henry opened the door. “Good idea. Thanks for the sundaes.”

  “We’ll be back for the dirty dishes.”

  “No reason to do that. They will not be a problem.”

  Henry closed the door. “Ain’t democracy an olé thing,” he said to Howley, Joan, and Barbara.

  Howley held up his hand to signal the others. Hush, please. Say nothing. He picked up his ice-cream bowl and looked and felt the bottom. He nodded for the others to do the same. Silently.

  Bingo. A small receiver, dull silver the size of a penny, was stuck to the bottom of the bowl Joan Naylor was using. Nobody said a word as Howley took the tiny thing between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and carried it into the bathroom. There he placed the stopper in the sink, filled the basin full of water, and dropped the little piece of round silver into the water.

  It was Henry who said “Jesus” this time.

  It put an eerie urgency to the business at hand, which nobody had to restate. Nobody had to restate the fact that time was running out, the fact that they had agreed on nothing, the fact that it had come down to Mike Howley. He had been about to say something when the knock on the door of the man in the green blazer interrupted.

  Nobody had to say, Well, Mike, what were you going to say—if anything? Well, Mike, have you got an idea, Mike? Hey, Mike, how do we do in David Donald Meredith?

  Howley put them through several excruciatingly tense silent dum-ta-dum-dum seconds. He walked back and forth across the room twice, the last time turning up the sound on Liz and Dick. He shook his head from side to side several times.

  It was quite an act.

  Finally, back in his chair at the big table, he said: “As a matter of fact, I may have a way to do it. Some papers came into my possession right before I left Washington. I didn’t take them to a Xerox machine, so I have only one copy of each. If you wouldn’t mind reading them one at a time?”

  He reached down into a small black canvas briefcase on the floor by his chair and pulled out some papers. He handed them to Joan, who was the closest to him.

  They spent the next two hours reading those papers and making the decision that would transform a presidential election, journalism, and themselves.

  Part 2

  What

  7

  Twenty-seven Minutes

  At 6:01 P.M., Eastern Standard Time, Michael J. Howley took the hand-signal cue from the stage manager. Howley looked at the spot he had been told to look at, grinned slightly, and then said to an estimated ninety-two million Americans and several million other people around the world:

  “Good evening.… And welcome to the only debate of this presidential campaign between David Donald Meredith, the Republican nominee, and Governor Paul L. Greene, the Democratic nominee. Welcome, Mr. Meredith … Governor Greene.”

  The candidates smiled and nodded. They were standing behind the blue-gray podiums that came up to just above each man’s waist. Both were dressed in dark blue suits and white dress shirts. Greene’s tie was his trademark shamrock green. Meredith’s was his customary dark burgundy. Howley and the three panelists were seated facing the candidates from behind their table. It was the customary look for presidential debates.

  Howley continued: “I am Michael J. Howley of The Washington Morning News. I am working tonight with three other journalists—Joan Naylor of CNS News … Barbara Manning of This Week magazine … and Henry Ramirez of Continental Radio.”

  Joan Naylor looked like Joan Naylor always looked. She was usually described in the personality magazines as that perky, spirited girl-next-door type who was clearly number one in CNS’s Doris Day Always Lives Here corps. Joan was blond, blue-eyed, lovable, and she was all of that and more now as the camera went to her when Howley called her name. She was dressed in a dark green silk suit. That was because she had never flubbed a line or done a poor interview after drinking a cup of hot tea with lemon, talking on the phone with her Aunt Grace in Sandusky, Ohio, or while wearing dark green. She had called her aunt before leaving her room at the Inn while sipping a cup of hot tea.

  There had never been a personality-magazine story about Barbara Manning. If there had been, it would probably have described her as a natural physical heiress to Lena Home. She could probably have been a campus beauty queen if she had been so inclined. She was looking down at something on the table in front of her when Howley mentioned her name. The camera missed her facial beauty but not the stylishness of the beige dress she was wearing. Her main predebate problem had been resisting the temptation to tell Barbara Hayes what was coming. When she had gone back to her room from Longsworth D, there was a hotel message slip under the door, and the red light on the phone was blinking. Call Barbara Hayes. Barbara Manning wavered but did not call her back.

  Henry Ramirez was as attractive a man as Barbara Manning was a woman. He came to that debate table even more unknown than Barbara Manning. His hair was full and black and combed straight back. He gazed right into the camera and winked when Howley introduced him. He appeared ready, confident. It triggered prize fighter analogies. Henry was wearing his dark blue suit, the one he wore at his Texas A&I graduation and all monumental and solemn occasions since. The shirt had been a problem because he didn’t think any of the ones he owned was right. So he had gone to Brooks Brothers on L Street and bought a blue pinstripe oxford-cloth button-down “classic” before leaving Washington. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that new shirts come out very wrinkled from their cellophane and pins. Fortunately, he unwrapped it and discovered his problem soon enough to send it off in the hands of a bellman for a rush press job. He also bought a new tie at Brooks Brothers. It was dark blue with half-inch pink stripes angled across it. He thought he vaguely remembered Phil Donahue—or was it Robert MacNeil?—wearing something like that the other day on television. The last thing Henry had done before leaving his room was talk to his mother in Falfurrias. “Muy bien, my son,” she had said. It was an expression he had heard fro
m his mother since the first time he remembered hearing anything. There were no better words to hear.

  Howley was dressed in a dark brown suit because that was what he always wore when any kind of serious chips were down. He had worn that suit the last two times on the NBS morning show, and when he got his honorary degree and delivered the commencement address at Amherst College in Massachusetts. (“I beg of you to enter journalism,” he said to the graduates. “Come save it from what we’re all doing to it before it’s too late.”) The only physical flaw he exposed to the American people this night was his hair. He had thought about getting a fresh haircut before the debate, but Marengo, his barber in Washington, was away seeing his family in Lebanon, and Howley had neither the interest nor the energy to find someone else. To hell with it anyhow, he must have thought. This isn’t show business, this is serious business. So his graying dark brown hair was careening slightly down over both ears and his shirt collar.

  He said to the millions: “We are here in an auditorium in the Williamsburg Lodge on the grounds of historic Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. There could be no more fitting setting for such an important exercise in modern democracy.”

  There was no TelePrompTer. Howley had worked to memorize the copy, but he looked down at his paper now. The next was the most difficult part, the important part. It had to be said correctly and firmly. It had to resonate, reverberate.…

  O Jesus, help us as we travel toward the shadow of death, thought beautiful Barbara Manning.

  Olé, Mike! thought handsome Henry Ramirez.

  From this next moment on, my life will never be the same, thought perky Joan Naylor.

  Howley said to the TV camera: “There have been ground rules agreed to for this debate. They called for a back-and-forth between the candidates that was precise in its minutes and order. But the four of us—Ms. Naylor, Ms. Manning, Mr. Ramirez, and I—have decided to dispense with those ground rules.”

  “No! Mike, no!” came the voice of Nancy Dewey into the earpiece in Mike Howley’s ear.

  Howley continued: “Earlier this evening I consulted with officials of the National Commission on Presidential Debates. I asked about the commitment of the commission and of the television networks to carrying whatever happens out here on this stage tonight. I was assured that what happens here is what you, the American people, will see. I was told it would be like a thunderstorm—once it begins there is no stopping it. They said no one from either campaign had the authority to pull the plug. The only way it could be stopped would be if one of the two candidates chose not to participate and literally walked away.”

  In the eighteen months since he had been an active candidate for the Republican nomination and then for president of the United States, David Donald Meredith’s face had never been seen by anyone in the outside world in any way other than that of a quiet, amused, friendly, knowing, serenely comfortable man. Now, for just a blink of a second, the four panelists and the American people saw a frown on his face.

  “May I ask your purpose?” Meredith said to Howley.

  “Our purpose is to get to the real issues of this election in a way that will allow the voters to make a real decision,” Howley said.

  “I much prefer the more open format anyhow and always have, of course,” Meredith said.

  “Mike, stop it!” Nancy Dewey shouted again into Howley’s left ear. “You can’t do this!”

  Mike Howley reached with his left hand down to a knob under the table that controlled the earpiece volume. He turned it with a harsh move to the left. He could no longer hear Nancy Dewey in his left ear.

  Howley could also not hear what was happening in the room behind the auditorium that had been converted into a television control room for the debate.

  Jack Turpin and Brad Lilly were sitting in canvas director’s chairs on either side of Hammond directly behind Nancy Dewey. She was at the huge console of buttons, levers, colored lights, and TV monitors through and by which what was happening onstage was being transformed into a television broadcast. She had people sitting on both sides of her—a director, an assistant director, and an array of various technical and engineering people, all wearing headsets.

  “Stop this program and stop it right now!” Turpin yelled at Hammond the second Howley finished his line about ignoring the rules of the debate. “They can’t do this!”

  “What is going on here?” Lilly said, also rather loudly.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know I could not stop it if I wanted to,” Hammond said. “I’m as upset and stunned as you-all are.”

  “Go out there and call a recess,” Turpin said. “I must talk to my candidate.”

  “No.”

  “You cannot say No to me!”

  “Shut up or get your ass out of this control room, Jack,” Hammond said. “There’s work to be done in here.”

  Turpin yelled: “You will never work again in media, in politics, in America, in the world, in the universe, Hammond!”

  He got up from his chair and took one step forward and leaned over Nancy Dewey. “Shut it down, lady. Shut it down right now!”

  Nancy Dewey had learned her craft at the old CBS News under the crazy, smart, tough guys such as Fred Friendly and Don Hewitt. “I’m busy, Mr. Turpin,” she said. “Be quiet, sir, or get out. I’m talking to Howley in his ear.”

  “Tell him to stop it!”

  “That’s what I just did.”

  Chuck Hammond stood up. “She’s doing her best, so leave her alone, Turpin,” he said. “Do it in a count of three or I’ll get a cop in here to throw you out of here.” Hammond was a large man in muscle but not in height. His great Marine sense of himself must have made him seem even larger at that moment, because when he stood up now he seemed to tower over Jack Turpin. They are the exact same height—five feet ten and a half inches. I checked.

  Turpin lowered himself back down in his chair. Hammond sat again.

  Lilly said nothing, did nothing. His instincts all told him to remain silent, remain invisible, remain out of it.

  “Are you OK?” Hammond said to Lilly.

  “Go,” Lilly answered, as all looked hard at the small television monitors and listened as Mike Howley spoke the words:

  “Gentlemen, each of you has the fundamental right and practical opportunity to stop it right now. Do I proceed?”

  I was watching this with some two-hundred-plus other reporters of all media and persuasions on one of the many television sets that had been placed up, down, and around the Virginia Room. There had been a slight stirring noise from the beginning, as there usually is in the press at events like this. Suddenly, almost as if somebody had flipped a switch, the Virginia Room got absolutely silent, except for the noise that was coming out of the televisions.

  In the control room, Turpin yelled at Meredith in the TV monitors: “No! Say No! Say No! Say No! Get out of there!”

  Lilly said quietly to his man in the monitors: “It’s all right, Governor. It’s all right.”

  Turpin shot his right hand into a fist and then into the air and screamed: “They’re going to screw you! Stop it! Walk away!”

  “By all means, proceed,” David Donald Meredith said to Howley and to the world.

  Turpin put his head in his hands and said: “No, no, no. It’s over. It’s over.”

  Lilly said to the monitors: “Go, Governor, go.”

  Paul L. Greene’s face had been locked into a worried scowl for the nine months since he declared his long-shot candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Now the panelists and the people saw a real grin, the happy kind people get when surprised on their birthday or when winning the state lottery.

  “Proceed,” said Governor Greene to Howley and the world.

  Howley said to the two candidates:

  “Thank you, gentlemen. We believe the central dividing element between you, as with all candidates for president, is that of character. No matter the Tightness or wrongness of a candidate, a president, on any given issue or
set of issues, the underlying power of that person lies in his or her character. We have come to the conclusion that it is a particularly crucial and cutting issue in your election. That is what we want to discuss with you for the next ninety minutes. We would like to begin with some questions designed to get to some basic attitudes about various subjects and people—and ultimately to the question: What kind of men, people, human beings are you?”

  David Donald Meredith must have known now for absolute sure what was going to happen. It might not be the first question, but it was coming. He refused to discuss any of this with me (or anyone else), but it is not difficult to imagine what kinds of questions must have been ricocheting through his mind and psyche at that moment:

  Do I stand here and take it? Do I fight? Do I remain here in front of all of humanity and participate in such a despicable and dangerous exercise? Do I preempt these usurpers, these scums, these criminals? Confront them now, right this minute? Challenge them, dare them? Do I storm off in anger, refusing to participate in such a shameful last-minute attempt to steal this election victory? Do I run? Do I stay? Where is the greater risk? Can I take them? Can they take me?

  Paul L. Greene told Bob Schieffer in a postdebate interview that he was confused but confident at that moment. There was no panic, no fear. He considered Mike Howley to be a respected, reputable person and journalist. He acknowledged he was no fan of Joan Naylor and he assumed she, like all of those TV showboats, would do anything for a rating point or a point of attention. He knew nothing about the other two. But he was comfortable. He knew there was nothing of a “character” nature they could go after him about. But. What in the hell is going on here? What can I do? If I walk, I say I am afraid of answering questions about my character. If I stay, I say I am a weakling, somebody who can be pushed around by four journalists making their own rules. But then he realized that he had nothing more to lose. Absolutely nothing. That gave him confidence. That made him calm. Proceed, please. Proceed.