The Last Debate Read online

  Whatever either may have been thinking, neither Greene nor Meredith said a word or made a move. They were both still standing silent at their podiums when Howley opened the bomb-bay door for the first drop. He said: “We’d like to begin with a series of questions about a character issue that arose only this afternoon. Henry Ramirez?”

  Henry said he did not mind going first. Back in Longsworth D he had even volunteered to do so. He said he crossed himself in his mind like the good Catholic that he was, repeated, Muy bien, my son, to himself and then said to Greene: “Governor, does your campaign have a private security firm working for it?”

  “No, it does not,” Greene answered.

  “How do you do background checks on personnel, friends and enemies, the press, and other things like that?”

  “We do not do such things. We are not interested in investigating anyone. We have no need for any private detectives.”

  Henry turned toward Meredith. “Does your campaign employ a security firm?”

  “I believe we do, yes. I fail to understand the relevance of such a question, however. Please, Mr.…”

  “Ramirez. My name is Henry Ramirez.”

  “I know your name.” Meredith held up a piece of paper. “It’s written down right here, in fact.”

  Henry said he could hear his mother and everybody at the café and maybe a few other places in Falfurrias cheering. Ramirez. My name is Henry Ramirez.

  He said to Meredith: “The name of that security firm is Nelson and Associates, is it not? Isn’t that the one that works for you?”

  “I believe they do some security work for us, yes.”

  “Doing background checks on people?”

  “I’m not sure of the scope of their work.”

  “Does some of their work for you involve electronic surveillance?”

  “Certainly not! I am outraged that you would even suggest such a thing.” The camera was right on Meredith’s face. It was in a full glower as he looked right at Mike Howley. “If this is your idea of asking about the essential issue of this campaign, sir, I believe I can tell you that you have lost your senses, Mr. Howley. This is an outrage. I would remind the four of you that this is a debate about the presidency of the United States, about the future of the United States, the most powerful nation in the world.”

  Howley responded in a quiet, confident voice: “As I said when we started, Mr. Meredith, you are free to go at any time. You said to proceed. We have done so. If you are now saying, stop, then we stop. It’s your call, sir.”

  “I have never run from a fight and I am not about to start now, particularly one with the likes of you … you people in the press, you self-appointed …”

  It hung there. “You self-appointed …” You self-appointed what? Nancy Dewey and her director kept the camera right on Meredith’s face. What were the words he was considering and discarding until he found the right one? Watchdogs? Arbiters? Gods? Emperors? Dictators? Fools? Idiots? Sinners? Scumbags?

  “Yes, sir?” Howley said. “You were saying?”

  “Never mind,” Meredith sneered, and then waved Howley off with his right hand.

  The camera shot switched to Howley. The whole world saw him nod again to Henry Ramirez. Proceed, young man, proceed.

  Henry was very nervous at this point. Not only did he have to speak coherently, he now had to move with force and grace. As confident as he was, he was aware of the potential for making an ass of himself and the entire exercise.

  He said to Meredith: “I have something here in my hand that I would like for you to look at, sir.”

  Henry got up from his chair, as he had seen Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, the people on L.A. Law, and many another TV lawyer do, and as he had rehearsed in his hotel room many times that afternoon. He walked the ten feet over to Meredith and handed him something too small for anyone watching on television to see and thus identify.

  With head up, shoulders back, Henry then walked deliberately back to his seat at the panelists’ table and sat down again. He said to Meredith: “Sir, do you know what that is?”

  “I do not,” said Meredith, the sneer back in place. I would give anything to know what that man was thinking at that very moment. Could he have begun to see his election as president of the United States slipping away?

  “Mr. Meredith, that is a miniature microphone.”

  “Well?”

  “We found it this afternoon under a bowl of ice cream that was brought to us by room service at the Williamsburg Lodge.”

  “So?”

  “Did people from Nelson and Associates put that microphone there on your behalf?”

  “No! No, no, no. I cannot believe you are asking me that!”

  Meredith’s face showed some fresh coloring. He turned away from Henry again and faced Howley. He said: “Mr. Howley, please ask your Ms. Manning there about her roommate. Doesn’t she work for the Greene campaign? They’d have no need to bug a room. They have their own person working on Governor Greene’s behalf right there inside the room.”

  Mike Howley turned to Barbara Manning and said: “It is true that your roommate works for Governor Greene, isn’t it?”

  Barbara assumed that the television picture to all fifty states, around the world, and to Mars and all the stars and planets became her distressed face about the time Howley said, “… isn’t it?” She assumed that the peoples of the nation, the world, and the universe saw in her eyes and mouth and ears and nose the composite look of an assassin, a serial killer, and a child molester. She assumed that the billions of people in the television audience were holding their breaths for the confession, for the ultimate Oprah.

  She had thought the subject of Barbara Hayes might get raised, but she didn’t think it would be this early in the debate. Howley had told her to have an answer ready. “Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” he had said. So she’d thought about what she might say. And now she was saying it to Howley and the billions. “Yes. Yes, she is my roommate. But I have said nothing to her about anything having to do with what was said by any of the panelists about this debate. We talked briefly the afternoon I was selected for the panel but not about anything other than the fact that I was selected.”

  Was that the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Not quite. She and Barbara Hayes talked about slightly more than just her being selected. Barbara Hayes had made a direct appeal for help in saving the country from the probability of a Meredith presidency.

  Howley asked Barbara: “Did you tell Barbara Hayes or anyone else what was said or decided by any one of the four of us during our debate preparations last night and today?”

  “No, I did not. I certainly did not. Not one word. The four of us agreed to tell no one and I have certainly kept that agreement.”

  Howley looked back at Meredith, who said: “And I guess we are simply to believe her? She speaks, we say, Yes, ma’am, whatever you say, ma’am?”

  “Believing or not believing, of course, is in the mind of the listener, sir,” Howley said.

  “I cannot imagine any one of the four of you or anyone else in the press letting somebody like me … or even the governor here or anyone else in public or political life get away with such an appearance problem with a dismissive denial like that. The double standards that you people, you—”

  “Self-appointed something-or-others, sir? You never did finish that a while ago.”

  The reporters in the pressroom with me had been stunned into a state of funereal quiet up till this moment. Now somebody yelled out: “Point to Howley!” And there were some quick but thunderous cheers and applause before the room fell—switched, click—silent again.

  “The tone and substance of this travesty is beyond all that is considered professional and fair and civil, Mr. Howley,” Meredith said.

  Howley said: “I take it the Nelson people were the ones who told you about Barbara Manning’s roommate?”

  “I don’t remember who told me,” Meredith said. “It
’s common knowledge.”

  “No, it isn’t!” Barbara barked out.

  Another cheer—smaller and shorter—went up in the pressroom.

  Howley said to Meredith: “So on the issue of who bugged our meeting room, sir. You are saying nobody connected with your campaign or in the employment of your campaign had anything at all to do with that tiny microphone and the placement thereof in our room—Longsworth D, just down the hall here in the Williamsburg Lodge?”

  “That is exactly what I am saying! How dare you speak to me as if you are some kind of prosecuting attorney! I am not in the dock. I am not on trial.”

  “No one is suggesting you are, sir—”

  “If you have any proof about any of this, put it out here now in front of us all so we can see it. Do your Mister District Attorney. Let’s have it. Call your witnesses. This is an outrage, a travesty.”

  “We are going to ask the FBI to investigate,” Mike Howley said.

  “So you have no proof, is that it?”

  “We will leave it to proper authorities—”

  “You people of the press love to talk about McCarthy tactics.” Meredith found the camera that was on him and spoke right into it. “My fellow Americans, you have seen an example of McCarthyism of the highest order. Here, in front of you, I have been accused of placing a hidden microphone on the bottom of an ice-cream bowl in order to eavesdrop on the deliberations of these four journalists. But when I ask for proof, what do I get? Nothing! I get nothing! This little thing?” He held the microphone up in front of him. “He says this is a miniature microphone. Is it really? I have no idea. What if it is? Where did it come from? He says from the bottom of an ice-cream bowl. Could it have been purchased by one of these distinguished journalists at some neighborhood electronics shop? Or maybe Miss Manning’s Greene-operative friend acquired it and gave it to them. Who knows, who knows, who knows? What we do know is that the outrageousness of this is beyond the pale of anything I could ever have imagined. They talk about police states. Talk about the New Arrogants. My fellow Americans, we are seeing here tonight the end result of the New Arrogants’ Press State in America. It’s our America. We must take it back.”

  He dropped his head and closed his eyes. He must have assumed—prayed, hoped, imagined, dreamed—that they were cheering for him out there in television land. From the close-up view of his bowed head it appeared as if he could hear them and was, in fact, listening to them. From my perspective in the Virginia Room I had no idea how it was playing out there in television land, but it seemed to me that Meredith had gotten the better of the exchange. I wrote in my notes: “Score—Meredith. Cheap shot—no proof.” I was sitting at a table between a young woman reporter from The San Diego Union-Tribune and an older man reporter from The Kansas City Star. Until this moment not a word had been spoken out loud by any one of the three of us since we had been frozen silent by Howley’s opening statement. Now the Star man, to my right, murmured: “I feel something serious happening out there.” “Me, too,” I responded. “Incredible,” said the San Diego woman.

  Howley ignored Meredith and said: “Barbara Manning will ask the next series of questions. Barbara?”

  All right, here we are, Gramma Maude, she thought. Here we are at all of the gates—the gates to hell, to heaven, to glory, to the Promised Land, to life, to death, to happiness, to shame, to immortality, to mortality, to fame, to fortune, to infamy, to poverty, to everything. Watch me, Gramma Maude. Watch me, watch me. Hold my hand, hold my hand. Pray for me, pray for me. Hold my hand! Here I go!

  Barbara said to Meredith: “It’s been suggested … charged, alleged … repeatedly during this campaign that you would be a dividing president. That when you look at people with my color skin, for instance, you see—”

  Meredith shook his head and held up his hand for her to stop. “Young lady, please—”

  “If I might finish my question, Mr. Meredith?” Look at me, Gramma Maude! Hold my hand tight!

  “No, you may not finish! I’ll tell you what I see when I look at you. I see a troubled and misguided soul. I see somebody who needs help in finding her way. I see neither black nor white, male nor female, liberal nor conservative—”

  “Wait a minute!” It was Greene. Governor Paul L. Greene of Nebraska, the Democratic candidate for president of the United States. The other man on the stage, the guy behind the other podium, the one who hadn’t said hardly anything yet. His voice was unnaturally loud, firm.

  “If I may finish,” Meredith said.

  “No, you may not finish,” Greene said. “No matter what words you weave and dispense now—tonight—the words you have thrown around during this campaign up till now have already offered a full-formed answer to Miss Manning’s question. And that answer is a loud Yes. You are a divider. When you look down—and down is clearly the direction you look—at people like Ms. Manning with skin a color different than yours, you see a different and lesser American. You see an inferior person, a person you do not believe is equal to you, your kind, our kind—”

  “That is a blasphemous lie!”

  “That is a disgraceful truth!”

  “Prove it! Prove it if you can!”

  “Your own words prove it!”

  “Be fair! Be fair if you can!”

  Paul L. Greene, the man Joan Naylor and others had suggested was among the worst presidential candidates in the history of American politics, did what Meredith had done a few moments before. He looked right into the camera that was trained on him.

  And he said directly to the television audience: “ ‘Be fair,’ he said. Yes, we must be fair to this man. So fair we will be. I just leveled a charge and he answered it. It is up to you to judge the validity and the veracity of our competing thoughts and words. In that spirit—that spirit of basic American and human fairness—I ask you, my fellow and sister Americans of all ages and races and politics, to think through what you have heard this man say during this campaign. Not just now but in stump speeches and in campaign commercials. Think through his position on enforcing civil-rights laws in a way that would all but end affirmative action as a method for redress for all minorities who feel they have been discriminated against. Think about what he has said about there being a cultural war raging in this country between the forces of sin and evil—the Democratic party forces of abortion, murder, gun control, and perverted sex—and his forces, the Take It Back forces of family, love, discipline, prayers, and lullabies that have taken over the Republican party. What is he saying really? Ask yourself that question and then answer it. Answer it honestly.…”

  “He’s alive after all,” whispered the San Diego reporter on my left. “He talks, he breathes, he’s real,” said the Kansas City man on my right. I agreed but said nothing. My head was alive with the certainty that I was watching—along with the rest of the press corps in the Virginia Room and America and the world—the most remarkable event of its kind ever. And what none of us knew then was that the best—or the worst, depending on the view—was yet to come.

  “I cannot let this go on!” Meredith yelled. It was a real yell. His voice was loud and ragged and high. It immediately reminded me of the way he exploded during the debate rehearsal back at the Omni—Newport News.

  Greene said: “Are you going to bow your head and pray? God cannot help you out of your words, out of the patterns of hate and discrimination and division that you have woven—”

  “You talk to me! You attempt to preach to me! The answer to your charges will come on Election Day, Governor. The American people are listening to you, and they have been listening to you. They will provide the answer, not me. I am their servant.” Then to Mike Howley he said: “What happens now, Mister Moderator? Do your job, please, or I really will exit myself from this attempt to thwart the democratic process.…”

  In the control room Chuck Hammond took a call from the president of CNS News. Then came calls from executives of all the other networks. The chairmen of the Democratic and Republican national comm
ittees phoned. So did the two co-chairmen and three of the seven other members of the debate commission. In each case, Hammond listened to their varied inquiries, messages, and requests and then said, No, I did not know this was going to happen. Yes, Howley asked me about the procedure and I did compare it to a thunderstorm. No, I had no idea why he asked. Yes, it is out of my hands. No one—not even the Republican chairman, John Singletary—demanded that Hammond go out there and stop it.

  Hammond received the most significant news from the outside in the calls from the network people. He passed it on to Brad Lilly and Jack Turpin: “The United States of America has come to a screeching halt out there. People are getting out of their cars to run into places and watch it on television. People by the millions are calling networks, radio stations, newspaper offices, to react. To shout, holler, threaten. It might beat Roots and the Super Bowl.”

  Turpin responded to the news in a tone used by the surviving families of mass murders and terrorist attacks: “You will pay for this, Hammond. All of you will pay for this. I mean pay. Do you hear me?”

  We of the press in the Virginia Room were also being informed about then of what was happening out in the country because of what was happening down the hall from us on that stage. Young people in blazers moved silently among us, distributing photocopies of stories about the flocking of the people of America to the closest television set.

  Then came the main event.

  Howley said to David Donald Meredith: “Mr. Meredith, do you know a woman named Jonell Jane Hampstead?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Meredith.

  The camera was right up close on his face. I could tell—anyone looking could tell—that here was a man in torment. Clearly, after the fact it is easy to conclude that for Meredith the moment had truly come. He had reached the point of ultimate conflict, of no return. It was decision time. And the presidency of the most powerful nation in the world hung in the decision.

  Do I, David Donald Meredith, bring this travesty to a screeching halt? But what does it really halt? If I walk off this stage, these terrible people will have quite a story about that, and they will also simply release their other story to their fellow travelers in the press anyhow. I can’t halt anything. They will run it without my comment, my response, my reaction. I will appear to have run from a fight. But if I refuse to play their game, will the people—the real people of America watching this spectacle now—side with me or with them? This is outrageous behavior these four people are engaging in. It goes against everything the press in my America supposedly stands for. If I survive this, I guarantee something will be done about the press in my country. I guarantee it!