Chapter 1: Good Evenings
Good evening. The television and radio stations of the United States and their affiliated stations are proud to provide facilities for a discussion of issues in the current political campaign by the two major candidates for the presidency. The candidates need no introduction. The Republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, and the Democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy.”
That was how the moderator, Howard K. Smith of CBS, opened the first televised presidential debate from the studios of WBBM- TV, Chicago, on September 26, 1960.
“Good evening from the Ford Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. I’m Jim Lehrer of The NewsHour on PBS, and I welcome you to the first of the 2008 presidential debates between the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.”
That was how I began the first McCain- Obama debate on September 26, 2008—nearly fifty years later.
There have been thirty- five nationally televised presidential and vice presidential debates, counting that first in 1960 and the last four in 2008.
All the moderators have been broadcast journalists except one—Chicago Sun- Times editor James Hoge in 1976. There have been several repeaters: Howard K. Smith of CBS and ABC, Edwin Newman of NBC, Barbara Walters of ABC, Bernard Shaw of CNN, Bob Schieffer of CBS, my PBS colleague Gwen Ifill, and I account for twenty- one of the thirty- five moderating
assignments.
Our “Good evenings” have remained roughly the same— except for the top billing going to the geography.
“Good evening from the Wait Chapel at Wake Forest University in Winston- Salem, North Carolina.”
“Good evening from the Bushnell Theater in Hartford, Connecticut.”
“Good evening from the University of Miami Convocation Center in Coral Gables, Florida.”
The first of my greetings was for a 1988 debate between Vice President George H. W. Bush and Governor Michael Dukakis in Winston- Salem.
That was when I got my introduction to the terrors and triumphs of moderating presidential debates, an experience I have sometimes compared to walking down the blade of a knife.
At Winston- Salem, it actually started before the debate itself.
I was closeted behind a closely guarded conference room door with my three debate colleagues—Peter Jennings of ABC, Annie Groer of the Orlando Sentinel, and John Mashek of The Atlanta Constitution—to discuss our questions for Bush and Dukakis. This was before the coming of the single- moderator format; the standard arrangement was a moderator plus panelists.
Jennings, anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, had an act of provocation on his mind.
He urged the four of us to forget the rules that had been agreed upon between the candidates and the Commission on Presidential Debates. We should publicly—in front of the whole
world—invite Bush and Dukakis to take on each other directly with no time limits on questions, answers, or anything else.
I said we couldn’t do that. We had given our word to follow the rules of the debate. Not to do so, I insisted in my most righteous tone, would be dishonorable, among other things.
Annie Groer and John Mashek agreed. Jennings quickly went along, with grace and professionalism.
Also in Winston- Salem, my wife, Kate, helped with some much needed pre- debate personal perspective that remains with me to this day.
In the hotel, as we were leaving for the debate, I came down with a bad case of nerves. I whined to Kate about how terrible the pressure was on me.
She said, quite calmly, “If it’s bad for you, think what it must be like for those two candidates—one bad move and they lose the presidency of the United States.”
True.
But I was still left with the pre- debate anxieties that have been with me in every one of the ten presidential and vice presidential debates I have moderated since. I soon learned that dealing with nerves is the key to being able to function effectively as a moderator. My guess is that there are surgeons, classroom teachers, and short- order cooks among the huge crowds of other people who know exactly what I’m talking about. Possibilities of pleasure and satisfaction, horror and failure, await everyone who performs.
The incredibly high stakes are what magnify it all in presidential debates. Candidates and their attendants have only one overriding purpose—to win the election to be the most powerful
person in the world. But others, including most in the serious press and political science worlds, see debates as decisive opportunities to inform and educate the voters about whom to
grant such power.
The critical space between those two very different purposes is the battleground on which all combat occurs.
"Excerpted from TENSION CITY by Jim Lehrer. Copyright 2011 by Jim Lehrer. Excerpted by permission of the Random House Publishing Group. All rights reserved."