Shaking Up the "Great Debates"

DON HEWITT

Think back for a moment. The only thing people remember about the Nixon-Kennedy debate was Nixon's makeup. The only thing they remember about Ford-Carter was Ford's gaffe about Poland. The only thing they remember about Reagan-Carter was Reagan saying, "There you go again." The only thing they remember about Dukakis-Bush is Dukakis being asked how he would react if his wife was raped. And if anyone remembers anything from the Quayle-Bentsen debate other than "You're no Jack Kennedy," I've yet to meet him.

So what's to be done? First, let's get the newsmen and women out of the debates. All they do is sit there preoccupied with asking themselves, What can I ask the candidate that will make me look smart but not partisan?

I propose further, that the networks and CNN provide two hours of air time for the two candidates who make the cut to debate in front of a joint session of Congress. Each candidate would being with him his own debating team. Suppose that last time around Bush had had Bob Dole on his team giving Dukakis a working over. Or that Dukakis had had Mario Cuomo on his team giving Bush a working over. Let it go two hours and during the second hour let the Democrats in Congress -- like Britain's back bench -- have a go at the Republican candidate and vice versa. No holds barred. A real Capital Hill Gang.

Don Hewitt is executive producer of 60 Minutes.

ROGER MORRIS

Reflecting on substance in presidential campaign debates reminds me of what Gandhi said when asked his views on Western civilization: "I think it would be a good idea." In that spirit, the following shorthand suggestions for journalists given the opportunity to question or moderate:

First, as a matter of approach, collaborate as a team with our colleagues on the panel, so that collectively you know as much as -- preferably more than -- either candidate. Include in your own briefing something of the origin of the genre in the television age -- the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates. No, they didn't ask then-Senator Kennedy about the woman he spent the afternoon with, or how much it cost his father to buy the West Virginia primary. With then-Vice President Nixon they never got around to Howard Hughes's secret contributions, or administration plots to kill Patrice Lumumba and invade Cuba. Still, those first four historic hours were remarkably substantive -- from civil rights to economic policy to premonitions of Vietnam. That was before either candidates or the media succumbed to sound-bite policies, and in many ways it's been downhill since. Read the transcripts in Sidney Kraus's The Great Debates for the sheer substance, depth, and spontaneity we should reclaim for the prototype.

Above all, panelists should ask journalism's old questions with bite befitting the occasion:

WHO briefs, handles, comes with the candidate? Tomorrow's thinkers or yesterday's hacks? We're electing not just a president but an entire administration, people whose character, views, interaction will define a presidency as much as its occupant. People are substance.

WHAT are the real issues, not just in this campaign, but for next year and beyond? (There's often a difference.) Never let candidates define the field. Their "policies" -- this year especially -- are a mix of gimmickry, irrelevance, and genuine innovation that you must unscramble. But beyond their own encapsulations and confections, what do they really know about a world and an America that have been coming apart?

WHERE do they get their campaign money, and what will contributors expect in return? Precisely where will all the money come from for the solutions they propose? Be ready here, as everywhere, to poke holes and press the point.

WHEN did they mean business -- six years ago, the last six months, today? Probe the records of both for the expedience that is the heart of politics. Pin each to his performance.

WHY should we believe that either candidate will bring us a presidency beyond politics-as-usual?

Finally, what is their deeper understanding of the essential connections between the crises we face? Of the connections between bigotry, violence, and inequity in our society? Or of morality -- as in the morality of a leadership that allows 11 million children to die around the world each year from preventable famine and disease, the morality of a politics that allows homelessness, of the U.S. health care system, even of the once-great victory in the Persian Gulf?

Roger Morris, who served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, is the author most recently of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.

ANN LEWIS

Too many people see too little connection between political activity and real life, between the questions they discuss around the workplace and the dialogue they hear in candidate debates.

Presidential debates would be more relevant if the addressed more real-life priorities. Meanwhile, here are a couple of suggestions for how journalists can improve them:

Stifle the gotcha! Gotcha questions are exercises in macho journalism, an attempt to catch the candidate at a disadvantage. Remember what smart people like psychologist Carol Gilligan (In A Different Voice) and Deborah Tanner (You Just Don't Understand) have told us about how women see connection and communication. A significant portion of the population tunes macho exercises out; if they want to see jostling and scoring, they'll watch their kids play soccer.

Forget The Front Page. Does your reporting have the subtext that campaigns are a game, that no politician is to be trusted, that taking issues seriously is for the naive or the "ideological"? I'm not asking for a torchlight parade, but isn't there some part of the process worth our respect? Won't some policies change, depending on who gets elected? When the campaign for president is presented as just one more insiders' game, a lot of overworked, underrepresented people choose not to play. And we all lose.

Ann Lewis, former political director for the Democratic National Committee, is a political consultant based in Boston.

TODD GITLIN

If journalists wish to take the citizenry seriously as potential voters rather than sports fans wowed by locker-room visits, they will have to pay more attention to political prowess -- the capacity to make change -- than to sexual prowess. If they are interested in the candidate's approach to women -- an entirely legitimate concern -- let them interview former staff members and ask them how the candidate treated them and others. Since the candidates' practical capacities matter, let us see what the they have and haven't accomplished -- and against what odds -- in their former lives. Let us have far less genuflection to the virtues of Issues over Images and more attention to what the candidates have done when they've laid a hand on Issues -- namely, how they have governed, proclaimed, changed.

Hence, this modest proposal to all the forms of media to prepare your constituencies for the debates: report once a week on the candidates' records. Let us know what the would-be presidents have said, proposed, and supported or opposed in the spheres of housing, welfare, health, foreign policy, and so on. If they have held office, let us know something not only of what they accomplished, but of the political and economic situation in which they had to operate. Regard character as a quality made manifest in the modus operandi of a lifetime. Give the voters the chance to sift through the evidence for smoking ideas.

Todd Gitlin, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Inside Prime Time, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, and the forthcoming novel The Murder of Albert Einstein.

JODY POWELL

I guess you could make the candidates appear in their underwear and everyone would take notice, but changing the format won't change the dynamic of the election process. The process is the way it is because 1) given the way it is covered it would be foolish to behave otherwise, and because 2) given the way voters respond to the coverage, it would be foolish to behave otherwise.

I can see why some candidates don't want to be in debates. The format puts pressure on them to be either rude and overbearing or invisible. Someone could reasonably not want to be either.

I also have sympathy for the candidates' staffs. Each candidate has strengths and weaknesses, so different formats and situations benefit one candidate as opposed to the other. Those who have cute ideas about reforming the process don't have the responsibility for the candidate that their staff does. The stakes are not small, and the candidate wants to be in a situation that highlights his skills.

Jody Powell is chairman of Powell Tate, a public relations firm in Washington, D.C. He was press secretary to Governor and President Jimmy Carter.

JAMES WEINSTEIN

The real issue in a democracy must be whether money interests will override the public interest. As long as TV commercials are the most powerful tools in the hands of candidates, the presidential debates will remain all but irrelevant.

As thedebates now stand, they offer no comprehensible discussion of underlying principles or ideas.

A real debate would require candidates to have substantial blocks of time -- thirty to sixty minutes -- to present and explain their ideas and programs. In turn, this would require an FCC regulation that made the airing of lengthy prime-time debates a condition of licenses for both radio and TV stations. Since we all own the airwaves, and since stations get to use them only at our sufferance, doing this would present no legal problem, only a political one.

James Weinstein is the editor of In These Times, a weekly newspaper based in Chicago.

JAMES DAVID BARBER

The debate should be prime time, three hours, with a moderator only, concentrating on one question, and following the classic debate procedure, with the debaters initiating their statements and then responding specifically to one another. After the debate, comments should be contributed by experts on government action, commenting not on how the debaters came across or seemed to feel, but on the substance of what they said. The news of the debates should be published narratively, bringing forth any developments in the candidates' thinking that night and quoting the experts as to the fundamental comparisons.

Why has that not already happened? Because, typically, one candidate wants to engage in such a debate and the other one does not. The way to make the real debate happen is to come forth with the announcement that the debate will happen, even if one candidate fails to show up. The candidate who does not want to do it should be informed that he is welcome to change his mind, but if he does not, a substitute will be recruited, say from the League of Women Voters, who will study what the candidate thinks and try to represent his points of view to the viewing audience. The result will be that the reluctant candidate will change his mind and volunteer to come on.

James David Barber is the author of The Presidential Character: Predicting Performances in the White House and The Pulse of Politics: Electing Presidents in the Media Age.

DAVID AARON

This could be the presidential election in which it is finally acknowledged that, while debates are crucial, specifics on the issues really cannot, and should not, determine the outcome. In the Democratic primaries, most of the candidates had detailed positions on health care reform, yet, despite a score of debates, voters couldn't understand how the differences would affect them.

Positions on the issues seem to serve mostly as grist for attacks on the candidates' character. Tsongas' ideas became evidence that he did not care about people on social security or the middle class. Clinton had so many proposals that he could be portrayed as a glib captive of the system. Jerry Brown is the exception that proved the rule: he mostly attacked and his one proposal, a flat tax, changed every time he was asked about it.

In the general election, issues will be further blurred. But it would be wrong to conclude that the presidential debates will be meaningless. To the contrary, they will be more important precisely because when all is said and done the personality of the candidate, not the issues, is paramount in the choice of president.

The presidential debates give the people their only chance for comparison shopping. No matter how well rehearsed a candidate is, his or her true character comes through.

David Aaron was a member of President Carter's National Security Council.

KEVIN PHILLIPS

Presidential debates are like streams; they don't exceed the level of the water -- political and philosophic talent -- that's flowing into them. Trying to reshape the twists and turns of the stream won't matter much until the water power increases.

That's historically been a function of crisis: you don't get Lincoln-Douglas debates until you get Lincolns and Douglases -- and the United States of 150 years ago spent two decades in a waiting process of Harrisons, Tylers, Polks, Taylors, Fillmores, Pierces, and Buchanans. The last two decades have also been underwhelming, but the restructuring of debates will be only a small catalyst for change that must really come from the larger U.S. political culture.

Kevin Phillips, publisher of The American Political Report, is the author most recently of The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath.

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