The Robert MacNeil Report; Presidential Debates

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. The Socialist Workers Party said today it was joining efforts by other Presidential candidates to challenge the legality of television debates between President Ford and Jimmy Carter. The first of three TV debates, agreed by the two major parties on Wednesday, is due on September 23. As in 1960, when Kennedy debated Nixon, the Presidential debates are likely to be the centerpiece of this election campaign, and other candidates want in or want equal time. Independent Candidate Eugene McCarthy, and American Independence Party Candidate Lester Maddox have been in touch through attorneys to explore a legal protest over their expulsion. Today the New York Post reports that the Social Workers Party was adding its voice to the protest. Carter and Ford have agreed to debate under the auspices of the League of Women Voters. Because such an event would not originate as a television program, it would be exempt from the provision of the Federal Communications Act requiring that political candidates for the same office be given equal time in television broadcasts.

Tonight we examine the issues behind the latest great debate: Is the format unfair to minority candidates? Why has Gerry Ford, an incumbent President, agreed to debate Jimmy Carter? How could the debates affect the outcome of the election? Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, there`s nothing new about politicians debating one another, of course. Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas in their 1858 race for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. Lincoln was generally credited with having won the debates, but he lost the election. `Those kind of face to face confrontations on the stump before live audiences in cornfields and parks and town squares have been going on for years. But as you say, it wasn`t until 1960 and the four Kennedy-Nixon debates on national television that they became the big thing they have become now. Television, of course, became the difference. And, many analysts say they may have even meant the difference in the outcome of the particular election. Kennedy won the debate and the election. They were also supposed to have ushered in a new era of debating on national television. But they didn`t. There hasn`t been another Presidential debate since . . . until now. As a sort of backdrop for our discussion tonight of proposed Ford-Carter debates, let`s take a brief look at some of the action from those 1960 events. The segment is from the beginning of the first debate.

Videotape: Kennedy-Nixon Debate #1

RICHARD NIXON: Through the years; I have sat in the National Security Council; I have been in the Cabinet; I have met with the Legislative leaders; I have met with the President when he made the great decisions with regard to Lebanon, Quemoy Matsu, other matters. The President has asked for my advice.

I have given it. Sometimes my advice has been taken; sometimes it has not. As far as whether experience counts, and whether that is experience that counts, that isn`t for me to say. I can only say that my experience is there for the people to consider. Senator Kennedy`s is there for the people to consider.

JOHN F. KENNEDY: I`ll just say that the question is of experience, and the question also is what our judgment is of the future, and what our goals are for the United States, and what ability we have to implement those goals. Abraham Lincoln came to the Presidency in 1860 after a rather little-known session in the House of Representatives and after being defeated for the Senate in `58 and was a distinguished President. There is no certain road to the Presidency. There are no guarantees that if you take one road or another that you will be a successful President.

MacNEIL: Edwin Diamond is a senior lecturer in Political Science at MIT and a contributor to several publications. At MIT he heads a study group this year, watching how the news media cover this election.

First of all, Mr. Diamond, what reflections do you have watching that taste of the 1960 debates?

EDWIN DIAMOND: Nixon obviously looked haggard, and his lazy shave . . . the make-up didn`t cover his beard too much. He didn`t look too good. He referred to the great decisions he participated in, Quemoy-Matsu; as someone said, they should be appointed to the Fish and Game Commission. Kennedy: those who see Kennedy through less dazzled eyes, and those of us who lived through Camelot, see the bags under his eyes too. My comments go to the point that the kind of mythology that built up at the time, when we all said, for example, that Kennedy won the debates, as we look at them again, and as social scientists and political scientists have gone back and looked at the results again, it isn`t quite clear that they were great debates; that they were even debates; and that Kennedy won them.

MacNEIL: But, clearly, they had some impact on the election at the time; if not a decisive impact, at least a lot of people thought that they had an affect on the election.

DIAMOND: Robin, one would assume because Ford and Carter, both with such alacrity decided to debate this time, there must be some great impact involved there. One of the studies that I looked at showed that Kennedy was gaining in the polls anyway. And it is true that 25 percent of the people who watched the debates felt more favorably disposed to Kennedy, after watching the debates.

MacNEIL: Than those who merely listened to him on the radio?

DIAMOND: Right. But the same polls also showed that 25 percent of non- viewers were more favorably disposed toward Kennedy, getting news from other sources.

MacNEIL: Yes. There was one particular point, wasn`t there, that ten Southern Governors who had been rather cool about Kennedy up to that time, Southern Democratic Governors, then got an image of Kennedy as a more viable candidate vis-a-vis Nixon than they had thought and agreed to work harder for the ticket.

DIAMOND: I think that`s a very important point, because there is not one audience out there for television for Kennedy Nixon or for Ford-Carter, but several audiences. One is the elite audience of politicians, and in `60 at least, contributors; more money did come in to Kennedy headquarters and more enthusiasm was generated by workers after the debates.

MacNEIL: Okay. Taking the situation now, what relevance do you think could the Kennedy-Nixon debates precedent have on the present circumstances?

DIAMOND: I argue that they weren`t great debates, and they weren`t debates because there wasn`t a true, face-to-face confrontation in which each person could answer the other. There were shortcomings to Kennedy-Nixon, and I am encouraged to see that in the Ford-Carter negotiations, apparently some of these shortfalls are taken into consideration. One: the first debate at least, will be 90 minutes long rather than 60, which does permit a certain exploration of issues. Two: there will still be this panel of interrogators, press probably, which lets the press play the heavy and ask the question. But, in the longer format, I think there w4.ll be a chance for Carter to say something; perhaps and then Ford to rebut him, and then for Carter to rebut Ford. So that, I think, is a plus over 1960,-too. So I think we have learned from 1960.

MacNEIL: Since 1960 it`s become more common in political campaigns for people to dodge each other in debates than actually to have debates. You`ve talked about the alacrity of both these candidates. What are the motives, do you think, in Carter debating, and the motives of Ford debating?

DIAMOND: This has to be speculative, but obviously, you look at the polls and Ford is behind in the polls. The Presidential advantage, which is one of the reasons Presidents don`t, the incumbency advantage, doesn`t seen to be operating, at least in the first polls. So Ford has a reason to go in to catch up in the polls. He has that vast apparatus of government to feed him briefing papers, and presumably he feels he will look good and tough and smart, and on top of things. Carter, on the other hand, who is supposed to be ahead in the polls - some one said of him that he may be a mile wide but an inch deep - he may be concerned about his soft vote. People are leaning toward him, and he may feel that he needs the debates to solidify and deepen that support.

MacNEIL: Okay. we`ll come back to these questions in a moment. Let`s look now at another aspect of the debates. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: As Robin has said, one man who is particularly displeased about the Carter-Ford debates is Eugene McCarthy, the former U.S. Senator, and candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1963, who is running for President this year as an independent. Senator, are you going to try and stop the Carter-Ford debates?

Sen. EUGENE McCARTHY: I`m not displeased about those two debates; I`m displeased about the idea of the debates. I don`t think they really have much bearing, or should have much bearing on the selection of Presidents. I think a debate between prospective Senators is important for two reasons. One: people generally don`t know where Senators stand. If the country does not know where Carter and Nixon stand on the issues by November ...

LEHRER: Ford.

McCARTHY: Ford, right. Ford and Carter, by election day, it means the media has failed. We don`t pick Presidents as debators. This is not their function. We pick Senators who do have to debate on the Senate floor, so in terms of knowing what they stand for, and testing this particular skill, there is no good reason to have Presidential debates of the two parties. Now, if they were to bring others in so that we could tell the country what we stand for, that`s the issue; it isn`t debate. People don`t even know I`m running, a lot of them. They don`t know what I stand for. It would not be the question of debate so much as a chance to say, "This is what I am for, and you can make your own comparisons between me and Ford, or between me and Carter." The other point of objection is that we think it will be a distraction, it`ll be another show; it`ll be like the conventions which didn`t tell anybody very much. So here will be, every two weeks or whatever it will be, there will be all this discussion on these two candidates, to the exclusion of other points of view. And I think in addition we have a technical point which we do believe, that the two parties, having taken twenty million dollars, should not be given what we think is very close to an illegal contribution of free television time bar the major networks.

LEHRER: All right. What are you going to do?

McCARTHY: We and others are going to check into the question of the illegality of the networks coverage. The particular point, as I see it, the technical, legal one, is the networks copyright their news coverage. Well, once they copyright, in effect they`re claiming it as theirs, and it has a value that they control. We think that technically it is a violation of the limitations.

LEHRER: I don`t believe that I follow that. If the League of Women Voters stage a debate in a hall and the networks chose to cover it, which is the way this thing has. . ..

McCARTHY: I`m surprised that the League let themselves be used that way for just those two parties. The League was not bound by equal time. The League could have said, "We`re going to include a third one just for fun, to prove how open we are." They didn`t do it. And it was rather obvious whether they conspired or not, that the networks were making offers and that the League was proposing. Maybe the twain never met, but we know what happened. The networks at the same time were making what I consider to be almost a public bribe offer to the Republicans and Democrats saying, "If you will suspend equal time, we will give you Republicans and Democrats free time." The networks didn`t come in and say, "we want you to trust us as a free press media and suspend equal time, and let us then decide whether we will give you time, or the Republicans, time , or McCarthy time, or anyone else." They didn`t do it. It was a closed shop operation all the way. The point at which we will really be expected to bring legal action . . .

LEHRER : You do expect to bring legal action?

McCARTHY: On the fairness doctrine which doesn`t deal with equal time, but rather whether it`s . . .

LEHRER: How serious is this going to be on your part; are you determined to stop these debates if they do not include . . .

McCARTHY: I don`t think we`d stop the debates. I would like to stop the debates principally because I think they have little bearing on the election. They will distract people from what they ought to be attending to, but they won`t help.

LEHRER: But that`s not a legal matter.

McCARTHY: It may be a legal matter with reference to the exceeding of the legal limitation on expenditures by the major parties. But that`s a technical question. My point is that what we want is under the fairness doctrine, to have a chance to talk to the country. That`s what it`s all about. I don`t care whether I`m on with Ford or Cater. I mean, I`d be glad to be on at the same time; they might have a larger crowd. But to have time to talk to the country to say, "This is what I stand for."

LEHRER: Okay. So, in other words, if you challenge under the fairness doctrine through whatever legal means, and if the networks as a result of that, or an FCC decision, or a court decision says, "Okay. You don`t have to allow McCarthy to be in the debates, but you do have to give him so much air time," then you`ll be all right. is that right?

McCARTHY: I think we already have a case against them because of all the time they gave then at the conventions. Under the Fairness doctrine. But this is just adding to it. This is in a way, more offensive, because it`s so particularized. We think we have a case under the fairness doctrine now, and we think that case will be so clear.

LEHRER: And you`re going to pursue it. There`s no question about that, right?

McCARTHY: As I said the other day, we`re not asking for equal time. I think the ratio ought to be roughly three, to two, to one: Carter should have three hours to explain each of his three positions on every issue; Ford needs two hours to explain one position; and I could take care of my case in one hour.

LEHRER : Senator, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: I`d like to ask Processor Diamond who has been making a name for himself as a media critic recently, just on this point, as you are covering the performance of the media, television and the newspapers and so on, as you`re covering this election, it must have occurred to you to look at how they are treating the minority or independent parties and candidates. What do you think of Senator McCarthy`s position; in your role as a detached observer of this sort of thing, has he got a point there that this is loading the dice even further in favor of the two major parties?

DIAMOND: He`s only worried about who is going to be President. The networks have to worry about their prime time schedule. We can`t have the prime time cluttered up with a free clash of ideas. The Senator knows that. I should answer seriously. I think there ought to be a way that the minority candidates can be heard. I liked his 3-2-1 ratio. I think that that may be a little unfair. But there ought to be some way that the minority parties can be heard, and maybe the League should do a fourth debate.

MacNEIL: Okay. Let`s go back to Senator McCarthy. How would you resolve this yourself? I Mean, you are an independent candidate. You are not a party at the moment as I understand it.

Some people do represent political parties, but I`ve seen a count recently that there are as many as 109 candidates for the Presidency this year if you include all those who have traditionally been called nuisance candidates. Now, how would one discriminate? Other countries have formulae whereby ;you can measure minority or third parties by their parliamentary vote in the preceding election, and give them time accordingly. How could you do it?

McCARTHY: There`s no trouble if you are going to use the cover of the League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voters has already made a decision. They might have said when they initiated this, I think Ford was showing 26 percent in the polls, they could have said, "lie`s not high enough. No one ought to hear him because only, 26 percent are likely to vote for him anyway. So why should we listen to him. We`re just going to put Jimmy Carter on and let him talk to the country so the country will know what they are going to get when he is elected. " Now, once the League said two, they could say three. They`re not bound by equal time. They wouldn`t have to include the Socialists and the Vegetarians; they- could include me; they could include, I think the American Party, at least when Wallace was its spokesman.

MacNEIL :But how would you feel, Senator, if they said, "We have to include the Socialist Workers and the Communists and the Vegetarians, but we don`t have to include Senator MacCarthy?

McCARTHY: I don`t think they`d have to include the Vegetarians. I think people know what the Vegetarian position is. If they know anything about Socialist Workers, they know the difference between them and the American Labor Party; they`re not presenting a complicated position. They don`t have to put on the Prohibitionists. I say the League can make a decision: one is whether or not what I have to say- is to be heard; the other is the quantitative measure. If the last poll we have - not our poll but the public poll - shows me with 13 percent, it shows me with about half as many percentage points as Ford had about the time that the League, as I understand, began to think about doing it. So, on the quantitative basis, if you say percentage points; on the other, does he say something that ought to be heard that has not been heard before? This is the burden on the League. I would like to see the networks free of equal time. I`ve been against the equal time provision since it was enacted. Say, "Look, we`ll just set you free, and you can be a responsible media." If they then said, "We`re being responsible; we`re only going to put Republicans and Democrats on," we`d be no worse off. At least they wouldn`t have the excuse that they now use, the protection, the cover of equal time.

MacNEIL: Can we take another aspect of this? You, Senator, said that you felt they didn`t serve a great purpose in Presidential debates; the important thing there was to get in front of the public the positions of the candidates, and as you claimed, the major party candidates` positions were known. Isn`t there another aspect? A lot of people, including academics, have been preoccupied for the last few years with the revelation of the character of the Presidential candidates. Isn`t there a function of television of giving the audience the opportunity, at least .intuitively, to appreciate the character of the two men in juxtaposition?

McCARTHY: I think it`s a very inadequate contest. It could be that the person has a bad night or a bad shave. I always thought that the Chicago count of Mayor Daly had much bearing on the outcome of the `60 election than the television show did. "Then you have a close election, everyone says this is what did it, and nobody quite knows what did do it. in my opinion, you should not have a Presidential election really hinge on the limited experience of the very short debate. And usually when the elections are close, that` s when something of that kind might make the difference. If there was a great spread between the candidates, I don`t think the debate makes much difference. We could have a trail by ordeal; we could run all sots of psychological tests. `You wouldn`t have to have the inaccurate test of a debate. You could subject him to stress. We could put them through psychological experiments before the public; find out how they act under these strains. Let them play baseball.

DIAMOND: You`re a good baseball player; that`s why you`re suggesting that.

McCARTHY: I`d challenge them in any area. We`d just have six or seven categories and we`d see who withstands the ordeal.

DIAMOND: Senator, I think a word should be said, of all things, by the critic of television, in defense of television. When you have a country this size, the day, that each candidate can go out and press the flesh of each voter, and the day that the citizen can take the personal measure of the candidate is over, and if it`s a choice, in my mind, between seeing the candidate on television in a somewhat live, somewhat unrehearsed, somewhat spontaneous format, I would prefer that to not seeing him at all. In terms of a citizen making a decision.

McCARTHY: Of course. I say they are seeing them, you know. This is not the experience though. They`ll have seen Jimmy Carter, and they`ll have seen Gerry Ford, and they`ll have heard them. And to reduce it to a showdown in three, one and a half hour debates, it seems to me that all the other exposure is only preparatory. And if it is, then any Independent or third party, or any other position is discriminated against even more, because they don`t get even a preliminary exposure to say nothing of the debate possibility.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Let me pursue that just a moment. Teddy White said in The Making of the President: 1960, Senator, and let me quote. He was talking about the debates, and he said. "What they did best was to give the voters of a great democracy a living portrait of two men under stress "-to use your word and Teddy White`s word - "and let the voters decide by instinct and emotion which style and pattern of behavior under stress they preferred in their leader.

McCARTHY: Yes, but that`s not the kind of stress that a President has to act under, so it`s misleading in that respect. That was probably only the one condition of stress which a President would probably, never face in office. Nobody debates the President in office. It would be better to leave hire out there all alone for a half hour and see what happened to him.

LEHRE : So you think they have no value at all.

McCARTHY: Very little. I think it`s an inadequate test, but if we say, "Look, we`re going to put you on now, for an hour with nobody there; no notes, Mr. President. Just talk now with no props around and no consultants. You just talk to us for an hour. We grant to find out what`s in you." I would venture that some of our candidates couldn`t go the route. They`d begin to repeat themselves after about 30 minutes, and call for help.

LEHRER : Ed Diamond, hose do you feel about Teddy White`s assessment?

DIAMOND: I think, in the light of hind sight, a little too much violin music in there for me. I think one factor we have not introduced, Senator, is the audience out there. The audience in 1960, I suspect, may have been a little dazzled, not only by candle light, but also by the technological wizardry of television. I think the audience today is a lot more sophisticated, and if Jim and Robin, and other people, you and I included, are worried about the make-up man`s art, or the media advisor`s are really being on display here, I think the audience, or a good part of it, knows how to see through that. And that`s another thing that can happen too. What`s going on in the mind of the audience as it Watches?

McCARTHY: I think that`s true. What I`m saying is in contrast with 1960 when Kennedy and Nixon were really not that well known on television, and the media was not what it is; it was still black and white, which makes a big difference. And it did make a -difference then. This is a different time. The only thing I`m saying is that to bring it down to a debate and say, "This is the critical point at which we ought to make our decision, because we want to see Presidents or potential Presidents under the stress of debate which is a stress which they`ll probably never again experience if they get elected, and we have to see them in this condition even though we`ve been looking at them for six or eight months, every day practically," suggests to me that it`s being set up more as a distraction than as something that would help the country to make the kind of judgment it ought to make, either about these two candidates, or about the whole question about what the country ought to be concerned about.

LEHRER: Both of you have said that through news media that`s already available, television coverage that`s already available, the country is already going to know quite a bit about Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, and Eugene McCarthy and the other candidates for President, but let`s assume for a moment that there is a two man debate between Ford and Carter. From each one of your own, special perspectives, how do you think they are going to do?

McCARTHY: I`ve never seen Carter perform in the Congressional setting. I don`t know if Carter does debate. Since governors don`t debate very much, he may have debated in his campaign. I don`t really mind a debate with some one running for governor, some one running for the Senate or the House, because it`s one way people get to know where they stand. You don`t get any publicity if you are running for the House or the Senate generally sneaking. I would think that Ford, who has handled legislation on the floor of the House over many years, and it`s a debators situation, and within the limited range of his interests which were principally Defense appropriations, that he will do a good job.

LEHRER: How do you feel about it, Ed?

DIAMOND: First of all I`m fighting a losing battle here, but it is not a debate. I mean these people will not be arguing with each other.

LEHRER: Okay.

DIAMOND: It`s a meet the press format which does allow that stilted . . .

MacNEIL: Which the candidates insisted upon.

DIAMOND: Insisted upon. Which means they can prepackage and pint in the quick freeze, or the frozen answer and thought immediately when they get the question they want to hear.

McCARTHY: That`s right, Ed. That`s really what the House debate is like too. You make your case, and the other side makes its case, and there is a kind of a resolution, so I think Ford has had experience with the technique that`s called a debate in this instance.

DIAMOND: By the way, you asked my opinion. I gather that the medium managers who are rehearsing these two tigers are deciding which approach to take. Should President Ford be genial, old Gerry, or should he come on as Mr. President? Should Jimmy Carter be Mr. Populus in his blue jeans, or should he try to look Presidential; So that doesn`t give us a lot of encouragement. I wanted to ask the Senator one question. Do you think, even if the League of Women Voters invited you, and the networks said they`d be there with the cameras that Mr. Ford and Mr. Carter would sit still to have you there?

McCARTHY: It would be interesting to find out how much interested they are in having a challenge from the outside. I wish the League had tried it, or at least had suggested it in negotiation. I have a theory that after the first 90 minutes people are going to be pretty tired of both of them. I debated Goldwater once for 90 minutes, and he and I were tired of each other.

DIAMOND: Are you suggesting the show will need a replacement?

McCARTHY: I think they may need a replacement. People will be relieved to see the Vice Presidential candidates. They probably ought to have the wives debate one night, and bring in the children and the dogs to see what the total picture looks like.

LEHRER: Robin?

MacNEIL: Okay. Thank you all very much. We`ll be back on Monday night when incidentally, the title of this program is going to change. From Monday night on, this is going to be known as the MacNeil-Lehrer Report. And that`s because that fellow in Washington, not the Senator but the other one, has been doing such a good job. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.