Inside the Presidential Debates – Their Improbable Past and Promising Future - Hardcover

Minow, Newton N; Lamay, Craig L

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226530418 ISBN 13: 9780226530413

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2008

Synopsis

Newton N. Minow's long engagement with the world of television began nearly fifty years ago when President Kennedy appointed him chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. As its head, Minow would famously dub TV a "vast wasteland," thus inaugurating a career dedicated to reforming television to better serve the public interest. Since then, he has been chairman of PBS and on the board of CBS and other companies, but his most lasting contribution remains his leadership on televised presidential debates.Written with longtime collaborator Craig L. LaMay, this fascinating history offers readers for the first time a genuinely inside look into the origins of the presidential debates and the many battles - both legal and personal - that have determined who has been allowed to debate and under what circumstances. The authors do not dismiss the criticism of the presidential debates in recent years but do come down solidly in favor of them, arguing that they are one of the great accomplishments of modern American electoral politics.Looking to the challenges posed by third-party candidates and the emergence of new media such as YouTube, Minow and LaMay ultimately make recommendations for the future, calling for the debates to become less formal, with candidates allowed to question each other and citizens allowed to question candidates directly. They also explore the many ways in which the Internet might serve to broaden the debates' appeal and informative power. Whether it's Clinton vs. Giuliani or McCain vs. Obama and a third candidate, "Inside the Presidential Debates" will be welcomed in 2008 by anyone interested in where this crucial part of our democracy is headed - and how it got there.

About this title

About the Author

Newton N. Minow is senior counsel of Sidley Austin LLP, where he has practiced law since 1965, and is the Walter Annenberg Professor Emeritus of communications and law at Northwestern University. Craig L. LaMay is associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. They are the coauthors of Abandoned in the Wasteland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Inside the Presidential Debates

THEIR IMPROBABLE PAST AND PROMISING FUTUREBy Newton N. Minow Craig L. LaMay

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2008 Newton N. Minow and Craig L. LaMay
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-53041-3

Contents

FOREWORD by Vartan Gregorian...........................................................................................ixACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................................xvINTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................11 How Adlai Stevenson Put John F. Kennedy in the White House...........................................................172 Presidential Debates and "Equal Opportunity".........................................................................293 "If You're Thirty-two Points Behind, What Else Are You Going to Do?".................................................434 The Commission on Presidential Debates and Its Critics...............................................................615 The Dilemma: Who Debates?............................................................................................816 How to Improve the Presidential Debates..............................................................................101AppendixesA Memorandum of Understanding between the Bush and Kerry Campaigns, 2004...............................................123B Negotiated Agreements between the League of Women Voters and the Ford and Carter Campaigns, 1976.....................137C Section 312 of the Communications Act: "Reasonable Access" for Candidates for Federal Office.........................139D Challenges to the CPD under Federal Election and Tax Law.............................................................141E Broadcast Debates and the First Amendment............................................................................145F The Televised Presidential Debates, 1960-2004........................................................................153NOTES..................................................................................................................165INDEX..................................................................................................................203

Chapter One

How Adlai Stevenson Put John F. Kennedy in the White House

What I am proposing now is ... the establishment of what I hope will become a national institution, a great debate for the Presidency. ADLAI E. STEVENSON, March 1960

Let's begin by addressing the questions posed by Admiral James Stockdale, the distinguished and straightforward U.S. Navy veteran who appeared in the 1992 vice presidential debate representing Ross Perot's Reform Party: "Who am I? And why am I here?"

My involvement with presidential debates began with heart attacks that in 1955 struck two of the most powerful men in the country, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson. At the time I was a young law partner of former Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson, and in the fall of that year I was with Stevenson when he gave a speech at the University of Texas. The governor and I were invited to spend that night at Johnson's Stonewall, Texas, ranch, where LBJ was recovering from his illness. After Adlai's speech in Austin, we drove to the ranch with Texas congressman Sam Rayburn, the powerful speaker of the House. We arrived in Stonewall late at night, but LBJ was waiting up for us (much to the dismay of his wife Lady Bird, as his doctors had told him to get more rest). Johnson announced that it would be unseemly to have the top three Democrats in the country appear to be conspiring to take over the government while President Eisenhower was recovering from his own heart attack, so we would be out all the next day, meeting in the open where the press could see us.

Afterward Adlai and I flew back to Chicago, and in the course of the plane ride Adlai said, "Lyndon and Sam say that if I want the nomination next year, I will have to fight for it in the primaries. What do you think?"

I said, "They're right. If President Eisenhower does not run for reelection, the Democratic nomination will be very appealing. There will be a lot of candidates who want it. On the other hand, if President Eisenhower does run again, he's going to be reelected and you should forget about it. But if you want the nomination, you're going to have to campaign for it."

Adlai said, "I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to run around to shopping centers shaking hands like I'm running for sheriff."

Eventually, of course, President Eisenhower did decide to run again in 1956, and Adlai did enter the primaries, did run around shaking hands at shopping centers, and won his party's nomination. The two electoral contests between Eisenhower and Stevenson were a turning point in presidential campaigns. Both traveled the country meeting voters, but the Republicans made extensive use of television, too. The last true whistle-stop campaign in American presidential politics had occurred in 1948, with President Truman's train swing across the nation. That year there were only twenty-nine television stations operating in the United States, broadcasting to only about 1 million television sets, less than 9 percent of the nation's homes. Two years later there were 108 stations on the air around the country broadcasting to 10 million sets. By 1952 television penetration had jumped to nearly 40 percent of American homes, and that year both the Republican and Democratic presidential nominating conventions were broadcast to national audiences for the first time. Both parties made use of television advertisements, each with different objectives. General Eisenhower was already widely popular, so his campaign needed only to shore up support in key areas of the country. It hired six different advertising firms to produce more than a dozen twenty- and sixty-second commercials featuring the general answering recorded questions read by nonprofessional performers. The Democrats' advertising strategy was to make Adlai into more of a national figure, and it bought five-minute segments at the end of popular entertainment programs to give their candidate exposure. The Republicans eventually did the same.

As the presidential campaign of that year wore on, it seemed to me that the combination of countrywide barnstorming and spot television advertising was physically exhausting for the candidates and made very little sense as a way to explain their views on important issues to the voters. I wrote a memo to Adlai proposing an alternative. Modern technology would enable voters to have a much better understanding of the candidates through radio and television, I argued, and because President Eisenhower's health was still not fully restored, Adlai should propose a series of televised nationwide joint discussions instead of traveling across the country shaking hands at rallies. Stevenson's advisers debated the idea, and though some of them agreed with me, they eventually rejected it. A few thought the idea would be perceived as a gimmick. Others thought Adlai would not do well in such a face-to-face debate. My guess is Eisenhower would have rejected the idea, too.

Then, very near the end of the campaign, a major international crisis erupted. On October 31, war broke out between Egypt and an alliance of Israel, France, and Britain over control of the Suez Canal, which Egyptian president Gamal Nassar had moved to nationalize. The Soviets threatened to intervene on the side of Egypt, thus raising the specter of a wider war that would involve the United States. The United States resolved the crisis by compelling the British and French to withdraw, thus for the first time asserting its power in the Middle East. But in what was clearly a moment of international danger, President Eisenhower asked for and received from the television and radio networks fifteen minutes of prime time to talk to the country about the war.

Jim Finnegan, an old-time professional politician from Pennsylvania whom I was assisting on the Stevenson campaign, said to me, "Our candidate should have an opportunity to answer President Eisenhower's views on Suez, and you're now in charge of getting us time on radio and television to do that."

This was my first specific exposure to issues involving political campaigns and broadcast regulation. Citing Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act, we asked the networks for equal time. In those days, the law made no distinction between news programs and other kinds of televised appearances, so we thought we had a good case. But the networks turned us down on the ground that President Eisenhower was speaking not as a candidate but in his capacity as the president. Therefore, the networks said, they were under no legal obligation to offer Stevenson equal time in which to respond. Naturally, we did not see how the two functions of president and candidate could be separated, so with the help of the Democratic National Committee we went to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and asked the agency to order the networks to provide the time. The FCC, as it turned out, was badly split on the issue and could not make up its mind how to resolve it. When it did, it ruled against us by limiting its decision to the particular controversy before it: "We do not believe that when Congress enacted Section 315 it intended to grant equal time to all presidential candidates when the President uses air time in reporting to the nation on an international crisis."

Meanwhile the clock was ticking. The election was only a day or two away. Finally, the Mutual Broadcasting System decided to give Stevenson time, which we promptly accepted. When that happened, all the networks gave him time, and Stevenson went on the air and gave his views about the Suez crisis.

Though the Republicans won the election, they were very upset by the networks' decision to grant us time. Remarkably, they then asked the FCC to order the networks to give the president time to answer Stevenson, even after the election. Nothing came of it.

In 1959 Adlai asked me to help him with an article about television and politics for This Week magazine, a Sunday supplement that appeared in newspapers throughout the country. The first drafts were done by the respected political writer John Bartlow Martin, and subsequently both Adlai and I worked on the piece. In the article, Adlai called for a series of half-hour blocks of broadcast time, on television and radio, to be made available without charge to the major party candidates and to the candidate of any other party that had won 20 percent or more of the popular vote in the previous election or "could demonstrate substantial national support." The proposal was that during the final eight weeks of the campaign the candidates should give their views on the issues in a national forum, and that would become the centerpiece of the campaign.

That article changed history. It attracted the attention of leaders in the Senate, among them Senator Michael Monroney (Oklahoma) of the Commerce Committee, a onetime newspaper reporter and political columnist who had long been concerned about the rising costs of purchasing television time for political campaigns. In 1960, when Congress first explored how the still-new technology of television might be used to enhance the electoral process, its focus was not on debates but on a different idea entirely. That idea, from Stevenson's article, was to provide broadcast airtime to the candidates to present themselves and their ideas to the public in their own way.

Stevenson began the article by noting what were, even then, the prohibitive costs of "political television." As a remedy for this problem, he wrote, "I would like to propose that we transform our circus-atmosphere presidential campaign into a great debate conducted in full view of all the people.... Imagine a debate now, or at least a discussion on the great issues of our time with the whole country watching. How we decide [those issues] may fix our children's future, and mankind's. And we can decide them not after canned rhetoric and TV spectaculars but only after intelligent discussion, which the candidates and the networks can provide."

Despite the title ("Adlai Stevenson's Plan for a Great Debate"), and Stevenson's description of a "great debate," the governor did not in fact propose debates, events with which he was both personally familiar and famously skilled. Only a few years before, in the 1956 Florida Democratic primary, Stevenson had debated Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver in a nationally televised ABC broadcast moderated by Quincy Howe of ABC News; in 1952, Republican and Democratic aspirants for their respective parties' presidential nominations-or in some cases their appointed representatives-had answered two questions each at the national convention of the League of Women Voters. To the extent that that forum constituted a debate, it was the first nationally televised political debate in the nation's history, and two months later Michigan senator Blair Moody proposed that the eventual nominees of the two parties meet in a nationally televised debate in the weeks before the November election. Both NBC and CBS agreed to broadcast such a meeting, but neither of the nominees-Stevenson and Eisenhower-accepted the networks' offer.

The idea of a broadcast debate was not new: the first nationally broadcast political debate was on radio on May 17, 1948, between Republicans Harold Stassen of Minnesota and Thomas Dewey of New York. The sponsor of the Stassen-Dewey debate was a small ABC station in Portland, Oregon, whose program director seized on the idea of a debate before the state's primary election. In a foretelling of what would later become one of the biggest obstacles to broadcast debates, the two candidates negotiated the terms of their encounter almost to the last day before going on the air. Governor Stassen insisted on audience participation and expected that "there will be applause, ... maybe some heckling" because "that's the American way." Governor Dewey refused to allow any audience participation. Stassen wanted a wide-ranging discussion; Dewey insisted the one-hour program be limited to a single question: "Shall the Communist Party in the United States be outlawed?" Stassen finally agreed to Dewey's terms, and the broadcast was carried by nearly nine hundred radio stations across the country. Each candidate gave a twenty-minute opening argument; each then gave an eight-and-a-half-minute rebuttal in which he lambasted his opponent. During the debate, AT&T operators reported that long-distance calls dropped by 25 percent. When Stevenson wrote his article in 1960, he came at the issue from personal experience and knowledge. And he did not propose debates. Rather he proposed that the candidates appear on television consecutively, not simultaneously, to present their ideas to the American people in the final weeks before the election. They should not have to purchase the time, Stevenson said; it would be provided to them as a public service by the nation's broadcasters: "Suppose that every Monday evening, at peak viewing time, for an hour and a half, from Labor Day to election eve, the two candidates aired their views. They might on each evening take up a single issue. Each in turn might discuss it for half an hour, followed by 15-minute rebuttals of one another for the third half hour." Stevenson acknowledged that this airtime could be used in other ways, "including face-to-face debate," but the critical matter was that "in some manner the candidates for president appear together at the same prime time each week for a serious presentation of views on public questions." Of similar importance, he said, was that "the time should cost them and their parties nothing." Stevenson acknowledged that many more parties than just the Republican and the Democrat would ask for time under his proposal. At least ten other parties put forward presidential candidates in 1956, but giving time to all of them, he said, would be "manifestly absurd." He proposed as a solution that public-service time be provided only to parties that polled at least 20 percent of the vote in the previous election and "to new parties which can demonstrate substantial national support."

Stevenson's article caught the attention not only of Senator Monroney but also of Rhode Island senator John Pastore, chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications of the Senate Commerce Committee. A little more than two months later, Pastore's subcommittee held hearings on a Senate bill modeled after the governor's proposal. Specifically, the bill required "each TV broadcast station and each TV network to make available without charge the use of its facilities to qualified candidates for the office of President of the United States.... Each candidate is entitled to 1 hour of time a week for the 8-week period beginning September 1 preceding the election.... This time is required to be made available in prime viewing hours and to be scheduled in programs of 1 hour each, equally divided between the two candidates." By its terms the bill did not apply to radio broadcasters, only television, and it required that the candidates themselves appear on their own behalf. The bill differed from Stevenson's original proposal in one key respect: where Stevenson had proposed a threshold of 20 percent public support to qualify for airtime, the Senate bill provided time to any party whose "candidate for president in the preceding election was supported by not fewer than 4 percent of the total popular vote cast." In hearings on the bill in May 1960, Pastore noted that even under this 4 percent rule only the Republican and Democratic candidates would qualify for time in that fall's presidential contest; he claimed (incorrectly) that no third party had won more than 1 percent of the popular vote going back to 1944. (Henry Wallace's Progressive Party won 2.4 percent of the vote in 1948.)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Inside the Presidential Debatesby Newton N. Minow Craig L. LaMay Copyright © 2008 by Newton N. Minow and Craig L. LaMay. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226530418
• ISBN 13: 9780226530413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240