Presswatch/My Night at the Debate

...The Court itself acknowledged that "members of the Jaycees regularly engage in a variety of civic, charitable, lobbying, fundraising and other activities worthy of constitutional protection under the First Amendment" but concluded that ]HE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1984 33...

...And it wasn't that Reagan couldn't handle my two questions...

...Such a violent reaction was not universal, though...

...Besides, the plan was to ask the same questions of Reagan and Mondale, and this one applied only to Reagan...

...Reagan debated in that format in the 1980 Republican primaries--and won easily...

...I told her I ' d think about asking that...

...I didn't try out my questions on her...

...But it is not just in regard to economic intervention that the current Court remains in accord with contemporary liberalism in welcoming an expansion of state power...

...Dorothy Ridings, the president of the League of Women Voters, called me at the Sun's Washington bureau to ask if I'd be on the panel...

...Consider how the format was arranged and how the interrogators were picked...

...What's ombudscience...

...You did not just ask him, you lit into him as though he were a criminal, answering in a court suit against him," it read in careful longhand...

...But that didn't stop her from calling me at Louisville's Galt House hotel and giving me a question...

...But Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...

...It was your classic wash...

...A grade B actor, he couldn't pull it off...

...Lewis, may be eager to speak for "the public," but when the public and its elected representatives are so obstinate as to take a different view, liberals have cheerfully resorted to the courts to get their way...

...He was off his game from the start, and at one point he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow...

...The core of the issue seems to be whether homosexuality is a condition of birth or an acquired trait...

...And might not the Reagan crowd have good reason to veto William Greider of Rolling Stone, whose views on Reagan are negative in the extreme...

...At any rate, she wanted me to ask if the candidates knew that a poll four years ago found that 70 percent of the people didn't want Carter or Reagan to be elected...

...Maybe I overlooked it...

...He was truly bad, and Walter Mondale was better even than the sainted John F. Kennedy in the 1960 debates...

...the flap over the panel of reporters because it really didn't matter that much who was picked...

...There was always a chance I might get a third question, since Reagan and Mondale weren't required to use all their time for answering questions and follow-ups and delivering rebuttals...

...So we may never find out if Mondale thinks homosexuals should be admitted to Annapolis and West Point...

...For that kind of against-the-grain role Laurence Olivier was required...

...Actually, I only got to ask about two subjects...

...Come on...

...The debate had eight segments, which meant that one of us would get only two questions...

...The answer has t~o be yes...

...A friend told my wife I looked "ghoulish" on television...

...Seeing no credible "public use" involved in Hawaii's forced transfer of land titles between private owners, a lower federal court had declared the state scheme unconstitutional...

...By the time I got there, the League was in a twit and the press in high dudgeon...

...Congress would have to wait...

...The first I heard about being a panelist was on the Thursday night before the debate...

...But Reagan's lack of church attendance had become a minor issue, given his courtship of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians...

...The same subjects were likely to come up--deficits, taxes, abortion, religionweven if the panel consisted of picture editors of skin magazines...

...Ridings groused publicly that the selection process had been "abused...

...But they were...

...Except for DeFrank's advice, the only help I got in drafting questions came from a Rose Lynne of San Diego...

...The ninety minutes zoomed by, but it must have seemed a lot longer to Reagan...

...Is it really so offensive to suggest that some reporters might be biased...

...in his defense, let me add that presidential debates are preposterously hyped events...

...That seemed a bit much...

...Or grounds to bar Jerrold Schecter of Esquire magazine, who worked in Jimmy Carter's White House...

...He made the debates politically meaningless events by winning the second after losing the first...

...Frankly, I found Ridings to be gracious and thoughtful...

...Reagan makes love to his wife or which night of the week he eats vanilla ice cream," the fan wrote...

...Suddenly this term, the Court found merit in Reagan Administration positions in a considerable string of cases, while simultaneously rejecting the usual appeals from the ACLU, the NAACP, and other avenging angels of the liberal establishment...

...Anyway, I agreed to be in Louisville by Saturday night for a meeting to prepare for the debate...

...The best single debate of 1984 was a three-candidate session before the Democratic primary in New York...

...That was the follow-up for him to my third question, which would have gone first to Reagan...

...That's a bit strong...

...They may be necessary--at the least, they have become established as a permanent part of presidential races--but that doesn't make them any less ridiculous...

...In truth, everyone acted ridiculously in...

...Reagan didn't say anything either, but I asked him if he thought the questions were softballs...

...As you might have guessed, she scolded the candidates for having vetoed "almost 100 qualified journalists . . . . As moderator, and on behalf of my fellow journalists, I very much regret, as does the League of Women Voters, that this situation has occurred...

...And well you might, for I did the same...

...This remarkably complacent view of state power evoked no word of protest from Anthony Lewis or the ACLU, however...

...No wonder Anthony Lewis was "stunned...

...It was sponsored by CBS News and moderated by Dan Rather...

...From Buffalo came a charge of assault and battery...

...All the more so, as the Court really did not travel far at all this term from the strange world-view of contemporary liberalism...

...No, not really," he said...

...Mondale was understandably beaming as he approached the panelists' table to shake hands afterwards...

...But she did take an interest in what we might ask, wondering aloud if we'd like to try our questions on her...

...In my reading of the First Amendment, I don't recall the part about the League of Women Voters' unfettered right to select the panel of questioners...

...I felt like jumping through the TV set to get you...

...But rather than a gross violation of the First Amendment, the vetoing of reporters occurred mainly because the League didn't get Reagan and Mondale aides in a room to work out a panel together...

...But Reagan, I found out later, was ready to attack the Democratic platform's plank about giving homosexuals full access to the military...

...Even though the campaigns hadn't approved her, moderator Barbara Waiters was offered the chance by League officials to ask Reagan and Mondale questions...

...Reporters don't mind exaggeration, but they hate to think their efforts are beside the point...

...In fact, it turned out that one of the campaigns had vetoed me and Diane Sawyer of CBS News the first time around, accepting us after our names went through the mill a second time...

...Only his aides wanted him tied down in hopes that Mondale wouldn't be able to hammer away at him and Reagan wouldn't screw up...

...But I'll tell you...

...And it made the flap-of-the-day reporting that dominated the campaign coverage seem exaggerated and irrelevant...

...They used far more than the time allotted, however...

...She wasn't speaking for me...

...some viewers were merely disgusted...

...It never occurred to me to say no, but of course I didn't know then that the Reagan and Mondale campaigns had stooped to the palpable evil of vetoing potential panelists...

...Early in July a unanimous Supreme Court, again overturning a contrary lower court ruling, upheld Minnesota's effort to force the Jaycees to admit women...

...I have never been as offended by any panelist as by your performance in the presidential debate on October 7, 1984," wrote a woman who mentioned she was 86 years old...

...I t is the study of how and why people abuse power by unrationally and compulsively not listening to new ideas that could optimally improve the quality of individual and community life," is how Lynne described it...

...About 100 reporters proposed by the League had been scratched, and two others had rejected invitations...

...The so-called prestige newspapers and the news magazines did their breathtaking best to pump up the debates...

...Why not have the parties themselves run the debates...

...Who could find fault with a women who, when asked by Barbara Waiters if she had considered Geraldo Rivera of ABC News as a panelist, said that he was never considered because she didn't THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1984 31 like his brand of journalism...

...Well, maybe...

...Mine said 3; 1 would ask the third and sixth questions...

...32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1984 So many questions, so few answers...

...Reagan's minions had seen Mondale savage Gary Hart in televised, moderator-only debates last winter and spring...

...Sawyer, Weighart, and I divvied up the subject areas--no one but I wanted to ask about religion, taxes, or homosexual rights--but we figured out our own questions...

...I plead guilty and ask for mercy...

...I merely thought it f r i v o l o u s , which is something different...

...Still, all the handwringing over the Court's recent performance was a r a t h e r petulant and u n g r a t e f u l response to such a long-time benefactor...

...She spent ten minutes on me, applying lotions and powders and generally making me look much more youthful, like a young Boris Karloff...

...Reagan was coached to be John Anderson in the debate, full of facts, tedious, slightly sanctimonious...

...Recent cases offer very little evidence that the Court is really prepared to cast off its traditional dependents and no sign that it really is interested in developing new conservative constituencies...

...As we walked from the dressing room to the stage, Walters said she would be adding a "personal note" to her introductory comments...

...He looked as if he'd just played basketball for an hour, full-court...

...He didn't like my quest i o n about the candidates' religious beliefs or the follow-up to Reagan about his church-going habits...

...Yes, I was a panelist on the first presidential debate, the one in which Reagan did so poorly...

...Now, I'm not suggesting the League didn't act honorably in this...

...The Fifth Amendment prohibition on the taking of "private p r o p e r t y . . , for public use, without just Compensation" has always been understood to limit governmental "takings" to actual public uses...

...To be honest, I didn't know her before the day of the debate...

...Rabkin and William Kristol of Harvard's Kennedy School...

...Why this demand...

...It took nearly a week before the fan mail began to pour in...

...And that was that...

...But Reagan wouldn't play along...

...The latest bit of crazed thinking in the press holds not only that the League should run the debates but that it should be able to force the candidates to accept any panel it chooses...

...I'll certainly admit to being less than smitten with some of the folks who sought the Democratic presidential nommaUon this year...

...These aides insisted on calling the group either The League of Women Vultures or The Plague of Women Voters...

...I remember hearing horror stories in 1980 from Carter aides, who were mad because League officials wanted to include John Anderson in the debates that year...

...you ask...

...You don't, for instance, get huffy or holier-than-thou about things that are frivolous...

...What is your view...

...Consider your ass kicked for lynching the great and good President Reagan in the presidential crucifixion...

...But Ridings's moxie and good sense do not mean the League ought to be in charge of presidential debates...

...James Wieghart of Scripps-Howard had managed to be accepted the first time around...

...When it comes to private economic activity, the Court has not presumed to "set the limits on state power" (in Mr...

...There were gasps, groans, and a few boos...

...All the blather about the two presidential debates as the most crucial political events in the history of Christendom turned out to be the usual press hysteria...

...When I got to Louisville, I had one question in mind, but it didn't seem quite weighty enough to stand alone...

...That left the overarching factors--peace, prosperity, leadership, the conservative trend in the country, Reagan's personality--in charge of the outcome...

...She declined to say what it was, which is fair enough...

...They probably would have spun out their blarney about fighting all forms of discrimination...

...This article inaugurates an American Spectator department on constitutional issues, to feature Mr...

...Is it a condition of birth or an acquired trait...

...Even before the Supreme Court ended its last term in early July, media pundits had reached a verdict on its significance: The Court had lurched to the right...

...My favorite was from a fellow who characterized me, in a letter to the editor, as " a n embarrassment to the city of Baltimore and your paper...

...And neither contemporary liberalism nor our ostensibly "conservative" current Court shows any signs of wishing to see our constitutional limitations in this area taken seriously ever again...

...Only three reporters either sufficiently fair or sufficiently insipid had been approved by the Reagan and Mondale camps...

...After watching the presidential debate Sunday night, I am convinced that one of the main reasons for the poor quality of the debate by both participants is directly related to the abhorrent questioning by the panel members such as yourself," another fan said in a letter...

...Contemporary liberals, like Mr...

...Again there was no protest from the ACLU or the New York Times...

...Jesse Jackson often cited it as evidence of Reagan's alleged hypocrisy...

...In a way, such anguish is perfectly understandable...

...It was a non-negotiable demand of White House aides that there be a panel of reporters questioning the candidates instead of having Reagan and Mondale go after each other with only a moderator between them...

...I t wasn't a press conspiracy or herd journalism at its worst that caused this verdict to be rendered...

...The "stunned reaction among the public as well as legal specialists," he wrote, reflected "the sense that our fundamental assumptions about the Supreme Court must change . . . . The Court made clear that it was no longer p r e p a r e d . . , to set the limits on state power...

...He never got the chance...

...But the nation has come to expect that sort of reaction from the press, no matter what the provocation, and the journalism establishment never lets the public down...

...Nor do I know where it's etched on holy tablets that the League must be in charge of presidential debates...

...I doubt if either would have answered that directly...

...They could have agreed in an hour...

...The trouble was, they struck different names, leaving practically none they agreed on...

...In any case, it hardly warranted the self-righteous posturing by the press that ensued...

...Still, the audience in Louisville auditorium acted as if the question, asked as a follow-up, were from outer space...

...There were extenuating circumstances and mitigating factors that you don't know about...

...To my surprise, she declined...

...They didn't want this to happen to Reagan...

...For him, the more liberating the format, the better the performance...

...He also wanted me to ask Reagan why he hadn't seen his granddaughter...

...President, advocates of gay rights argue that homosexuals should be protected by law from discrimination in the same way that blacks and other minorities are...

...But would it...

...Or the TV networks...

...an admirer wrote...

...The question: How come you don't go to church, Mr...

...Before hanging up, she offered me political assistance...

...Postscript...

...And a fellow from somewhere in Pennsylvania concluded in a postcard that my presence on the panel "only means they were scraping the bottom for journalists...

...At the end of May, a unanimous Court blithely endorsed a Hawaii statute allowing the state to confiscate land from large private landowners and transfer it to private homeowners...

...Lynne said she is affiliated with the North American Center for Ombudscience Studies of Human T e r r i t o r i a l i t y . T h a t ' s NACOSHT for short...

...Reporters, whose proclivity for asking boring questions may be genetic, would insure the debate was properly stuffy...

...But the Supreme Court insisted courts must defer to any "legislative determination that the taking will serve a public use...

...Lewis's phrase) since the early New Deal...

...Wieghart and I didn't...

...We drew pieces of paper with 1, 2 or 3 written on them...

...And on the whole over the last two decades, they have gotten their way in the courts...

...1 didn't regret the disapproval of so many reporters at all...

...The truth is that, if the Court has started to retreat from some of its earlier activist positions, it has done so by hobbling backward, with its face still firmly fixed to the left...

...Thomas DeFrank, Newsweek's White House correspondent, suggested it to me the day before the debate while we were sitting in the steam room at the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club...

...At worst, it was a venial sin...

...I f you run for Congress, we can guarantee your election as a write-in," she said...

...Once, this kind of hype was limited to television news, but no more...

...in other words, a legitimate "public use" is whatever a government says it is...

...As usual, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times gave the charge its most strident formulation...

...Jeremy Rabkin is assistant professor of government at Cornell University...

...They were on religion (describe your faith and how it affects your politics) and taxes (are middle-income folks undertaxed or overtaxed), two subjects he had boned up on before the debate...

...So Reagan lost this one on his own...

...Judicial power remains a weapon almost exclusively available to the left, even if it is becoming a less reliable weapon than it once w a s . To begin with, there was a very large (and altogether predictable) measure of selectivity in the wailing about the Court's unleashing of "state power" from constitutional restraints...

...she didn't try out her personal note on me...

...Instead, lists were sent to the White ~louse and to Mondale headquarters, and each side struck some names...

...I thought the follow-up question was going to ask how many times a week Mr...

...But we did avail ourselves of Walters's makeup woman...

...True to form, the Supreme Court rejected the arguments of the Reagan Justice Department in every major case in which it advocated a conservative position during the first three years of this administration...

...He said nothing, just grinned...