The Last Debate (15 page)

“This isn’t about drama or fireworks tonight,” Joan said.

“Dull is what it is going to be,” Jack said. “Dull as dishwater …”

“With a capital W,” Jill said.

“As in wipeout. A wipeout of Greene by Meredith.”

And after a while they turned to the two preachers for a back-and-forth about the proper role of religion and ministers in politics.

Joan got one more brush of attention at the end of the broadcast.

“Again to Joan Naylor of our own CNS family before we go,” Jack said. “She is one of the four panelists for tonight’s debate. And from here you go back to work with the other panelists to think up some good ones, I assume?”

“That’s right, Jack.”

“I’d love to have a camera in there with the four of you,” said Jill. “Hot stuff, I bet.”

“Not so hot.”

“Well, good luck, Joan. All of America will be watching and depending on you,” Jack said.

“Try to be fair to the next president of the United States,” Jill said.

“I always try to be fair.”

“Nobody is fair to David Donald Meredith.”

“He is the unfair one,” Jack said. “He is the one who insults and castigates, distorts and disrupts, disrespects and grotesques—”

“Grotesques?”

“Happy hunting, Joan,” Jack said.

“Thank you,” Joan replied.

H
enry Ramirez opened the door to Longsworth D for Joan Naylor and closed it behind her. What happened behind that door over the next five hours and forty-five minutes may very well be the most important meeting ever conducted by and among journalists. There had always been talk and charges from the uninformed and angry of the right and/or left about alleged journalistic conspiracies but hear ye, hear ye, here now there really was one.

But first there was some good-spirited skylarking.

“Joan, Joan, she’s our girl! If she can’t do it, nobody can!” Henry yelled, and he clapped and cheered, and so did Barbara and Howley.

“God, what I would give to be on
Jack and Jill
,” Henry said. “I cannot even think of what I would give to be on
Jack and Jill.
”

“Your soul,” said Joan. “Only your soul is required.”

“What I would give to
be
Jack and Jill!” Henry said.

“Only your balls in addition to your soul,” said Howley. “Sorry.…”

A few minutes later they were talking about questions. Henry said: “All of my really tough bad questions are for Meredith. I can’t think of
any for Greene. But I can’t think of any other kind for Meredith. I really cannot. I just put the sight of him in my head and I want to scream.”

“You can say amen to that,” Barbara said. “We need zingers for Greene, that’s all. For Meredith, they’re easy.”

“Forget the idea that you are really going to zing that man,” Joan said. “Nobody handles people like us New Arrogants better than he does.”

“He’s a menace to this country and all who live in it,” Barbara said.

There was a moment of silence, broken finally by Joan asking Mike Howley: “Do you agree, Mike? Do you believe he will be as bad for this country as … as everyone else seems to? Everyone but the voters?”

Howley, after a few beats, said: “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I have not said it in print or even on the air, but here in the privacy of this room I do say it. I honestly and strongly believe the election of David Donald Meredith would be a devastating development for our country. I wish I did not feel that way, but I do.”

“How devastating?” Joan asked. “How bad?”

“I cannot imagine in my worst nightmares anything worse. I honestly cannot. I know I should not be saying stuff like this. But you asked me. There is my answer.”

“I agree with you,” Joan said.

Henry looked away, out the windows of the room to a small outside courtyard.

“Jesus,” said Barbara.

And her word hung there by itself in the stillness of the next few seconds.

“What are you going to do about it?” Joan asked Mike Howley.

“Do?” he replied. “There is nothing I
can
do.”

“Don’t you owe it to all of those Michael J. Howley readers and listeners to tell them what you think?” Barbara said. “That’s what you can do.”

“That’s not my job.”

“Whose is it?”

“Editorial writers. Politicians. Talk-show hosts. Ross and Norman. Jack and Jill. The clownalists.”

“What all of them say don’t mean sweat compared to what it would mean if you said it,” Barbara said.

Joan Naylor was suddenly uneasy, almost scared about what she had started. She decided to call it off, to stop it before it went too far. “There is no point in talking about this,” she said. “Like it or not, personal opinions aside and all of that, we have our jobs to do and that is to ask questions at this debate tonight. Let’s get on with it.”

“Good idea,” Mike Howley said.

“Bad idea,” said Henry Ramirez.

“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” Barbara asked him.

“Sí, sí, señorita. SÍ, sí, and amen to that.”

“Wait a minute,” Joan said. “Don’t say it. Don’t say it.”

Henry said it anyhow. “We all think Meredith should not be president of the United States. We all think he would do heavy damage to our country, the country we all love and cherish. So why don’t we do what we can tonight to make sure he does not become president of our country?”

“No!” said Joan.

“Right on!” said Barbara.

“Wait, wait,” said Mike Howley. “Don’t say another word.”

He went over to the television that was in a console along the back wall. He turned it on. “What’ll it be, Stormin’ Norman or Squeakin’ Ross?”

Nobody answered, so he put on General Schwarzkopf’s
Review of the Week
on NBS. His show and Perot’s
Sunday Morning Ross
on ABS were on at the same time, right after
Jack and Jill
, both having run away in fear of going heads-to-heads with Jack and Jill.

“I thought you checked out everything,” Barbara said.

“That was last night,” Mike said. He adjusted the TV sound so it was audible enough to thwart electronic surveillance but not loud enough to intrude in their conversations. “Background noise is the perfect use for that crap Ross and Norman thrust on the American people,” he said.

Howley chose Norman over Ross. The voices of the Desert Storm commander and his talk-show guests thus became the cover Muzak noise for the planning of America’s first major journalism storm.

“Well, as I was saying,” Henry said once Howley had returned and sat down. “We are in a position tonight to do something about this awful thing.…”

“Sorry, Henry, but I must stop you again,” Mike Howley said. “We are about to do some walking on some extremely dangerous ground. If we are going to go on with this line, then I think—I believe, I insist, really—that we should agree on some rules of conversation.”

“Like what?” Barbara said.

“Like what I proposed yesterday. Nobody talks about what is said in this room from this point on. Nobody. Nobody does any stories about it for their newspaper, magazine, or television network.”

“Radio. I’m in radio,” Henry said.

“I’m sorry,” Howley said. “I forgot.”

“Everybody forgets radio.”

“So moved,” said Joan. “So moved that we all go to jail and die before we breathe a word about this. Mike is right.”

“I think so, too,” Barbara said. “Unless we agree otherwise—”

“ ‘Think’ won’t cut it,” Mike Howley said. “I walk out of here right now if we do not have an ironclad agreement. I do not need a story in
This Week
magazine or on the radio—”

“Thanks,” Henry said.

“About the fact that I participated in a serious discussion about rigging a presidential debate, no matter the outcome. Sorry, but I do not need that. I will not have that.”

“I hear you,” said Barbara. “OK, OK.”

“Hearing is also not enough,” Henry said. “Mike is right.”

Barbara pointed to Henry and said to Mike: “You trust us? Him and me?”

“Good question. The good answer is yes. The honest answer is I’m thinking about it.”

Barbara said: “What about you, Joan? Do you trust us?”

“I’m thinking about it, too. One word anywhere about my just being in such a conversation and the network would boot me back to doing Eyewitness weather in Chillicothe.”

“Is that how you got your start?” Henry said. “I didn’t know that. I’m fascinated with how everybody got their start. Some of the stories are really strange. There is no one way to do it. Rachel Jergens at CNN was discovered by some local news producer selling women’s beach accessories outside Miami—”

“It was a joke,” Joan said. “I started as a reporter with WFRA in Cincinnati, way down the road from Chillicothe.”

Henry joined her and the others in silence. And the only noise in the room for a full forty-five seconds was the muffled one of Norman Schwarzkopf interviewing three pollsters, two political consultants, two senators, three governors, four radio-talk-show hosts, and two late-night comedians about what to expect in that night’s presidential debate.

It was Barbara’s call and she made it. “It’s a deal. No matter what happens, no matter what is said, we do not talk, unless we talk about it and agree to it beforehand. If you’ve got a razor blade or a pocketknife, cut me and draw some blood.”

“Great and olé,” Henry said.

“So now, Mike and Joan,” said Barbara, “it’s up to you two. You’ve got a lot more to lose than us little minorities persons. The question is whether you trust us enough to place your asses and your other vital important white parts into our little minorities persons’ hands.”

“Mike, what do you say?” said Joan, asking what must have been the most important question ever asked of Michael J. Howley.

“I’m game if you are,” he said. “All we’re risking is all.”

“ ‘All We’re Risking Is All’ would be a great title for my book about all of this that I am hereby swearing with my blood never to write no matter what,” Barbara said.

“Repeat after me, amigos,” said Henry. “ ‘All I’m risking is all, amigos.’ ”

Mike and Joan and Barbara joined him in saying: “All I’m risking is all, amigos.”

And they all four laughed. But not very loudly or for very long.

Barbara said to Howley: “Start talking, white man.”

And Howley started talking.

He said: “I think it’s accurate and fair to say that we might be able to come up with some things to do tonight that might—‘might’ is the operable word—might throw not only the debate to Greene but also the election.”

That was it. Those were the words.

I think it’s accurate and fair to say that we might be able to come up with some things to do tonight that might—‘might’ is the operable word—might throw not only the debate to Greene but also the election.

Those were the words of action and conspiracy, unlike any ever spoken before. Those were the words of Michael J. Howley, one of America’s most respected journalists.

“You are saying, Mike,” Henry said, “that the four of us, sitting in this room right now, could do it. Just by what we did this evening at the debate, we could—”

Joan, her feet suddenly very cold, interrupted. “We’re journalists. If we’re going to talk about this, then let’s begin with a little reminder of what we are.”

“Aren’t we Americans first?” Barbara responded. “Isn’t the issue whether we four patriotic Americans can sit back and let an evil fool become the president of our country? Isn’t the question whether being journalists means we must sit back and watch our country be ruined by some maniac who stands and lives for everything that is wrong in our country? A man who would divide us, rather than heal us—”

“A man who has not one caring or understanding bone in his body,” Henry said. “A man who has no idea of community, of the family of all of us different peoples we are supposed to be.”

Joan looked at Mike Howley. Say something, please, she said with her eyes and demeanor. Tell these kids what is going on.

Howley took the cue, saying: “I have been at this longer than any of you-all. I have always enjoyed the cover being a reporter has given me. I do not put bumper stickers on my car. I do not serve on committees and commissions. I do not sign petitions. I do not attend rallies or meetings. I don’t even vote—”

“What?” Henry said. “You don’t vote?”

“I gave it up in the sixties. I was having trouble separating out my own views from my reporting—particularly when it came to Kennedy against Nixon and then Goldwater and the crazies who were around him.…”

“They’d look like PTA ladies compared to Meredith and his Take It Back people,” Joan said.

“True,” Howley said. “At any rate, I decided to keep my own decision making out of it by not voting then. And I haven’t since.”

“Do you think none of us should?” Henry said.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s an individual thing. I was just saying that to
make the point that until the last few weeks, days, hours, and now, in this room, minutes, the very idea of doing something like throwing a debate to one candidate or the other would have been in the same league with committing murder. Or with, say, a doctor intentionally letting a patient die, a lawyer throwing a case, a preacher refusing to save a soul. This is very serious stuff to me. That is what I am saying. The most serious stuff there is. I have lived my whole professional life on the other side of that line.”

The words made an impact on the other three. They established what Joan described later as “a justification context confirmation.” If Michael J. Howley, the purest of the pure, felt compelled to throw over all of his professional journalistic constraints, then it was surely all right, surely justified for the rest of us.

Howley, after delivering the words, took a deep breath and poured himself some coffee from a thermos pot someone had put there on the table along with four cups.

Joan said: “There are all kinds of analogies to dream up. What if you were walking down the street and came across a burning building? A woman yelled at you from the fifth floor to call the fire department. Would you do it or would you just stand there? I’m a reporter. I cannot get involved. Let somebody else call the fire department. I will cover the fire. If they get there in time to save the lady’s life, so be it. If not, nasty break. I am a reporter. I am not responsible. My job is to observe, not to act, not to call the fire department, not to sound the alarm. Even if it means people die in burning buildings.”