The Last Debate (26 page)

Back in my room at the Lodge, I turned on the television. Jack and Jill were still on the air. And so were Ross and Norman and it seemed like half of the rest of the Western world. If you were awake, opinionated, voiced, and available, you could express yourself on what the four panelists did and why, on the F-word, on what it all meant for Meredith, Greene, the press, and America, and on most anything else you had on your mind if it was even vaguely related to Williamsburg.

Everyone said afterward that there had never been anything like it in the history of television and news and public affairs and talk, and I do not quarrel with that conclusion. I finally went to sleep at two o’clock in the morning because my channel switcher, ears, eyes, and mind were worn out. So I did not see it all live, but over the next few weeks I did either watch videotapes or read transcripts of just about everything that was broadcast that night.

Jack and Jill, for instance, may not have honored their commitment to stay on the air until they got to the bottom of it, but it wasn’t because they didn’t try. They did not sign off until 3:22
A.M.
, Eastern Time, almost nine hours after they went on the air immediately following Howley’s debate good night. A world-record 114 guests were heard before it was over, and that did not count the many ordinary people who simply called in to scream something—several only some version of the famous F-word.

Ross Perot was on the air for seven hours and twenty minutes, giving-and-taking with ninety-three guests, most of whom condemned what the press panel had done. Perot himself was also critical of the panelists, after a while calling the whole thing “Debate-gate” and predicting it would do to the press what Watergate, the original “gate,” did to Richard Nixon.

Norman Schwarzkopf, the first former four-star general to have his own talk show, did a mere six and a half hours with only seventy-one guests, most of whom were with him in loving what had happened. He praised the four panelists for “taking the bull by the horns,” for “going for the high ground,” for “pulling off a journalistic Desert Storm.”

All three of the major shows, as well as the many others on cable and elsewhere, divided the emphasis between the panelists-press angle to the story and the specific charges against Meredith and his behavior on the stage.

Tape replays of Meredith throwing the microphone and then the podium and screaming the word “fucking” and walking off were repeated in various speeds of slow motion time after time after time. Several family, youth, and religious channels on cable bleeped out the bad word in their replays. Pundits on all channels had an awkward time talking about the potential impact of Meredith’s profane departure. Some tried to do it without actually saying the word, but not all were so squeamish. David Snider, the PNN analyst, broke new ground and held it by referring all night to it as “the ‘fucking’ thing.”

Psychiatrists, psychologists, and other behavior specialists also weighed in. Some contrasted Meredith’s predebate religious and Puritan pose with his debate profanity and the reports of his violent side to conclude that he suffered from a psychic disorder known as Jekyll-Hyde
syndrome. Others stood at television monitors with pointers and made clinical observations about what the freeze-framed shot of Meredith’s forehead and mouth and fist said about the state of his emotional health.

Much of it was ridiculous and stupid, but it was clear to me by the time I went to sleep that the trend was more than established. Ross, Norman, Jack and even Jill, as well as most of their guests and call-ins, bought the validity of the charge that David Donald Meredith was an unstable man of violence. All of the broadcasts went repeatedly to live feeds in front of the homes, apartments, and hideaways of the various women who had had their statements read by Howley, Joan, Barbara, and Henry. Some declined to be interviewed, so the television reporters interviewed their neighbors, friends, and anyone else they could find in the immediate vicinities who would talk. The scene in front of the duplex of the woman in Asheville who claimed Meredith kicked her after a fender bender was particularly grotesque. The woman insisted that all interviews be conducted with two uniformed Asheville police officers standing on either side of her. “My life is in danger,” she said to every interviewer. “The Meredith forces cannot let this stand. You saw him there at the end. You saw what a madman he is.”

The F-word politics came into full focus when William Allen Tona-pah, the chairman of the American Christian Families Coalition, emerged from an emergency conference-call meeting of his executive council to issue the following statement: “We are outraged over the way those four press jackals attacked David Donald Meredith tonight. But we regret to say that their conduct does not excuse that of Mr. Meredith. We were stunned, disappointed, and repulsed by his use of gutter language. As an organization dedicated to furthering what is clean and Christian, we must withdraw our support for his candidacy. There were young people in that vast television audience tonight. They were looking for moral leadership from David Donald Meredith. They saw and heard the opposite. This is a sad day for America.”

That statement helped develop a clear—and obvious—consensus through the evening and early-morning hours among the many varieties and types of pundits. The result of the Williamsburg Debate was going to be the election of Paul L. Greene as president of the United States rather than David Donald Meredith.

There was one important picture and voice and view that was not seen or heard on anyone’s program that night. Its absence was noticeable not only to me but to most everyone else. Jack of Jack and Jill, for instance, said at one time into his camera: “Mike Howley, if you’re watching us now, call us. We need to talk to you. America needs to talk to you.

“Defend yourself. Speak for yourself.”

M
ichael J. Howley talked to Jack, me, and everyone else in the world the next morning. There across the top of the front page of
The Washington Morning News
was a story under the headline
MIKE HOWLEY
: “
WE WERE CITIZENS FIRST
.” It was above the main news story about the debate, which appeared under a larger hard-news banner headline: MEREDITH ACCUSED OF VIOLENCE. The subhead under the banner was “Candidate Throws Fit, Cusses.”

It was Howley’s piece—his own account in his own first-person words—that gave me the first whiff of the scent toward the trail to finding out what had really happened in Williamsburg and why. The smell came not in what he said but what he did not say, what he left out.

The length of the article, in fact, was the first thing that struck me as curious. It was less than two thousand words. Here was the guy who was involved in—led, probably—what even then, on the morning after, was shaping up as a major historical event of American politics and journalism, and
this
was all he had to say about it?

The thrust of his message was contained in one paragraph. He said:
“We came to a joint realization, the four of us, that we were confronted with a searing, crucial choice between conflicting duties and responsibilities. On the one hand were those we had as journalists to remain detached, uninvolved, and on the other those we had as citizens to participate, to take action. We concluded that in this case we were citizens first. Our country deserved and demanded that we act on our informed fears and knowledge.”

He said the decision was “agonizing, wrenching, draining, and, yes, in the final analysis, terrifying.” He acknowledged that many people—Meredith and his supporters particularly—would probably never understand why it was done. Others might have the same problem, he said, closing with these words:

“I am certain there will also be people with no political axes to grind—many within our own profession of journalism, no doubt—who will also take severe exception to our decision and actions. There is sure to be much debate about the debate.

“Let it begin.”

And that was pretty much it. I read his few words three times before what was wrong finally hit me. He had failed to speak to the central questions that the panelists’/citizens’ dramatic action raised.

Were the women’s charges of abuse against Meredith what caused Howley, Joan Naylor, Henry Ramirez, and Barbara Manning to decide to move against him? Did they conclude that a man so prone to violent outbursts was unsuited for the presidency? Or were there other reasons about political philosophy and beliefs that made him unacceptable first? Were the abuse charges thus only the weapons for the attack and the kill, not the reasons? And then, of course, there were the simple logistics questions. Where did those interview statements from all of those women come from? Who conducted them? How did they come into the possession of those four panelists/citizens in Williamsburg? What kind of fact-checking, if any, was done by the four panelists before using them against Meredith in such a dramatic way? Did they count on his blowing up the way he did? Was that the real point, the real objective?

One of the four people who knew the answers had decided, at least in his article, to simply ignore the questions.

On impulse, I picked up the phone—I was still in my room at the
Williamsburg Lodge—and called
The Washington Morning News.
It was only eight o’clock on a Monday morning, but something told me it was possible, probable even, that on this momentous Monday morning-after Mike Howley would already be at his office.

I told the woman who answered the phone in the
News
newsroom that I was calling from Mr. Howley’s hotel in Williamsburg about “something he had left behind.” She put me through immediately.

“This is Howley,” spoke the voice of the man who had changed the course of a presidential election just fourteen hours ago.

I quickly identified myself, reminding him that we had talked briefly after the Thomas Jefferson press conference in Williamsburg the previous afternoon.

“Hey, goddamn it, she said it was about something I left in my room.…”

“I am doing some major reporting for some major stories for the
Tatler
about what you and the other three panelists did last night. And how and why you did it. I cannot do it, of course, without your help and cooperation.”

“Sorry, can’t help you. What I have to say I will say in my own newspaper. Look, got to go. This is already shaping up as the busiest day of my life—”

“Where did the women’s statements come from?”

“Hey, forget it—”

“Was it them or something else that caused you-all to go after Meredith?”

“I’m hanging up, Bob.”

“Tom—”

“Sorry. Tom—”

“Did you have any idea he would scream a word like ‘fucking’?”

“Good-bye, Tom—”

“I’ll be back, Mr. Howley.”

I don’t think Howley heard that last line. By then I was probably talking into a dead phone.

By the time I pulled my rented Toyota into the Georgetown Inn in Washington three hours later, I had formed a rough working plan for how I would get back to Mr. Howley.

Joan Naylor was the plan, pure and simple. If I could use her friendly attitude toward the
Tatler
as an entreé to get her, a veteran and respected professional, to talk to me in a full and open manner, then I could use that fact to bring in the younger and inexperienced Henry Ramirez and Barbara Manning. Then, with the cooperation of those three, I would go back to Mike Howley.

Do I do my story with only their versions, their facts, their points of view, Mr. Howley? Who speaks for you, Mr. Howley? How can I do a fair and complete job without your slant, your perspective, Mr. Howley?

Go, Tom, go.

I could not get anyone on the phone at Joan Naylor’s CNS office to tell me one thing about where she was or how I might contact her. I took several stabs at it through various ploys, and after about the fifth time I had the feeling that I was being recorded or that my call was being traced. Something was going on. A man suddenly came on the line—all previous calls had been fielded by women—and started chatting me up. I had said this time that I was with Blue and Gray Motor Freight and we had a leather couch from a furniture company in North Carolina that needed to be delivered to Ms. Naylor. Did Ms. Naylor want it at her office or her home? The instructions we had were not clear, I said. The guy on the phone burst into a small talk about the weather and life on Mondays and I hung up.

What I did not know at the time was that the people who ran the CNS television network had decided Joan Naylor’s life was in jeopardy. Their switchboards, fax machines, and mail and message receptacles in both Washington and New York had been deluged with threats to her life and person. CNS hired a private security firm to keep watch over her around the clock, and the chatty guy was undoubtedly part of the crew.

The network also suspended her. “For her own protection,” said the written press statement from a network spokesman in New York.