DEBATES: Candidate Kennedy rose from his nap!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

Kilmeade brought in the trash: "By mid-September all had been arranged."

So wrote Theodore White, describing the process by which the first presidential debates came into being. As White explained in a famous book, the debates would be presented to the public through the auspices of a new electronic medium—through the public's purchase of 40 million brand new TV sets.

The year was 1960. There were no "cable news" channels in the Big Woods. There were no national "talk radio" programs of any major consequence.

All we had were the three major networks. The schedule agreed to was this:

WHITE (page 283): There would be four debates—on September 26th, October 7th, October 13th and October 21st. The first would be produced by CBS out of Chicago, the second by NBC out of Washington, the third by ABC out of New York and Los Angeles and the fourth, again by ABC, out of New York. 

According to White, Candidate Kennedy initially wanted five debates. Eventually, the candidates agreed to hold four—and the four debates were parceled out among the three major networks.

To judge from White's reporting, "debate prep" may have been a bit more casual in those early days. According to White, Candidate Kennedy arrived in Chicago on Sunday, September 25, accompanied by a three-man "Brain Trust"—an entourage composed of three men who were strikingly young.

Theodore Sorenson was 31; Richard Goodwin was just 28. At 43, Mike Feldman was the graybeard of the group. According to White, the candidate's debate prep, such as it was, proceeded as described:

WHITE (page 284): Early on Monday they met the candidate in his suite for a morning session of questions and answers. The candidate read their suggestions for his opening eight-minute statement, disagreed, tossed their suggestions out, called his secretary, dictated another of his own; and then for four hours Kennedy and the Brain Trust considered together the Nixon position and the Kennedy position, with the accent constantly on fact: What was the latest rate of unemployment? What was steel production rate? What was the Nixon stand on this or that particular? The conversation, according to those present, was not only easy but rather comic and rambling, covering a vast number of issues entirely irrelevant to the debate. Shortly before one o’clock Goodwin and Feldman disappeared to a basement office in the Ambassador East to answer new questions the candidate had raised, and the candidate then had a gay lunch with Ted Sorensen, his brother Robert and public-opinion analyst Louis Harris. The candidate left shortly thereafter for a quick address to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (which Nixon had addressed in the morning) and came back to his room for a nap. About five o’clock he rose from his nap, quite refreshed, and assembled brother Robert, Sorensen, Harris, Goodwin and Feldman for another Harvard tutorial skull session.

Several who were present remember the performance [quite] vividly...The candidate lay on his bed in a white, open-necked T shirt and army suntan pants, and fired questions at his intimates. He held in his hand the fact cards that Goodwin and Feldman had prepared for him during the afternoon, and as he finished each, he sent it spinning off the bed to the floor. Finally, at about 6:30, he rose from his bed and decided to have dinner. He ate what is called “a splendid dinner” all by himself in his room, then emerged in a white shirt and dark-gray suit, called for a stop watch and proceeded to the old converted sports arena that is now CBS Station WBBM at McClurg Court in Chicago, to face his rival for the Presidency of the United States.

So the hopeful's debate prep went, with shards of comic, rambling banter and index cards flipped to the ground.

Meanwhile, Candidate Nixon "had spent the day in solitude, with no other companion but Mrs. Nixon, in his room at the Pick-Congress [Hotel]." It seems that his debate prep was even more casual than that of the candidate he opposed.

Mythologies have emerged about this first debate, one of which seems to trace directly to White's famous book. White's greatest concern—his belief that these debates had failed to inform the public—have largely been forgotten in this less rigorous time.

It was, in effect, a simpler time—a time which boasted far fewer means of mass communication. Tonight, Candidates Harris and Trump will stage their first and possibly their only debate—but they'll be operating in a vastly different cultural and journalistic context. 

For better or worse, we've come a long way, baby! Consider what happened last Saturday night when Judge Joe Brown was invited by the Fox News Channel's Brian Kilmeade to please bring in the trash.

TV was new in 1960, and we had only three networks. That first debate was moderated by Howard K. Smith of CBS News. He was only 46 at the time, but according to the leading authority on his career, he had a substantial background:

Howard K. Smith

Howard Kingsbury Smith (May 12, 1914 – February 15, 2002) was an American journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman, political commentator, and film actor. He was one of the original members of the team of war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.

Upon graduating [from Tulane in 1936], Smith worked for the New Orleans Item, with United Press in London, and with The New York Times. In January 1940, Smith was sent to Berlin, where he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System under Edward R. Murrow. He visited Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden and interviewed many leading Nazis, including Hitler himself, Schutzstaffel or "SS" leader Heinrich Himmler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

He had interviewed Hitler himself! The overview continues:

He was one of the last American reporters to leave Berlin before Germany and the United States went to war. His 1942 book, Last Train from Berlin: An Eye-Witness Account of Germany at War describes his observations from Berlin in the year after the departure of Berlin Diary author William L. Shirer. Last Train from Berlin became an American best-seller and was reprinted in 2001, shortly before Smith's death.

Smith became a significant member of the "Murrow Boys" that made CBS the dominant broadcast news organization of the era. In May 1945, he returned to Berlin to recap the German surrender.

Like the not-yet famous Walter Cronkite, Smith had been one of the "Murrow Boys." The background continues:

In 1946, Smith went to London for CBS with the title of chief European correspondent. In 1947, he made a long broadcasting tour of most of the nations of Europe, including behind the Iron Curtain. In 1949, Knopf published his The State of Europe, a 408-page country-by-country survey of Europe that drew on these experiences and that argued "both the American and the Russian policies are mistaken"; he advocated more "social reform" for Western Europe and more "political liberty" for Eastern Europe.

Despite these criticisms of Soviet policies, Smith was one of 151 alleged Communist sympathizers named in the Red Channels report issued in June 1950 at the beginning of the Red Scare, effectively placing him on the Hollywood blacklist.

Beginning on January 11, 1959, Smith moderated Behind the News with Howard K. Smith, a CBS-TV program "analyzing news events and the significance of issues in the news". The sustaining program was broadcast on Sundays from 6 to 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

So matters stood on the night of that first debate. In effect, Smith was a member of an American generation a new president would describe at an early point in his inaugural address:

KENNEDY (1/20/61): Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

The new president was principally speaking of himself and of his administration. But so it also seems to have been with (some of) the journalists of the day, including Cronkite and Smith. 

That said, Smith's days at CBS would soon come to an end. As its thumbnail of Smith's career continues, the leading authority explains:

Reporting on civil-rights riots in Birmingham in the early 1960s, Smith revealed the conspiracy that existed between police commissioner Bull Connor and the KKK to beat up black people and Freedom Riders. He planned to end his report "Who Speaks for Birmingham?" (broadcast date: May 18, 1961 with a quote from Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," but the CBS lawyers intervened. Nonetheless, the documentary caused a stir (leading CBS to be sued and its Birmingham TV station to disaffiliate), and because his contract with CBS forbade editorializing, Smith was suspended and subsequently fired by CBS President William S. Paley.

Smith was out at CBS; he moved on to the less prominent ABC. In April 1996, reviewing one of Smith's books, the Washington Post's Herbert Mitgang puckishly described the ouster from CBS:

HOWARD K. SMITH: TV HISTORY

EVENTS LEADING UP TO MY DEATH The Life of a Twentieth-Century Reporter, by Howard K. Smith St. Martin's Press/A Thomas Dunne Book. 419 pp. $24.95.

In the history of American television, Howard K. Smith deserves a place of honor for being the only correspondent ever fired by a network for daring to quote Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman.

Smith, a CBS News correspondent who had risked his neck reporting from prewar Berlin through the Battle of the Bulge, was covering the riots in Birmingham during the civil rights revolution in the early 1960s. Klansmen, encouraged by Bull Connor, the police commissioner, began to beat up blacks and Freedom Riders with bicycle chains and baseball bats. After giving an account of blood flowing in the streets, Smith, a former Rhodes scholar, ended his planned documentary with a quotation from Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

The network powers summoned Smith to New York. He was told that his commentary violated "standards of objectivity." A CBS lawyer who vetted his broadcasts said, "Smith's quotation from Burke is straight editorial; it's out." He was asked to write a memo explaining the meaning of fairness and balance. At a showdown lunch in the office of William S. Paley, the CBS chairman reached into his pocket and drew out Smith's memo, which emphasized the need to enlighten the public. Paley threw the document across the lunch table at Smith. "I have heard all this junk before," the chairman said. "If that is what you believe, you had better go somewhere else." Goodbye, Burke. Goodbye, Smith.

"Witnessing the savage beatings in Birmingham was my worst experience since the opening of the concentration camps at the end of World War II," Smith writes.

If we choose to take Chairman Paley at his word, there was zero room for "editorializing" at that point in time. At any rate, with respect to the moderator of that first debate, "That's the way it was" at the CBS News of that time.

Is it possible that we the people—we the American people—were, at least in certain respects, a bit less frivolous then? Is it possible that we were dogged by fewer inanities at that time—perhaps by fewer distractions?

To borrow from Harper Lee, is it possible that something like this was true?

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with,

Is it possible that (some of) our journalists were (perhaps) more serious then? We know of no way to answer that question, but there were no "cable news" channels in the Big Woods, and there was no Fox News.

All we had was the three major networks! Within the communication landscape, there were no garbage cans out of which a figure like Judge Joe Brown might be invited to crawl.

Tonight, two candidates will take the stage for their first, and perhaps for their only, debate. 

One candidate was unexpectedly thrust onto the scene when President Biden withdrew from the race. Whatever her actual merits and demerits might be, she has struggled to assemble a campaign as various flyweights fill the airwaves, asking why it has taken her so long.

The other candidate arrived on the scene in 2015 after four years of pretending that President Barack Obama had been born in Kenya. He had sent his agents to Hawaii to figure the whole thing out!

The Fox News Channel had provided the platform for that long-running con. Last Saturday night, with tonight's debate approaching, that channel sent Brian Kilmeade onto the air to introduce Judge Joe Brown.

Brown is a once-famous "TV judge." He crawled out of the garbage can last Saturday night in a type of performance which couldn't have occurred in the days when Theodore White worried about the failure of the television debates to fully inform us the people.

The year was 2024, and we now had "podcasts."  On one such recent broadcast, Judge Joe had called Candidate Harris "a piece of shit." Also, he had referred to her as a "humping hyena."

That performance made him a perfect fit for a "journalist" like Kilmeade. 

This morning, as the debate draws near, the New York Times fills its pages with an assortment of thumb-sucking drivel—with imitations of journalism. Also, the Times insists on ignoring the gruesome "journalistic" culture which now surrounds our election campaigns and our ersatz debates.

We've come a long way, citizens! Candidate Kennedy rose from his nap. Decades later, Brian Kilmeade was eager to bring in the trash.

Kilmeade opened the garbage can. When he did, the major news orgs of Blue America politely averted their gaze. 

Tomorrow: Kilmeade opens the can