Happy humming

Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain by Jim Lehrer

Jim Lehrer. I really like this guy. 


And since this book of his is about presidential debates (one of my most favorite things upon this earth), we’d really be expecting that I’d be over the moon about it.

Well, guys, I liked this book just fine. But for me, it didn’t really take off until the very end. (I’ll get to that in a minute.)

The bulk of the book analyzes the debates from 1960 to 2008. And since Lehrer moderated several of those debates, he can provide some really great insight. 


One of the things that surprised me is that the moderator gets all jittery before the debate, too. I’d always thought of the candidates being all keyed up before a debate, but it turns out the moderators are also “shaking like a leaf,” as Bob Schieffer put it.

So that stuff’s all interesting enough, but it’s the book’s final chapter that really sings. It’s a wonderfully congenial treatise on the importance of both freedom of speech/press and civility in public discourse. (I liked it so much, I read it twice.)

Here’re some beautiful sentences:

“The more voices and views, the better. Always, the better. I do not want anybody shut up. The addition of new and varied and multiple voices in the public mix is terrific for our democracy. I am, in fact, a purist on the First Amendment guarantees of everyone’s right to speak, no matter how disagreeable or ridiculous the words may be.

But.

The First Amendment is about a right, not a requirement. It says nothing about requiring people to attack or inflame others to get ratings or to be notice, or to take positions only for votes or to insult people for entertainment value.” (p. 194)

And here, even more succinctly: “… I believe as a moderator and as a citizen in the virtue of civil discourse as strongly as I believe in the right to uncivil discourse.” (p. 198)

Truly. I’d like to just shake that man’s hand.