In Search of Questioners

By William A. Henry III.

The League runs into problems putting together a panel

Nearly every candidate for national office complains at some point that the press spends too much time pursuing its own vision of the issues and not enough allowing the candidate's message to get through to voters. Yet when offered the opportunity to debate on TV, the campaigners have spurned proposals for head-to-head confrontation and insisted instead that reporters ask questions, as the Reagan campaign demanded this year. Participation by journalists turns what could be an unpredictable, even uncontrolled, exchange into a variation on the safe, familiar format of a press conference.

Despite reporters' growing misgivings about becoming too much a part of the campaign process, journalists have been a part of every presidential debate since the first Kennedy-Nixon encounter in 1960. To all outward appearances, there have been only cosmetic changes in the debate structure established then and adapted in 1976, 1980 and 1984. But behind the scenes, a new factor this year caused major news organizations to threaten to boycott future debates: for the first time, both campaigns misused their veto power over the selection of questioners in an effort to secure a friendly panel.

The League of Women Voters has accorded campaigns veto power since it began sponsoring the debates in 1976. Explains President Dorothy Ridings: "If a candidate feels there is some reporter who is totally opposed to him as a person or to his positions, it will affect his performance." There was a general understanding that the veto would be used only in extreme circumstances. In 1976 neither side objected to any reporter. In 1980 a handful were excluded, but not enough in any debate to force the League to expand beyond its usual slate of about twelve potential participants. For the exchange between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, however, 83 journalists were considered and only three were acceptable to the campaigns and also willing to appear. Each side knocked out about an equal number. Said Ridings: "There was abuse of the process by both campaigns. The letter of the agreement was lived up to, but the spirit was not."

League organizers say that what may have started as gamesmanship to unnerve the other side simply got out of hand. Says one participant: "A certain dynamism took over. One party became very harsh, and the other side then said, 'All right, we'll do the same thing.' " Of the first dozen names submitted, the Democrats reportedly agreed to five, the Republicans to just one: James Wieghart, national political correspondent for the Scripps-Howard newspapers and former editor of the New York Daily News. After rejecting another group proposed by the League, each campaign countered with suggested names: some were rejected by the other side and some by the League, which wanted a mix of sex and race of reporters and in type of news organizations represented. A senior White House official said that the Reagan campaign had excluded three reporters, on what appeared to be a political basis: William Greider of Rolling Stone, whose Atlantic Monthly interviews with Budget Director David Stockman raised questions about the integrity of the Reagan budget-planning process; Nashville Tennessean Editor John Siegen-thaler, who served in the Kennedy Administration; and Jerrold Schechter of Esquire, a former TIME correspondent who served in the Carter Administration.

As it turned out, the two members finally added had stronger ideological ties than most potential questioners: CBS News Correspondent Diane Sawyer worked for Richard Nixon at the White House and after he resigned, and Baltimore Sun Reporter Fred Barnes writes a column for the conservative monthly American Spectator. A fourth seat was offered to two New York Times reporters, Gerald Boyd and Hedrick Smith, who refused because they disapproved of the extensive vetoes. The Times's Washington editor, William Kovach, announced that the newspaper would boycott further debates this year: "We cannot encourage a process that has a political saliva test administered by candidates. We all know where that leads--to asking the White House who we can assign to cover it." CBS News President Edward Joyce also pulled his reporters out of contention for subsequent debates.

The selection process for the vice-presidential forum Thursday was less tortuous. Ridings insisted that the slate be chosen largely from an original list of twelve, and to complete the process, she presented each campaign with pairs of potential panelists who had to be accepted in tandem. That approach produced a balanced group whose questions seemed a bit sharper in tone and follow-up than those posed by the presidential inquisitors. Its members: Robert Boyd, Washington bureau chief of the Knight-Ridder newspapers, Norma Quarles of NBC News, John Mashek of U.S. News and World Report and Jack White of TIME.

Despite the slight improvement in the approval process, Ridings said that she would not deal with campaign subordinates but would seek to discuss the process and perhaps establish a list during a conference telephone call with Mondale Campaign Chairman James Johnson and White House Chief of Staff James Baker. After the campaign is over, the League is considering meeting with reporters and political figures to work out a new system that will give candidates less leeway in exercising a veto. Says Ridings: "We do not expect journalists to be political eunuchs. We all have our thoughts and beliefs, but we can separate that from our duties."

-By William A. Henry III. Reported by Kathleen Brady/New York and John E. Yang/Washington

With reporting by Kathleen Brady, John E. Yang