“Where’s Wayne Slater?” Texas Monthly senior editor Paul Burka asked shortly before a small panel went on the air in the KLRU-TV newsroom last week. Slater wasn’t expected; Burka was referring to the quality of the questions asked in the two presidential debates that had occurred up to that point. Slater is The Dallas Morning News reporter who asked one of several critical questions that sent Republican gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams back to his ranch in Fort Stockton in 1990. In particular, the debate question and follow-up that Slater asked Claytie revealed that the candidate:
1. Did not know the content of a constitutional amendment.
2. Believed it was an unimportant amendment.
3. Had already voted absentee.
4. Didn’t know whether he had voted for or against the amendment.
Slater gently reminded Williams that the amendment pertained to the governor’s appointment powers and asked how he could have cast an informed vote if he didn’t know that. Williams responded that he routinely depended on his wife, Modesta, to keep him apprised of minor down-ballot issues. He and his staff were last seen getting loaded in the upstairs bar at Jalisco, at South First and Barton Creek, before heading for Fort Stockton and the end of a brief political career.
Unfortunately, Slater wasn’t asking questions during the presidential debates. In Boston, then again in Wake Forest, PBS News Hour host Jim Lehrer served up questions so soft and fuzzy that they discouraged debate. It was not until the final Oct.17 meeting in St. Louis, when audience members asked the questions and the always moderate Lehrer only moderated, that there was anything resembling a contest between two opposing political candidates. (Al Gore’s overcoached, focus-group driven, and ingratiating act at the second debate didn’t exactly make sparks fly.)
Lehrer’s failure to ask pointed questions and follow-up in the second debate, however, provided Bush the opportunity to launch into the sort of loopy disquisition that should warn the voting public that this guy is not ready for prime time. Gail Collins of The New York Times latched on to the following Bushspeak passage first. Consider it, and the idea of George W. Bush seated between Yasir Arafat and Ehud Barak at Sharm El Sheik, attempting to negotiate an end to the violence in Israel and Palestine is both hilarious and terrifying.
It’s also important to keep a strong ties in the Middle East with credible ties because of the energy crisis we’re now in. After all, all the energy is produced from — the Middle East. And so I — I appreciate what the administration is doing. I — I hope to get a sense of, should I be fortunate enough to be the president, how my administration will react to the Middle East.
Indeed.
Translated simultaneously into Arabic and Hebrew, a passage like the one above might start, rather than end, a war.
A small bit of good news for Bush is that Hightower Radio goes off the air this week. Several months ago Jim Hightower — a Bush critic, author of If the Gods Had Wanted Us to Vote, They Would Have Given Us Candidates, and a former Texas Ag Commissioner — told i.e. america network president Frank Choice that Hightower Radio would come to a conclusion after the election. It seems like someone in the small network’s management chain wanted to pull the plug earlier. A spokesperson for Hightower said he intends to devote more time to speaking, writing, and editing his newsletter — The Hightower Lowdown.
This article appears in October 20 • 2000.