Jim Lehrer, the Dean of debate moderators, as Bernie Shaw once called him, joins us on Political Wire Conversations.
Moderator of 12 U.S. Presidential debates. He’s also a current member of the Board of Directors for the Commission on Presidential Debates, the group that organizes and runs the general election debates – three with Trump and Clinton and one for the Vice Presidential candidates Pence and Kaine, assuming, of course, they all take place. Maybe Jim hasn’t seen it all, but he surely has seen nearly everything in modern American politics. In fact, that’s what I started with. I really wanted to know: Given everything he’s seen, has he ever seen anything like this campaign. His answer might surprise you. Of course, we spent most of the time talking about debates – future and past. Is there anyone more qualified to discuss Presidential debates in this country? By the way, in case you don’t know the rest of what Jim has done: Not only is he the former executive editor and a former news anchor for the PBS NewsHour, but he’s also written more than 20 books – fiction and non-fiction – along with some screenplays and plays. I’m telling you – check out his author page on Amazon. It’s really something. Oh yeah – one other thing: You may not know, but as a journalist, Jim not only wouldn’t register with any party – he wouldn’t even vote. He said that was a personal choice – he didn’t feel every journalist had to do that, but that’s how he felt. So I asked him – will you vote now? His follow-ups to my question were a lot of fun.
Jules Witcover, author of "The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power"
Sam Wang, Founder of Princeton Election Consortium
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight
Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark, authors of "Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs and Washington Handshakes"
John Avlon, Editor in Chief of The Daily Beast, author of "Wingnuts"
John Dean, author of The Nixon Defense
Alex Lundry
Noam Bramson, Mayor of New Rochelle
Willy Jay on the Supreme Court term
Carroll Doherty, Pew Research Center
David Wasserman, Cook Political Report
Doug Schoen, Democratic pollster
Philip Howard, author of "The Rule of Nobody"
Ken Vogel, author of Big Money
Joe Lockhart, former White House Press Secretary
Nate Cohn, The Upshot/New York Times
Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary
Michael D. Shear, White House Correspondent at the New York Times
Jonathan Alter, executive producer of Alpha House
Jon Ralston, Ralston Reports
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