This brings me to the issue of experts. There is a reluctance sometimes to say that there are people who actually know a lot about an issue who can help us. And if that is not the problem, the other problem is to assume that there is some expert answer to some particular policy question. I think both views are mistaken. On the one hand, there are a lot of people who know a lot more than each one of us does as an individual about some particular problem. On the other hand, and I dont think this gets conveyed enough to people, experts radically disagree with each other. We could elevate the nature of the conversation if we made very clear to people that very smart, very able people who have looked at problems at great length come to radically different conclusions. We should then try to explore why that is. In the end, most of those debates among experts are going to be solved in politics, which means they are going to be solved by the voters who are our readers, our listeners, our viewers. We have an obligation to bring the best arguments to people, not simply the worst arguments.

     Another criticism of civic journalism is that civic journalists often look for consensus when consensus doesnt exist. In some cases thats fair, in some cases thats not fair, but for those of us who are trying to clarify choices for voters at election time, I think the obligation is to try to reach a higher level of disagreement. Somebody once said that the hardest thing in the world is to reach true disagreement. When I say a higher level of disagreement, what I mean is that we should look at an election campaign and say, These folks are arguing about all this stuff, and sometimes the argument doesnt shed too much light on the particular subject at hand, but the argument is important. Lets try to elevate that to say they actually are disagreeing about something important, and that there are real, genuine, deep divisions in the country about whether we should go here or there on that particular problem. Our jobs, I think, is to make very clear what those choices are and to have people who can articulate those choices as clearly and honestly as possible talk to the people whom we are talking to.

     I would like to close by talking a bit about civics education. I wrote a column last week which got much more response than I ever anticipated. It was a column about the problem of civics education in our schools and that the civics textbooks arent very good and that a lot of schools tend to downplay this. These days, most people who teach civics arent happy with the way its taught. We are clearly not teaching kids that being involved in the great democratic experiment is something very much worth doing. I suggested that, perhaps, a society that is utterly disengaged civically, might be getting the civics education it deserves.

I have argued to friends and editors of newspapers for a long time that we are in the only business that actually has an economic interest in higher voter turnout, and I know you have been arguing among yourselves about whether journalists have an obligation to increase turnout or not. One of the closest correlations that you can find in the polls is between reading a newspaper and voting in an election. Newspapers, I think are fundamentally civic, and that is true whether you like civic journalism or not, because people dont just come to the media to learn about sports (even though I love sports) or to read recipes (and you can look at me to know I like recipes). Most of the people who come to journalism do so because they care about our public and our civic life. Our obligation is to open an invitation to people to come into that process of public and civic life. Our obligation is to say that you are in a democracy and whether you like it or not you have an obligation to bear at least some of the load that you have taken on by being a democratic citizen. And finally (and this is where I would love our conversation to go) this whole process can be an awful lot of fun.

     We had a time in the 19th century when people looked to politics for entertainment (and I dont mean the way we look to politics for entertainment now). Political parties would draw people out for grand festivals and for marches. People would come to speeches and actually expect that they would learn something and might be amused by what it was they heard.

     We are missing that now in our politics. I dont think journalists can provide all of that. Politicians have to think a little bit about the way they carry out their task in this great democratic experiment. But I do think that by issuing an invitation to people, by saying that politics is important to them and it can be fun, we might make the democratic experiment work a little better than it does now…and Lord knows, it certainly needs to.

[question]: What did you think about the reporter who asked the candidate George Bush to name the obscure foreign leaders? The fact it was done, and how it was covered afterwards?

Dionne: I had, as I feel on a lot of things political, a profound ambivalence about that. Part of me, as a human being, admired the chutzpah of the guy who would ask that question, and I kind of admire chutzpah in reporters, the fact that he had this presidential candidate in front of him and he would be willing to do that. When I found that he was under attack, I was inclined to defend him, just because I like his chutzpah. On the other hand, there arent an awful lot of people whom I might actually want to be president who could have answered each of those questions. That was the problem with the questions and the way the whole thing was played.

     Its interesting how much campaign coverage operates as metaphor. Even if you thought that the particular questions werent terribly legitimate, that somebody could not know the answer to one of those questions and be a decent president, those questions became the reason a reason for (or if someone is a Bush supporter, an excuse for) exploring the whole issue of whether this person is qualified to be president. How seasoned he his, how would he deal with foreign leaders it led to some great political cartoons. I loved the particular political cartoon where Bush is on the air and says We are going to bomb the leader of that L-shaped country, whatever the hell his name is. The coverage that followed, that got into the subtleties of whether George W. Bush is ready to be president or not, was pretty good. So what you have is a reporter with chutzpah asking questions that might not be fair, that led to some fairly decent coverage.

[question]: A lot of the way candidates campaign now, to segments of the audience, has become such a scientific formula to get to the win column. Its difficult sometimes for candidates to even go on the air, like in a mini-debate or in a large debate, because its not part of their strength. How do we force candidates to be accountable to the public, other than just pushing for a news conference? How do we get them out there, to engage them in a long-term discussion?

Dionne: In the end, I dont think there is any way to force a candidate to debate if that candidate perceives absolutely no interest in debating. The only person who can do that effectively is the opponent of that candidate, and if the candidates lead is big enough, that doesnt even work. Lets take George W. Bush right now. Circumstances are going to force Bush to engage in a whole lot more of that kind of discussion, because in his case not engaging earlier and not gaining the practice he seemed to need to do it, put so much pressure on the debates at this moment in the campaign, where according to his own allies hes failed. Hes going to have to do a whole lot more of this. In the case of this presidential election, were going to see more of all these candidates together than even those of us who actually watch this stuff might want to do. My sense is that debates are the one moment when most voters figure they can, in an efficient way, make some judgment. Thats a good thing.

     The other way to do it is to simply use whatever is said in public to inform people. When you look at the number of words any given candidate produces, either through advertising, or on his or her web site, or in speeches, there are lots of opportunities to use those words to explore an awful lot of other things. When George Bush talks about the environment, Im sure a lot of reporters are going to go back and say, What did he do about the environment in Texas? In this whole health care debate, on the Democratic side, youre seeing a lot of people go back and look at where Bradley and Gore were, how does what theyre doing now relate to what they did in the past? I dont think we can rely on ourselves to force anyone to do anything thats against their own interests. Its very rare that that succeeds. You take what youve got, and reporters can learn a lot and provide an awful lot of information by doing that. You can package it in ways that people might actually want to watch or listen to, or read. But I just dont see any way we can force people to act against their own interests.

[question]: The airwaves belong to the public. Do you think all broadcasters should be required to like free air time for federal candidates, and if so, what kind of effect do you think that would have?

Dionne: My own solution to this is to say, yes, there should be provisions made for free air time and that you could pay for this through some kind of tax credit to the broadcasters, which is a backdoor way of publicly financing campaigns. I have always thought that this could actually be done, because Republicans would like it because its a tax cut, and Democrats would like it because its public financing of campaigns. It may be the only way you would ever get this done with a lobby like the National Association of Broadcasters around. They could argue that in some small markets free time could be an economic burden on them. I dont see any reason why we cant just compromise. Ive talked to campaign reformers about this and they see it as a sell-out to the N.A.B., but if you want something like this to happen somehow, that compromise is worth doing.

     The real question is what form should that time take? That I am torn about. Purists say there should only be candidates talking to the public themselves, without advertising, without any intermediary. I respect that argument, but Id actually like people to watch this stuff, and that might not be the most attractive package for people to look at. If a candidate could produce something that might be longer than thirty seconds but could actually convey something that might hold the audience for that time, I think you can make a case that that would be better than just having the candidate sit at a microphone and talk to the public. I think the main requirement would be that the form should be longer than the thirty-second advertisement. A lot of countries do this. In Britain there are political broadcasts that people actually watch every night. If I remember right, the parties have about fifteen minutes, and they do a very mixed presentation: a little bit of advertisement, some feel-good partisan documentary, candidates talking directly to the people. Some mixed format like that might be better than simply the candidate talking to people, because somehow I bet someone will find ESPN or a fifty-year-old movie at the moment the candidate comes on the air and takes his free time.

     Id have the free time requirement in exchange for the tax credit, and then figure out if you could allow candidates to use a format that might draw people in to watching them.

[question]: Take a candidates drug use prior to becoming a political candidate. Is that a fair question for a reporter to ask, and is a candidates refusal to discuss possible drug use a fair issue?

Dionne: That sounds like a trick question. Thats a good question. My general view is that any question a reporter wants to ask is at some level a fair question. Candidates can choose to answer those questions or not. The issue is: is this a central concern for voters, should it dominate coverage for days and days.

     Lets take the Bush example, which is obviously the one youre talking about. This question was asked in 1992, and nobody shrank from it. It was asked in 1988 after Doug Ginsberg was nominated for the Supreme Court and went down. I always said that Ginsbergs nomination died for the sins of marijuana users, because once he was rejected as a Supreme Court nominee, it suddenly because acceptable for a candidate to go out and say, Okay, I smoked marijuana. And so Bruce Babbitt said he did, and Al Gore said he did, and at one of the strangest press conferences Ive ever been at Richard Gephardt said he didnt, and the press spent most of the time asking Why didnt you? Whats wrong with you for not using marijuana? He never got forgiven for having a dog named Spot and a wife named Jane… Bill Clinton was asked it, and he answered and gave his famous response that he hadnt inhaled (which, parenthetically, I believe is actually a true statement from Clinton).

     The great paradox is that it became a symbol of a certain fudging on Clintons part, and the fudging is quite a legitimate issue with Clinton, but everything you know about Clintons allergies said he might well not have inhaled. He was asked it, no one complained at the time, and I think its a reasonable question to ask. In the case of Bush, whether this answer is legitimate or not will be tested by the voters and by his opponents. He sits in an odd place now, where he has told us just up to the point where he hadnt used drugs, but has said before that I wont answer, and then we have to figure out what that means. I have a hunch that in a closely fought campaign this issue will somehow come back.

     Do I personally think our choice for the next President of the United States should hang on this questions alone? No. Do I think that there are some interesting questions surrounding this when you look at drug policy in America, if the drug in question is cocaine? Well, yeah, that does raise some interesting concerns. I dont think it would be decisive for me as a voter, but I dont think its illegitimate for someone to have asked that questions. One of the reasons there was the feeding frenzy around this issue at the time, is because it took Bush so long to figure out exactly where he wanted to be on the question. There are many things you can blame us for, but not that.

[question]: When I interview lesser known candidates, they answer my questions. When I interview better known candidates, they dont. How do I get them to answer my questions?

Dionne: Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose… That explains the behavior of the lesser known candidates. My experience in covering this is that you can never get somebody to say something they dont want to say, if they are smart. You can ask a million different ways, and you can report it. If you look at the coverage of the last couple of debates, journalists can pretty well say that someone took a question and changed the subject. That they didnt answer the questions. You can badger someone, but its not clear that works. A refusal to answer a badgering by the press often makes them look better and still doesnt get you the question answered. The best one can do is either try to answer the question some other way outside the voice of the candidate, or just report a candidates persistent evasiveness.

     In some ways, to have such an experience on tape can be very revealing to people if you can figure out how to package that as a piece. That if you ask Al Gore what time is it and he says its blue, or its time to ditch Bradleys health plan, that does tell you listeners something about whats going on. Maybe thats not always easy to do when people face competitive pressures to get their story on the air instead of somebody elses story, although I have a hunch that listeners would be very interested in seeing that. Sometimes we so produce things that we pretend that we got information out of candidates that we actually didnt. Perhaps you would shock listeners into listening if you said, This is what we got, which really isnt much, and heres why its not there. That sort of thing is easier to do in print instead of on radio or television, but I think its a doable thing.

Thank you.

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