Retiring PBS NewsHour host Jim Lehrer admits in his new book “Tension City” that he’s had a lot of trouble throughout the years saying no when asked to moderate presidential debates. (He’s moderated 11). But he did say no to one very well known fake one.
In 2005 before Forrest Sawyer stepped in to host a live debate for the TV series “The West Wing,” Lehrer had been tapped to do it by the show’s then-executive producer Lawrence O’Donnell, now an MSNBC talking head.
“My first reaction was pleasant, appreciative — and negative,” Lehrer writes in the book, which uses Lehrer’s unique position as both moderator and journalist to discuss every presidential debate starting from Kennedy-Nixon to the 2008 debates between President Obama and Sen. John McCain.
Lehrer reconsidered and agreed to the “West Wing” cameo, then changed his mind again and pulled out. “Oh it would have been fun, that’s my only regret, it would have been fun to do,” he told Yeas & Nays Monday, explaining that it was against NewsHour policy and his own professional policy to do so. “If someone were to invite me to be an actor and play the role of an assistant district attorney on ‘Law & Order’ that would be different, but to play myself as a journalist, or in the case of ‘The West Wing’ I would have been playing myself as a moderator, I think that’s inappropriate,” he explained.
Lehrer had already learned one lesson about blurring the lines after he named a fictionalized character for his 1995 novel “The Last Debate” after former presidential candidate Ross Perot. Perot was not pleased.
“He felt that I had abused that long, friendly relationship by making fun of him in the novel,” Lehrer wrote. “I got overcome with being cute was what it boiled down to, I thought he would think it was funny, but he didn’t and I can see why he didn’t,” Lehrer further explained. He told us that the two had buried the hatchet, though admitted in the book that Perot refused to grant him an interview for it.
“Tension City” is on sale Tuesday.
