That was some debate they had up there in Concord, N.H., last week on television station WMUR. Actually, it wasn’t a debate. It was a forum. Actually, it wasn’t a forum; it was a chance for WMUR political reporter Carl Cameron to watch as the candidates kowtowed before him. And it resembled nothing so much as a bad cable-access show. During Gov. Steve Merrill’s opening peroration, the lights went out. Later, during Bob Dole’s portion, the sound went out. And throughout, the viewers went out — of the room, or changed the channel. CNN reported a horrifyingly low rating for the spectacle.
But most interesting was the disappearing act Dole pulled during Phil Gramm’s exchange with Cameron. For those few minutes, the majority leader simply vanished from the stage.
Why? Because he feared Gramm was going to turn and ask him, point-blank and on camera, to take a pledge — a letter that would commit him to $ 245 billion in tax cuts. And you know how well Dole does with pledges in New Hampshire. If those few people who were still watching CNN didn’t notice Dole’s absence, that was due to some clever advance work by Dole’s staff: His handlers had already extracted a promise from WMUR that the camera was not to pan the faces of the other candidates while any of them was talking.
