The Last Debate (20 page)

We of the press in the Virginia Room were also being informed about then of what was happening out in the country because of what was happening down the hall from us on that stage. Young people in blazers moved silently among us, distributing photocopies of stories about the flocking of the people of America to the closest television set.

Then came the main event.

Howley said to David Donald Meredith: “Mr. Meredith, do you know a woman named Jonell Jane Hampstead?”

“I’m not sure,” said Meredith.

The camera was right up close on his face. I could tell—anyone looking could tell—that here was a man in torment. Clearly, after the fact it is easy to conclude that for Meredith the moment had truly come. He had reached the point of ultimate conflict, of no return. It was decision time. And the presidency of the most powerful nation in the world hung in the decision.

Do I, David Donald Meredith, bring this travesty to a screeching halt? But what does it really halt? If I walk off this stage, these terrible people will have quite a story about that, and they will also simply release their other story to their fellow travelers in the press anyhow. I can’t halt anything. They will run it without my comment, my response, my reaction. I will appear to have run from a fight. But if I refuse to play their game, will the people—the real people of America watching this spectacle now—side with me or with them? This is outrageous behavior these four people are engaging in. It goes against everything the press in my America supposedly stands for. If I survive this, I guarantee something will be done about the press in my country. I guarantee it!

Whatever thought route he may have taken to get there, the camera showed the face of a spirit switched to
OFF
.

Howley moved on. He said: “She is a woman who says she worked for you in your Take It Back headquarters office in Charlotte, North Carolina, as a part-time secretary from May 1986 until June 1988.”

Meredith kept his eyes on Howley. With a monumental effort that was actually perceptible to us television viewers, the Republican candidate for president of the United States changed the look on his face as cleanly and decidedly as if he had slapped on a Halloween mask. There, slap, look at me now. Now I am a man at ease with himself, with this situation. I am a picture of serenity and comfort. Look at me and my relaxed state. This absurdity is no problem for me. No problem at all. I can handle these people. I can handle anything. God and the people are with me. It is the godless and the press who are not.
Only
the godless and the press. Serene and comfortable. That is what I am right now. You can see it here in my face.

Again, Meredith said not a word. I do not ever recall even hearing about a few seconds of silence—a full twelve seconds, according to my count from the videotape afterward—that matched those for their shrieking intensity. “Never in the history of American politics has there been a louder silence” was the way the columnist Richard Field described it the next day. The Virginia Room, jammed with more than three hundred people who are seldom quiet, was absolutely noise-free. I had never experienced anything like it, even in personal terms. Postdebate reporting said it happened almost everywhere people were gathered in front of television sets for those twelve seconds.
Click-uh, click-uh, click-uh
, they went, one after the other, as Nancy Dewey and her director, a man named Richard Deutsch, moved back and forth between full head shots of Meredith and Howley.
Click-uh, click-uh, click-uh.
Meredith, Howley, Meredith, Howley, Meredith, Howley.

Howley broke the silence. He said: “She claims in a notarized statement that I have before me now that she observed you striking your daughter Allison, who was then fourteen years old. She said you hit her in the stomach with your right fist after she confessed to you that she had accompanied some friends to a movie called
Last Tango in Paris
starring Marlon Brando.”

Howley stopped. It was an opportunity for Meredith to speak. Was he going to take it? Was he going to remain silent? For how much longer?

Meredith’s mind must have been racing at full throttle. But it could not be seen in his face, which remained in a state of serenity and comfort. Remain calm, remain calm, he must have been saying to himself. You
are calm. Count some numbers. Think of other things. Remain calm. Say nothing. Show nothing. You’re on top of this. You’re in charge. This godless man of the press will not prevail! He will not get me!

Again, Mike Howley went on. “She said that your daughter left your office bent over, crying. She said that when she—the woman employee—moved to help your daughter, you ordered her to leave her alone. Within ten days she was told that her job in your organization had been eliminated. Then she learned in fact that someone else was hired after her departure to fill it. Would you like to comment, Mr. Meredith?”

I felt I was now about to be an eyewitness to a catastrophe, a tragic, earth-rumbling collision. Two elephants butting heads in an open field at a dead run. Two Metroliners crashing head-on north of Baltimore at speeds of 125 miles an hour. I remembered the debate rehearsal again, but I also recalled something I had just read that afternoon. It was a story in that packet of material the research department at
The New American Tatler
had FedExed to Williamsburg for me. Yes, it was something about Meredith’s father in a profile of Meredith in the
Charlotte Observer.
James Grayson Meredith was a car salesman in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, who had dropped dead of a heart attack when he was forty-seven years old. It happened late one Friday afternoon just after a customer had rescinded an order to buy a new blue loaded Ford Victoria four-door sedan. The original sale had put Meredith’s father over the top in a Ford Million-Dollar Salesman contest that had as its prize an all-expenses-paid trip for him and his family to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The shock of losing it after having won it stopped his heart. The
Observer
story said it embedded profound like-father/like-son possibility fears deeply inside Meredith’s mother. As a result, she was obsessive-compulsive in preaching to her lone son David Donald about the lifesaving need to be peaceful, easy, serene, comfortable.

“No, I would not like to comment,” that son said now to Michael J. Howley and the world. His demeanor and his manner were those of a lone son who had been taught to be peaceful, easy, serene, comfortable. “The shame of what you are doing to me right now is on you, Mr. Howley. It is one that is for you to bear and to wear like a crown of thorns. Your soul will bleed from those thorns, Mr. Howley. I have nothing to say. Not now. Nothing at all.”

We in the Virginia Room were informed via distributed wire copy that motorcades of angry Meredith supporters were being organized in Norfolk, Richmond, and in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington to drive to Williamsburg. One of the leaders was quoted as saying: “We will take back democracy from those four arrogant criminals of the press.”

In the control room an ABS producer passed on the same information to Hammond. He whispered it to Turpin, who said: “Great. I hope they arm themselves and come in shooting.” Lilly barely heard the report. He shushed Hammond. He did not want to miss a word of what was going on out there on that stage. What he was experiencing then made up for every bad or awful thing that had ever happened to him. He found himself several times on the verge of humming out loud “America the Beautiful” and other songs, including offbeat ones such as “Mack the Knife” and “Jesus Loves Me.”

Mike Howley said: “Joan Naylor will now ask the next series of questions.”

Everything had happened with such stunning quickness that I had not focused on the fact that Joan Naylor had yet to be heard since the debate began. Joan Naylor, the most experienced and comfortable of the four on live television, had not said one word.

Paul L. Greene chose that moment to speak. “Pardon me,” he said to Howley. “There are two of us up here, Mike. May I comment on what has just been said?”

“Certainly, sir,” said Howley. “Forgive me.”

Greene turned toward Meredith and said: “I would just like for you, Mr. Meredith, to know that what is happening here now is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. I hope you believe that.”

Meredith did not respond. He did not even look back at Greene.

Greene continued: “While I have leveled my criticisms of you on the issues and your opinions and beliefs, I do not believe matters of a personal nature have any place in a campaign for president of the United States. This kind of journalism of the leer that has taken over our airwaves and printed pages is something to be condemned.”

“Shut up!” Brad Lilly screamed at the control-room television monitors. “For God’s sake, shut up!”

Turpin screamed: “Right, Governor! More, more! For
my
sake, more!”

Joan thought at that moment that it was over. Paul L. Greene had stopped them in their tracks. She was so focused on what she was going to do that the lightness or wrongness of what Greene said did not penetrate her consciousness. She only saw this man Greene, standing behind a podium directly across from her, as an idiot, a fool, a ninny. Here we are, on the verge of making you president of the United States, and you’re trashing us. Take it away, David Donald Meredith. The United States of America is all yours!