Word: interviewer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Rather was "pretty chagrined" immediately after the interview, according to one associate, but he quickly gathered his spirits and strongly defended his performance. "I never felt the interview was out of control," he told TIME. "I couldn't get answers, but I did not get mad." Aides who briefed Rather before the interview say the anchor was fully prepared for a heated exchange. "We knew Bush would attack, and we knew he wasn't going to answer the questions," says Producer Martin Koughan. "The trick was, How does Dan keep control of the line of questioning? Better rude than cowed...
...slow his speech and keep his voice from rising to a reedy whine. At Ailes' urging, Bush painfully learned what not to do by watching hours of his awkward TV appearances. Ailes spent a week priming Bush for his announcement speech and was with Bush before the Rather interview, which Ailes had insisted be live, and suggested the cool counterpunch about Rather's walkout. "If a reporter is bullying you, the viewers at home may start to root for you," Ailes advises in his book You Are the Message. "The more inflammatory the journalist, the cooler you should...
...often unruly marriage between politics and television, there are certain charged moments that flicker in the national memory. Richard Nixon tense and sweaty debating an unruffled John Kennedy. Ed Muskie's frozen tears in the snows of New Hampshire. Ted Kennedy groping for meaning and a verb in an interview with Roger Mudd. Ronald Reagan squaring his jaw and asserting, "I'm paying for this microphone, Mr. Green!" Who cares that the man's name was actually Breen? It was great television...
...first, what happened seemed blindingly clear. A powerful TV journalist hectored the Vice President, who had been lured into the interview expecting that it would focus on his presidential campaign. Eager to combat his wimpy image, Bush came to shove, denouncing Rather's tactics and counterattacking by recalling the evening last September when Rather stalked away from his anchor duties and left the network blank for more than six minutes. The tightly coiled anchorman, a combustible character in the coolest of mediums, seemed almost to spring out of his chair, unsettling his audience with high-voltage intensity. It was video...
...series of political profiles. Richard Cohen, senior political producer of the Evening News, lobbied for a different approach to Bush, one that centered on the Iran-contra affair. Rather and other producers agreed. In early January Cohen sent a letter to the Bush campaign requesting a lengthy taped interview for a campaign profile. "Part of our early coverage of the 1988 presidential election has been a series of candidate profiles," he wrote. "We purposely saved your profile for last . . . Dan Rather is very interested in your profile and has decided to do it himself." Then, as well as later...