BOB GARFIELD: For more than four decades, Walter Mears covered national politics for the Associated Press where in 1977 he won the Pulitzer Prize for the coverage of the Ford-Carter presidential race. Mears was famous for his speedy writing and his uncanny knack for finding the essence of the story. In his new book, Deadlines Past: 40 Years of Presidential Campaigns, a Reporter's Story, he shares his front seat at presidential history and some secrets of the trade. For instance, how to influence a bus full of your colleagues asking, "What's your lead, Walter?"

WALTER MEARS: Because as the lead AP writer, I wrote first, yeah, there was a little tongue in cheek about what's our lead, Walter, but-- I think that everybody wanted to make sure that somewhere in their story, fairly high up, they had covered whatever I thought was the most important part of the story, because otherwise they're going to get a call from their desk saying "The AP has this lead, and we don't even have it in our story."

BOB GARFIELD:One of the criticisms against the way political races are covered by the "boys on the bus" is the fixation on the process and on the horse race as against the actual substance of the campaign and the issues and so forth. I don't think that's a, a ridiculous criticism. What's your take? You've got more experience than most.

WALTER MEARS: I disagree. If you're covering politics, or for that matter, if you're not, and there's a primary campaign on, and you go to a cocktail party, say, with a bunch of people interested in politics, you know, they're not going to ask you what these people's positions on economics are. They're going to say who's going to win? And I always regarded the horse race as an opportunity to get to the issues in a way that might entice people to read about the issues, since the competition is what attracts interest.

BOB GARFIELD:We're accustomed to thinking of how journalism is one of the underpinnings of democracy. The way it is practiced today, especially on cable news, do you sometimes think that --particularly in the 2000 election, for example -- that journalism somehow subverts democracy?

WALTER MEARS: I wouldn't say subverts. I don't have much use for the shout shows and the proliferation of what I regard as largely uninformed, highly noisy commentaries, and I don't think that they further or help the process. I think that because of the technology and the candidates' understandable nervousness about the fact that they're always on the air or on camera, we may know less about them as men and women. When I was first doing this, you used to see fathers with their kids, holding them up in the air, pointing out an unlikely candidate --even Barry Goldwater, when he was so far behind in the polls that he was almost out of sight -- and saying "Remember this. This man could be president of the United States." I don't see that any more. They're in the living room on television all the time. The aura of one of two people is going to be president isn't what it was. Who's to say that's bad? But, but I don't think that familiarity has led to more engagement. In fact, if you look at the, at the participation levels, they go down and not up.

BOB GARFIELD:And nowadays you hear so much about "the liberal media" and the bias that is supposedly attached to television and newspaper reporting. But I've never heard anybody ever say "the liberal wire services." Did you have, personally, and did the wires in general have a better reputation for playing it straight than the newspapers that subscribe?

WALTER MEARS: Our first Washington correspondent famously observed that his business was to communicate facts, not to comment upon them. That said, I think this stuff about the liberal media is a great way for a lot of right wingers to sell books, usually very poorly-written, and media is a word that means whatever you want it to mean. I don't like it particularly. I think that you ought to take journalists, broadcast people, whoever - as individuals - look at what they do and judge that. My father was a very conservative man, and he read a lot of very conservative publications, and he came to believe that there was a meeting in Washington every day at which the news organizations decided on the line -- and he told me about it, and I said "Dad!--" (At the time I was bureau chief of the AP) -- I said "I run the biggest news organization in Washington. They couldn't have the meeting without me." [LAUGHTER] And he said "Well you wouldn't go, but the rest of them are there."

BOB GARFIELD:Yeah. [LAUGHS] [LAUGHTER] You have seen some of the great figures and some of the great characters in American political history. Jimmy Carter had a lot of wonderful qualities as president. He did not have JFK's sense of humor and wit, I guess. There was a time in Japan, you recount, where he was making a speech and was flummoxed by thunderous applause. What happened?

WALTER MEARS: Oh, laughter. Laughter. A friend who had accompanied him on the trip listened to this joke, and Carter's jokes were not the best. And he told a moderately awful joke to a dinner audience in, in Tokyo, and at the conclusion of the joke it was translated into Japanese, and the audience just broke up --fell on the floor with laughter. And afterwards, my friend asked the translator "How did you ever translate that joke to get that kind of a reaction?" And the guy said "I didn't translate it at all. I just said the President has told a joke."

BOB GARFIELD:[LAUGHS] Walter Mears, retired vice president and special correspondent for the Associated Press is author of Deadlines Past: 40 Years of Presidential Campaigning. A Reporter's Story. Walter, thanks so much.

WALTER MEARS: Well, Bob, thank you. I've enjoyed it. [MUSIC]

copyright 2003 WNYC Radio