Face the Nation: My Favorite Stories from the First 50 Years of the Award-Winning News Broadcast [Hardcover]

Bob Schieffer, moderator of the last Presidential debate and moderator of Face the Nation, has written a second book of memories. In it, he recounts the successful CBS show "Face the Nation."

It is a good read. Unfortunately, there's not quite enough meat in it. The book is over almost before it began. It comes with a 2-hour DVD that I am planning on watching soon. I hope it includes some of the remarkable stories included in the book; the McCarthy interview, the Ali interview, and most importantly, the great Martin Luther King, Jr.

Schieffer has a natural gift to tell a story, and it's a worthwhile read.

I am not a regular viewer of the Sunday political interview program Face the Nation but, while surfing channels, I saw Face the Nation moderator Bob Schieffer discuss his book celebrating the 50th anniversary of the program. Clips from the DVD included with the book were shown. There was the CBS crew in Moscow interviewing Nikita Krushchev in an odd-looking set in 1957. Then they showed a clip from 1959 with Fidel Castro in Havana. Schieffer explained that armed guards (one with a gun pointed at FTN producer Ted Ayers) surrounded the camera crew with Castro giving the probably not too reassuring claim that they were "men of love." What really intrigued me was a clip of the first FTN telecast. Senator Joe McCarthy was interviewed shortly before Congress voted to censure him for his excessive, paranoid, unsubstantiated accusations that many in the government were card-carrying Communists. McCarthy branded the Senate session a "lynching bee" right on the television show. When I was a teacher, I researched several lectures on McCarthy and never heard of this interview. Since I am interested in Cold War history, I bought this book.

The 50th anniversary book covers the following topics: McCarthy and the Red Scare, Krushchev the "big scoop," "Castro day on CBS," Civil Rights, Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers, women on FTN, presidential campaigns, Clinton's impeachment, 9/11, and the war in Iraq. The second part includes select "final thoughts" by Schieffer my favorite being on Prince Charles: "So why is this cause to celebrate? Because he's their prince, not ours" (p. 197). The third section is a brief look at the moderators and producers of FTN through the decades. In the back are statistics listing guests with the most appearances and the longest span of appearances. Part 1, the meat of the book, is only 179 pages of the short 227-page book, so the topics are discussed only briefly. Still, there are some interesting stories.

I am more interested in the Cold War-era topics so the following highlights are mostly from the older broadcasts. On McCarthy, Schieffer explains how blacklists publications like Aware and Red Channels influenced CBS's hiring process (p. 19). One story I have never heard before was that Ed Sullivan wanted to be a respected news journalist and hoped that interviewing Castro (the same day as FTN's interview with the Cuban dictator) would help him be taken seriously in that department by Edward R. Murrow. Sullivan was so impressed by Castro that he donated a 10,000 check to the dictator (Sullivan was soon persuaded to put a stop on the check) (p. 43). Another highlight was the Vietnam chapter and how a long parade of government officials interviewed misled the public (either out of ignorance or intentional deception) as to America's progress in southeast Asia. In more recent news, Schieffer humorously describes Al Gore's attempt to seem more down-to-earth on FTN by being interviewed in a vegetable market in casual, farmer garb. Schieffer points out that the soles of Gore's boots were clean as a whistle (p. 124). The book is a quick read through the main news items in the second half of the 20th century. It includes many photos.

The DVD shows shorts clips of the following: McCarthy, Krushchev, Castro, Roy Wilkens, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, Dean Rusk, Melvin Laird, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Chase Smith, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, candidates McGovern, Dukakis, Perot, Dole, Gore, McCain, Edwards, Dean, and Kerry. On the Clinton story are Clinton's lawyer Bob Bennett and Monica's lawyer William Ginsburg among others and discussing 9/11 are Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. Members of the CBS news team cover the Iraq war and Schieffer offers a final thought. I was a little disappointed that the DVD did not offer more of the early interviews than the shorts clips I saw on television promoting the book. Still it is 2 hours long and adds a star to the score. It greatly enhances the book to see some of these interviews in the flesh.

I picked up this book with the reflection that long-time journalists (e.g., Theodore White & Walter Cronkite) write some very interesting memoirs. Bob Shieffer must have saved the good stories for his other book. Instead of his personal reminisces, we mostly get a self-congratulatory history of the Face The Nation program, and its place in CBS News and as (just) one of the Sunday interview shows.

Even though this is a short book, it feels padded. Shieffer discusses how Face The Nation covered the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, 9/11, and Monica Lewinsky (he thinks it was appropriate for the show to feature that story on 49 Sundays in 15 months). Still, it is interesting and useful to remember how journalists once asked MLK if he shouldn't be more patient, and refused to take woman politicians seriously.

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