The Art of the Interview

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Mike Wallace died yesterday.

He was 93 years old so his death, while sad for his survivors, cannot be considered either unexpected or tragic. But his loss is considerable for anyone who appreciates the art of the interview.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Wallace interviewed just about everybody who was anybody — presidents, kings, newsmakers of all kinds. I suppose most of his interviews were conducted in his work for CBS' 60 Minutes. He did some interviewing as a staffer for the University of Michigan's student newspaper, but a lot of the work he did in his youth would be better classified as entertainment.

He did some announcing, even some acting, on radio in the 1940s and hosted some game shows in the 1950s. The latter is not as unusual as it might seem today. In those days, newscasters, as they were called, did it all. In addition to announcing, they did commercials and hosted game shows.

And that generated most of Wallace's income for awhile.

But it was his interview work in the late 1950s and early 1960s that led to his job with 60 Minutes.

In that capacity, he really did interview just about everyone, all the movers and shakers of the late 20th century, but he did say about six years ago that he regretted the one that got away — former first lady Pat Nixon.

I have conducted many interviews in my life, and I can assure anyone who has never done one that it is much more difficult than it may appear. Most people who get interviewed tend to feel that they are somehow doing the interviewer a huge favor by sitting down and answering a few questions, which really puts the interviewer at a disadvantage.

There are some interview subjects who do not think that they are above the likes of any interviewer, but they are rare (and, my experience is, the bigger they are, the more likely it is that they will feel this way).

I've seen more than one interviewer come away with a poor interview because the subject seized the psychological high ground. It takes someone with confidence in himself and the validity of his questions to walk into an interview setting and treat his subjects as equals — and be treated as an equal in return. That was the amazing thing about Mike Wallace.

I share little tricks with my students, and I hope those tricks will help them conduct better interviews, but I often wonder if being a great interviewer isn't one of those things one is born with, sort of like when Stan Musial was hired to coach batting.

Musial was one of the greatest hitters ever to play baseball, but no one, not even Musial himself, could teach his unorthodox batting stance to others. It worked for him. It didn't work for anyone else.

Similarly, I wouldn't encourage young reporters to emulate Wallace — except, perhaps, to study the kinds of questions he asked. He always tried to develop a rapport with his interviewees, but he was tough, and he got right to the point. Sometimes it got him in trouble. Most of the time, it got him great stories.

Broadcasting isn't what it used to be. Wallace's death is a reminder that the practitioners of high–quality broadcasting are just about gone now.

"There simply hasn't been another broadcast journalist with that much talent," said 60 Minutes' executive producer Jeff Fager. That's pretty high praise coming from the chairman of CBS News, a network news division that has been graced by the presence of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Daniel Schorr — and many, many more.

Rest in peace, Mike Wallace.

'I Gave Them a Sword'

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Thirty–five years ago today, journalist David Frost and former President Richard Nixon sat down for the first of the Frost–Nixon interviews in Monarch Bay, Calif.

The interviews were edited into four 90–minute programs that were broadcast in May 1977.

After Nixon's resignation in August 1974, he more or less disappeared from public view for the next couple of years. His presidency was the subject of many books and articles in that time. His successor, Gerald Ford, issued a controversial pardon to the former president about a month after he left the White House, allowing Nixon to avoid a trial, nearly certain conviction and a prison sentence.

But Nixon himself remained largely out of public view.

By March 1977, though, he was ready to give his side of the story.

He may have been about to finish writing his memoirs at the time — or perhaps a completed manuscript had already been delivered to the publisher. I don't know. What I do know is that Nixon's two–volume memoirs arrived in bookstores in 1978 and became huge bestsellers.

I don't recall whether Nixon ever mentioned the upcoming publication of his memoirs during those interview sessions — or whether Frost ever mentioned it, either. But I do recall that Nixon made some tantalizing remarks in the interviews themselves.

Not the least of which was his assertion that "if the president does it, that means it is not illegal" when Frost asked him about the legality of his actions in the aftermath of the break–in.

That's the kind of comment that justifies any kind of behavior, even behavior that is clearly unjustifiable, from a public official, and the Watergate break–in — and the activities it was meant to conceal from public view — are among the most unjustifiable imaginable.

Knowing what kind of man Nixon was — a president who kept a list of his enemies — I have no doubt that he harbored many grudges, but when he spoke with Frost, he attempted to make it appear that he did not. What had happened was his own fault, he said.

"I gave them a sword," Nixon said, "and they twisted it with relish." Had the roles been reversed, he continued, "I'd have done the same thing."

After leaving the presidency in 1974, Nixon spent the last 20 years of his life waging a campaign to rehabilitate his image. Although Nixon spent every moment after he left the White House pursuing that goal, he did so visibly for about 17 — until his death in 1994.

But his P.R. campaign was really only partly successful.

If it had been possible, Nixon would have obliterated all memory of the Watergate scandal that pulverized his presidency and his legacy. But that could not be done.

Because you can't tell Richard Nixon's story without telling the story of Watergate — just as you can't tell the story of Lyndon Johnson without also telling the stories of the Vietnam War and all the men who were killed or maimed in it.

It was a tale that was almost Shakespearean — the man who achieved his greatest ambition and held it in the palm of his hand like a crystal ball and then watched it slip through his fingers and shatter on the floor.

Nixon began that rehabilitation campaign in earnest 35 years ago today.