The Last Debate

The renowned PBS anchor takes a fictional look at the presidential debate just eight days before the election, and how politics and journalism clash.

It is the night of the presidential debate. The election is eight days away. Republican nominees James Meredith, a fundamentalist Christian whose ambitions border on white supremacy, is pitted against four reporters who have just discovered damaging information that could ruin his career. What unfolds during The Last Debate will change the course of electoral politics and the news business forever.. As "the ultimate insider-outsider" (Washington Post), and as a moderator of presidential debates past and present, journalist and PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer knows the world he writes about only too well. His novel--a satirical and absorbing story of the behind-the-scenes world of news journalism--also exposes the duplicitous posing and posturing of made-for-TV political events. And with the 2000 elections looming ahead, the targets of his satire--religious fundamentalists, self-important journalists, feral network programming heads--could not be more timely.