Gotchas: some good, not so good

Most of those seemingly unfair “gotcha” questions this presidential season appear to be aimed at Republican candidates, but that’s because, like Lincoln’s common people, the Lord made so many of them. Meanwhile, the obscenely few Democratic candidates are ducking debates and even press conferences that are gotcha producers. With all that in mind, a little history and perspective are in order.

A gotcha question can be defined as one that seems to trap a candidate into giving an answer that is damaging to his character, his cause or both. Sometimes it’s a hard question, other times, a snarky one. The distinction can be difficult to fathom, as the gotcha part is often in the eye of the beholder. 

It’s pretty clear, however, that gotcha questions have been bipartisan. In fact, you can trace the first truly gotcha questions — there’s a tie — to the 1988 campaign and both targets were Democrats. One destroyed Gary Hart, then the front runner, and the second helped defeat Michael Dukakis, the nominee.

The Hart gotcha has been overshadowed in political lore by the famous photograph that illustrated it. You surely remember the picture: There was candidate Hart, sitting on a dock, dressed in a T-shirt bearing the legend, “monkey business,” with a lovely woman, not his wife, aboard his lap.

The photo didn’t turn up until after a sloppy stakeout by The Miami Herald revealed Hart may or may not have weekended with the same woman. But The Washington Post was also working on a story dealing with another Hart affair of the heart, and it was a Post reporter who asked the gotcha:

“Have you ever committed adultery?” 

Hart angrily refused to answer but after the reporter privately told him the paper knew about a second woman, he quit the campaign and the paper quite properly dropped the story. 

“It was well known around Washington that Hart liked women and that all the women he liked were not his wife,” writes Matt Bai in his book on Hart, “All the Truth’s Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid.” But Hart assumed his avocation would be tolerated, or protected, by the media, as had the peccadilloes of past pols. He was wrong.

The second gotcha question of the campaign was asked by CNN’s Bernard Shaw during a debate between the Democratic nominee, Gov. Michael Dukakis, and his opponent, Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Shaw, who liked to think of himself as the asker of tough questions, knew Dukakis was opposed to capital punishment, but found a new way to ask about it:

“Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” 

“No, I don’t, Bernard,” Dukakis quickly replied. “And I think that you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty all of my life.” 

Later, staff members argued Dukakis responded so coldly because he wasn’t feeling well, had a virus, was running a fever, but Susan Estrich, Dukakis’s campaign manager, ultimately admitted that, “When he answered by talking policy, I knew we had lost the election.” 

You might agree these questions were a bit rougher than asking Donald Trump to identify his favorite Bible verses upon hearing him boast that the Bible was his favorite read, which, in turn, caused Ted Cruz to accuse debate reporters of picking on Republicans while asking the Democratic candidates fawning questions.

Actually, Anderson Cooper’s first debate question to Hillary Clinton sounded rather gotcha: “Will you say or do anything to be president?”

In between the first gotchas in the 1980s and the present festivities, there were plenty of stupid and petty gotchas. A reporter asking George W. Bush to identify the presidents of Chechnya, Taiwan and other exotic places comes to mind. 

But there was also Katie Couric’s interest in knowing what papers and magazines vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin regularly read. When Palin answered by speaking of her “great appreciation for the media,” Couric tried again and Palin revealed she read “all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.” And Couric was accused of being unfair.

Recently, Palin admirably told an interviewer, “I had a crappy answer but it was a fair question.” And so it goes.

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.