“We’re not out to expose anyone,” he says. “We just want to see them as people. It’s fairly casual and informal, not the whole country watching.”

He says that Gephardt and Edwards have done the best so far because they had low expectations, but surprised people because “They came to play.”

The worst performance, he says, was turned in by a stiff candidate who stuck to prepared statements—but Griffin declined to name the guest.

“Chris doesn’t like that,” says Griffin.

At 6:55 p.m., minutes before the start of the Dean interview, which Griffin expected to get the largest television audience, Griffin seemed nervous. He sat with a dozen type-written questions and an unopened water bottle.

Jokes and smiles aside, his legs were pumping and ready to go as he sat in his seat.

The production manager, Rick Jefferson, wasn’t particularly excited.

“We’re all grizzled veterans at this point,” he says, noting that the production logistics were easy this time because they had broadcast from the same place five times before.

Still there was reason to be nervous, for even though Griffin is behind the scenes, it’s clear that Matthews and Griffin are in it together.

At the end of an intense back-and-forth exchange between Matthews and Dean about the candidate’s draft deferral, Dean finally admitted that he had been hoping for a deferral when he answered the draft notice with a letter from his orthopedist and x-rays of his bad back.

Matthews blurts out “thank you” as the show goes to commercial break, and Griffin smiles in the production truck, “Good job!”

The Meatlocker

These are the kinds of news segments that the staff at the pre-show meeting hopes for.

With fruit, cheese, crackers and lattes on the way, the staff gathers in a suite at the Charles Hotel just before 4:00 p.m. to chart out its hard questions and most importantly, to get the order right so that they flow without being predictable.

Matthews and his staff rifle through a dozen newspaper clippings, talking about the big stories of the day as they coordinate their questions on speakerphone with the home office in New York, which works off a more comprehensive set of notes.