The One To Watch

In an election season like no other, CBS News’ JOHN DICKERSON is the voice of reason

- Tom Roston

As the HOST of FACE THE NATION and POLITICAL DIRECTOR of CBS NEWS, John Dickerson has become the straight face of news in particularly confounding times. So much so that Stephen Colbert likes to call him “elvish,” for his preternatural sense of fairness and, perhaps, his ability to rise above the human fray. After Dickerson moderated two contentious presidential primary debates, he was dubbed by many as the sole winner. 

D.C. politics runs in Dickerson’s blood. He was raised inside the Beltway—having grown up in the 36-room Merrywood mansion where Jackie Kennedy once lived as a child—and his well-connected parents entertained the Washington elite. His father, C. Wyatt Dickerson, was a businessman; his mother was pioneering journalist Nancy Dickerson, who was CBS’s first female correspondent in 1960 during another tumultuous era. So it seems preordained that Dickerson would be right here, right now.

But Dickerson, a consummate news junkie known for his meticulous research and incisive articulation, earned his place after years of working as a Time magazine correspondent and Slate columnist. He has been married to his college girlfriend, media coach Anne, for more than 20 years, and they have two children. Watch! got on the phone with Dickerson while he was in New York City’s Penn Station on his way home to Washington, D.C., after he appeared on CBS This Morning, where he was once again called on to provide a steady compass to help navigate the news.

You moderated two incredibly charged debates, to borrow a phrase that you used during the Republican one; do you think those forums helped steer the national conversation out of the ditch and onto the road?