John Dickerson is a political junkie, peppering his conversations with references to previous election cycles and stats from contests in decades past. | AP Photo Inside CBS host John Dickerson's debate prep The network plans a debate focused on foreign policy and Wall Street.

The day before the New Hampshire primary, CBS anchor John Dickerson walked into an American Foreign Legion post in Manchester to observe a Ted Cruz event. The host of one of the big Sunday talk shows and the moderator of Saturday’s Republican debate went nearly unnoticed, slipping in among reporters with little fanfare. It seems that few people noticed him, or if they did, they didn’t care.

The CBS team is keen to keep the focus tonight off its “Face the Nation” host too.


"My goal is to be a window; you see the candidate, I’m just making it easier for people to see what the candidates believe and think,” Dickerson said in an interview in his barely-unpacked offices in the week before the first primaries. "We want to illuminate things so people feel like they have some control over this thing that’s happening on their behalf. They’re out there talking and trying to work out answers and we’re trying to facilitate that for people in the audience."

In the corner of Dickerson’s barely moved-into office at CBS’ Washington bureau, brown butcher paper hangs on the wall. It's where Dickerson has mapped out the questions he'll ask at the debate in a big spiderweb-like flow chart of topics, questions and comments. Over days and weeks, the chart expanded until Dickerson ripped the paper off, folded it up and took it with him to planning meetings with the rest of the CBS debate team.

“It’s like outlining but less linear,” Dickerson said of the butcher paper method, something he said he “always wanted” in an office.

“We’ve got about 150 questions planned. I have had questions I’ve wanted to ask for 10 years,” he added.

Part of Dickerson’s preparation for the debate has included dozens of interviews with policy experts, his weekly interviews with the candidates as host of “Face the Nation”, the Slate podcast "Whistlestop", and reporting from the trail.

Dickerson is also a political junkie, peppering his conversations with references to previous election cycles and stats from contests in decades past. The 1980 presidential debates serve as an examples of a debate that illuminated real differences between the candidates and famed NBC News anchor John Chancellor, a moderator he admires.

"When he unfurled the brown paper and tacked it up on the wall in Des Moines (before a Democratic debate) I thought it was a joke. Then I went and took a closer look and I realized this man is slightly obsessed but it became actually a road map for what we were going to do," said CBS News Executive Editor Steve Capus. "He’s a great collaborative player."

Dickerson, as he prepped for the debate, said he would have never guessed the anger and restiveness in the country would translate into Donald Trump rising to front-runner status in the Republican primary.

"That he would be able to survive all the things he’s survived, that he would totally change the posture of a party that ended the last presidential campaign by talking about the need for immigration reform and his number one issue would be the opposite message that came out of the Republican Party autopsy is one of the wonderful thing about politics -- that it’s a total surprise," Dickerson said. "That’s what makes races so much fun to cover -- they're a surrpise and people get to make the choice and not us."

Dickerson said that in his dozen interviews with Trump, the New York billionaire answers some questions more bluntly and candidly than other politicians.

The questions facing the candidates on Saturday will likely focus on foreign policy and Wall Street than spats between the candidates, the network said.

"While we're doing the debate prep, we kept an eye on Wall Street, an eye on Syria and what the Russians were saying that was going on in Aleppo, and we kept our eye on what the candidates were saying on the campaign trail. There are four timely areas of discussion and I know that we’ll be doing that into Saturday," Capus said. "I think in our last debate we were still sitting in a conference room about 25 minutes before the debate, putting the final touches on the questions."

Other questions, such as whether Sen. Ted Cruz is eligible to run for president, an issue Trump resurfaced this week, are less likely to be raised by the moderators.

"If it’s something one candidate is shooting at another about, you have to worry, are you doing the candidate’s work for them? Is this going to tell us something?" Dickerson said.

Capus emphasized that CBS is not looking for flashy cage matches to capture big TV moments.

"We want to keep focusing forward," he said. "We know that the candidates are going to go after each other. I think that other news organizations get in trouble when they feel like they’ve got to generate food fights between the candidates."