NONFICTION - Aug. 23, 1992

A BUS OF MY OWN by Jim Lehrer (Putnam’s: $22.95; 256 pp.). “When in doubt about anything, say ‘sir.’ Sir, sir, sir. always say ‘sir.’ ” Jim Lehrer offers this advice (with a knowing smile rather than a bitter smirk) while describing his days in the U. S. Marines, but it’s also a rule he follows each weeknight in his work on PBS’ MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour. Noting that Lehrer, along with co-host Robert MacNeil, respects his interview subjects enough to let them bite a proportion of sound unheard of in commercial news, America’s political leaders have come to see the NewsHour as a haven where they can chuck PR and confess at least some of their real stands on the issues.

Readers of Lehrer’s books, though, will know that he has another, far more irreverent side. And for those of us who enjoy seeing a heathen or two in the temple, observing this irreverence can be a delight. Lehrer hinted at it in his novels about “one-eyed Mack,” the Oklahoma boy who almost becomes U. S. Vice President because he gives a terrific speech at the Democratic National Convention about his quest to find a mummy. Here, however, Lehrer minces no words about his indignation at a system that demands truth about “personal ethics” (behavior in bank accounts and bedrooms) but winks at pervasive lying about opinions and issues.

Seeing a “scandal” in reporters’ failure to challenge statements such as the President’s that Clarence Thomas was nominated because he was the best qualified, Lehrer writes: “You do not have to be anti-Thomas to shout, Lie! Mr. President, that is a lie! You just stood there on your front lawn at Kennebunkport and told a lie! A lie, sir! Stop it! . . . But nobody said that. The people of America, not even the journalists of America, rose up to shout, Lie! We all just kind of smiled and said, Oh, my. That certainly isn’t right, but please, pass another beer--or martini or glass of milk or Diet Pepsi. Our president lies, life goes on.”

Through most of these pages, however, Lehrer’s voice is more that of empathetic novelist than outraged polemicist. The joy of his childhood (looking up to the drivers in his father’s bus company as they negotiated nobly through snowstorms in their starched and pressed gray uniforms), the pain of his adolescence (when the bus company failed and he had to watch his father beg for credit) and the fragility of his middle age (when he suffered a heart attack) all seem to have gifted him with an unusual ability to laugh at the everyday problems he encounters in his work at the NewsHour. Typical is the semi-prominent retired diplomat who showed up in Lehrer’s Washington studio one night “drunk. smashed, juiced, pickled, soused.” Shortly after Lehrer went on the air live, the man’s earpiece fell out. “He tried to find his left ear to stick it back in. He stuck it into his cheek. Then up around his nose. Below his ear and above his ear. I asked him a follow up . . . just about the time he tried to insert the earpiece into his chin.”