At tomorrow's second and final presidential debate, the questioners will be ordinary San Diego residents, screened by the Gallup organization to represent everyone but hard-core supporters of President Clinton or Bob Dole.
PBS newscaster Lehrer has taken some heat from commentators for being bland and, as one critic wrote, "fair minded to a fault" while moderating the first presidential debate and the vice presidential forum.
A town-hall-style debate four years ago between President Bush and Clinton, his Democratic challenger, showed the dangers to the candidates of letting citizens take charge.
While the questions can reflect what is on the public's mind, they also can come from far afield or be downright mystifying.
In the 1992 debate, the evening's third question consisted of a citizen's lecture that disarmed Bush, who had been intent on portraying Clinton as ethically unfit for the presidency.
The questioner deplored "the amount of time the candidates have spent in this campaign trashing their opponents' character and their programs."
Bush was left floundering a second time by a question in which the candidates were asked how "the national debt personally affected each of your lives."
The president wound up saying one didn't need to have cancer to discuss the impact of cancer. Clinton turned the question into a more general inquiry about the economy and talked about "people that have lost their jobs, lost their livelihood, lost their health insurance."
The questioner, Marisa Hall, commented later that Bush was "wishy washy" while Clinton did "a pretty good job."
That debate - like Wednesday's - was characterized as the Republican candidate's last best chance to catch up with his Democratic rival.
If Dole intends to raise character questions, as advertised, he'd better hope the audience gives him the opening, said Wayne Fields, a Washington University professor who has written a book on presidential speechmaking. Dole would look obvious twisting a question on another topic into a discussion of Clinton's flaws, he said.
"If the audience asks hard questions of Clinton, that's fine," Fields said. "Dole has to hope that's what happens. If he raises the hard questions, it's just not likely to work in this format."
Dole's best opportunity to raise character questions may have already passed. In the first Dole-Clinton debate, moderator Lehrer asked the Republican candidate to name one thing "you'd like voters to have on their minds about President Clinton."
Dole played it safe. He said any comment "might be misconstrued," then added, "I happen to like President Clinton personally."
Dole has since decided to be tougher. En route to California and debate preparations, he told an audience in Kansas City, Mo., on Monday that Clinton "does not have an ethical administration and we're going to go into that in the debate."
In raising character as an issue, Dole is handicapped by his 20-year-old reputation as a "hatchet man," arising from a vice presidential debate in which he scowlingly seemed to blame the opposition party for all the "Democrat wars" of the 20th Century.
And Dole's difficult position is underscored by a poll conducted for CNN and Time magazine that said that half of likely voters think Dole has already engaged in too much negative campaigning. Twenty-two percent said Clinton has attacked his opponent too much.
Dole campaign manager Scott Reed told reporters that Dole had been using his "Listening to America" Q-and-A sessions with Republican voters to practice talking with the public, including "the technique about making eye contact, about body language."
Clinton was rehearsing in New Mexico on Monday and promised that "whatever they ask, I'll do my best to answer." Aides drafted "off the wall" questions, including some on administration ethics, to help him prepared for the unexpected.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup organization, said "computer assisted telephone interviewing" had been used to recruit audience members. Interviewers weeded out committed Clinton or Dole voters, but did not insist upon voters who said they were totally undecided - about 5 percent of the population, polls suggest. Instead, they looked for voters who might be leaning toward one candidate but open to persuasion by the other.