Uncle Barky Does Debates... Badly
I respect Ed Bark greatly. He was the television critic of The Dallas Morning News and now is an independent blogger covering the same subject. But he ought to stay well away from politics, including reviewing televised political debates. His analysis of this week's debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reads like it was written by someone more used to watching fake 'reality' shows than following politics. Oh wait, it was.
ABC and its moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulis have been roundly criticized for spending the first half of the debate on "gotcha" questions about Wrightgate, bitter-gate, sniper-gate, Ayersgate, even flagpin-gate. Bark defends ABC.
"Did ABC's critics really expect Gibson and Stephanopoulos to throw out nothing but another round of generic questions about the candidates' only slightly differing positions on the war in Iraq, health care, taxes and so on? Both Clinton and Obama are fully capable, as they again demonstrated Wednesday night, of responding to any question with an automatic pilot restating of their rehearsed-to-death talking points."Are you kidding? Does Bark believe that it's only possible to ask "sharp, provocative questions" about tabloid issues? That substantive policy issues require the moderators to lay back and "let the candidates pontificate," as he put it? Is that really the only choice the moderators had? Of course not.
Bark even implies that these attack questions aimed at Obama worked to his advantage because they give him more time to answer. That's certainly a novel viewpoint.
"Obama got the lion's share of time in the opening hour, with Gibson twice noting that things were 'getting out of balance.' 'I've noticed,' Clinton said with a game smile before acquiescing to a commercial break."Poor, patient Hillary. The moderators spent so much time attacking Obama, she didn't get enough time to pile on herself.
Bark defended his own defense of ABC:
"Maybe you should go back to watching all the debates in which Obama got a virtual free pass. And as noted in the article, two of the supposedly tabloid questions came from voters, not the moderators."ABC didn't tell us that they were going to make up for anti-Clinton bias in previous debates by showing anti-Obama bias this time. The only excuse for piling on Obama is that he's the frontrunner, which isn't necessarily a bad excuse, but let's at least quit pretending the debate was fair.
What difference does it make that ABC found a voter to ask the flag pin question? ABC could find someone to ask any question they wanted. I would have volunteered to ask: What will you do, as President, to prevent future Presidents from abusing the Constitution through signing statements, domestic spying or running torture programs out of the White House? Democrats don't want to talk about that. Neither do Republicans, which makes it all the more important for someone to force an airing of this Constitutional abuse. After a person is elected President, it's too late to pin them down on limiting Presidential powers. A few probing questions by a debate moderator might force them to say something now about a Constitutional issue more important than, say, who loves America more, Obama or his pastor.
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