Posted on 10/22/2012 8:18:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
When CBS’s longtime Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer sits down in Boca Raton, Florida, tonight to moderate the final 2012 presidential debate, he’ll be following three journalists who became targets for criticism over how they handled their moderating duties.
Upset liberals scorned PBS’s Jim Lehrer for taking a hands-off approach in the first debate on October 3, with MSNBC analyst Howard Fineman slamming him as “practically useless” for not jumping into the debate on behalf of President Obama.
Such criticism may have encouraged the activist approach taken by ABC’s Martha Raddatz in the vice presidential debate October 11, and by CNN’s Candy Crowley in the October 16 town hall debate, as both of those journalists repeatedly interrupted the Republican candidate and larded the discussion with a predominantly liberal agenda.
So will Schieffer please liberals and infuriate conservatives by adopting the Raddatz-Crowley strategy? Or will he upset media partisans like Fineman by leaving the actual debating to Romney and Obama?
He surely won’t jump in as an activist conservative moderator. A review of the record shows Schieffer has tilted left in his previous visits to the presidential debate stage, and his approach as a CBS correspondent and anchor is that of a conventional establishment liberal:
■ Moderating one of the 2004 presidential debates between President George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry, Schieffer offered up nine liberal or anti-Bush questions, vs. only three conservative or anti-Kerry quotes, a three-to-one skew. (Eight other questions were ideologically neutral.)
For example, at one point he opened the door for Kerry to champion a standard liberal cause: “Senator Kerry, the gap between rich and poor is growing wider. More people are dropping into poverty. Yet the minimum wage has been stuck at, what, $5.15 an hour now for about seven years. Is it time to raise it?”
Later, he hit President Bush from the left: “Mr. President,...you said that if Congress would vote to extend the ban on assault weapons, that you’d sign the legislation. But you did nothing to encourage the Congress to extend it. Why not?”
■ Moderating a debate in 2008, Schieffer took a more subdued approach with few ideological questions. At one point, he sounded downright conservative, asking both John McCain and Barack Obama about how their proposals would boost the deficit by “more than $200 billion,” a figure that seems quaint in retrospect.
Schieffer actually proposed less federal spending: “Aren’t you both ignoring reality? Won’t some of the programs you are proposing have to be trimmed, postponed, even eliminated?”
But later in the same debate, Schieffer invited Obama to push for even greater spending on education: “Do you think the federal government should play a larger role in the schools and, I mean, more federal money?”
Old Progre$$ives talking heads never die, they just get shuffled off to new assignments.
Reporting FRom Hades, This is Bob Schieffer, SeeBSNooz.
I was under the impression that it was some committee that picked out the moderators and the candidates have nothing to do with it.
Ahhhhhh... no?
Why on earth would Obama know that Crowley had the transcript of his rose garden remarks on the table in front of her? Did she have the transcripts of every single press conference over the last 4 years there? No. But b.o. knew that she had this one.
-PJ
My tolerance for knee-jerk off-the-cuff victim-theme defenses for Rs expired about 2007.
Back when the 47% vid came out Rush was praising the comment and many here followed, then Romney told Hannity it was ‘totally wrong’ and I heard Rush last week say that Romney talking about 47% at all is risky because it can be effectively used against him, used to accuse Romney of wanting to raise taxes on them.
If you ever watched A+E Intervention you will see parents crying and hand wringing over their addict kids, very dramatic, and then you see many of them give their addict kids money to buy more crack or meth claiming they have to to ‘keep them out of jail’. It's called co-dependency.
I am no longer a co-dependent of Republican victim syndrome. They need to grow some....
I honestly don’t know, but it would seem these folks would have to be connected in some way the candidate or the RNC.
I wouldn’t agree to a totally unassociated person or group setting it up.
” My only concern about Savage moderating a debate is that I don’t want anyone using a stage name at something as important as a presidential debate. If he were to do it, it needs to be with his given name. Do any of the liberal moderators use stage names? “
Fair enough....
Savage = Weiner
Schieffer = Alinsky
Crowley = Piven
” I am no longer a co-dependent of Republican victim syndrome. They need to grow some.... “
No, they need to be fired, and replaced.
They will never grow some.
I was agreeing with you and expanding my thoughts.
Also, I was having trouble connecting to this site (only this one) on and off all day so trying to get that and other comment edited and posted was very painful, it took many painful clicks and waiting to see if the page went blank.
I was not meaning to disagree with you. Thanks for mentioning me :)
If your intent was not what I thought it was, then I’m willing to apologize to you. I have no interest in treating people unfairly. I will take you at your word, and I am sorry I took your post the wrong way. Please forgive me for responding as I did.
Almost all your posts here are appreciated. There are some times when they seem rather pointed. The somewhat combative nature of the forum contributes to the ease of taking things that way.
Thank you for your response. Sorry to hear you’re having problems getting in today. That really frustrates me during the debates. I’ve given up trying.
Hope you afternoon and evening goes better.
One thing we can be sure of, if Odumbo did nothing more than walk onto the stage, drop his drawers, defecate on the stage and walk off, the media would declare him the winner.
You have class, period.
I can’t believe he would be so stupid. He has to have seen how the first 2 debates went and the criticism the moderators faced especially Crowley. I am hoping he is such an old fart that he will be thinking about his reputation and will want to at least make an attempt to be fair. He cam’t really help an empty suit anyway.
OR.....he feels nothing really happened to the moderators in the first debates, what does he have to lose. He knows this will probably be his last opportunity as a debate moderator, why not make his career worth something as noble as helping re-elect Obama.
“Romney needs to be prepared to dress-down Schieffer “
No! Schieffer’s going to try to draw him into doing just that inappropriately.
There’ll be a trap this time to turn Romney’s aggressiveness and assertiveness against him.
I would love for MR to say to Zero and Schieffer before the debate begins: “For the record, did you, or anyone on your staffs, discuss the questions to be asked tonight with each other, or in any way discuss the strategy to be used to assist the POTUS? 65 million Americans are waiting for your answers!”
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