Posted on 04/19/2008 5:19:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Take cover, ABC! Incoming!
“[Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos] disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself.” – Will Bunch, Philadelphia Daily News
“Perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.” – Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher
“… all the substance of a Beavis and Butt-Head marathon.” – Walter Shapiro, Salon
“… petty, shallow, process-obsessed…utterly divorced from the actual issues that Americans want to talk about.” – Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic
“…Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos turned in shoddy, despicable performances.” – Tom Shales, The Washington Post
What could ABC’s Democratic presidential debate moderators possibly have done to elicit such vitriol from the elite liberal media?
Stabbing the sacred cows, that’s what. Leftwingers in the media and the blogosphere are furious that during Wednesday’s debate, the ABC journalists had the effrontery to ask Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton some tough character, values and judgment questions the candidates would rather not answer.
Obama was forced to explain why he refuses to wear the American flag in his lapel, why he associates with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, why he associates with America-hating, racist pastor Jeremiah Wright, and what he meant when he told a San Francisco audience that small-town Americans “cling to” guns and religion. Clinton was forced to address the widespread public perception that she is dishonest, based on her misrepresentation of her visit to Bosnia.
This was no “meaningless inquisition about loose semantics and questionable acquaintances,” as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote today. By devoting the first half of the evening to character questions, Gibson and Stephanopoulos improved the quality of the presidential debates.
Critics are saying ABC should have focused on the “issues,” by which they mean Clinton’s and Obama’s policy proposals. Of course the policy proposals are important. That’s why ABC devoted the second half of the debate to them. But character, values and judgment ought to outweigh the “issues” when we’re electing a president.
For one thing, the personal character of a president affects his job performance and the moral example he sets for the nation. For example, Bill Clinton – enough said.
Also, nobody knows what the issues will be six months after the election. All we can know about is the character of the person we put in the White House. President Bush’s signature issue during the 2000 campaign was Social Security reform. His proposals were inevitably killed by gridlock on Capitol Hill, but long before Social Security privatization died, the issue was obscured by the rush of international events. Scant weeks after Bush took office, the Chinese government tested his mettle by taking hostage an American aircrew. Eight months after taking office, al Qaeda attacked America on 9/11. With war thrust upon us, even some Democrats reportedly admitted they were relieved that George Bush, and not Al Gore, won the 2000 election.
ABC’S tough questions provided some insight into how the candidates might handle tough situations. We learned more about Obama and Hillary in the first half of the debate than the second half, when they drearily recited their campaign talking points and demonstrated again there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them on the “issues.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel observed today that in recent weeks,
“Yes We Can” has devolved into “Who the Heck Is This Guy?” Mr. Obama’s political brilliance to date has been to use his message of hope to deflect questions about himself or his record. But the San Fran comments proved one scandal too many; man and message have now been delinked.
In November America will fill the Oval Office with a man or a woman, not a message. Americans need to find out as much as they can about the candidates’ character, values and judgment, and the media are responsible for informing them. ABC has set a good example.
It took 20 debates before Obama got a tough question. Oh the media hates him so much....
The rule in the media is you bloody up the Republicans, you do NOT bloody up the democrats, any of them.
Wow - wish now I'd watched it. Sounds like they touched the right bases...
It’s about time!
Policy proposals are easy to make. All of the dem candidates will stop the war, improve the economy, heal the sick, make the blind see and the deaf hear, and blah, blah, blah.
Promises are easy to make and difficult to keep. But character is, in fact, assessable, based upon past performance. Candidates who lie about their association with anti-American undesirables are not likely to be truthful with the populace on other matters. Candidates who claim they "misspoke" about being under enemy fire are not going to get much benefit of the doubt when they are trying to persuade the citizenry that their latest proposal will be beneficial to them. In other words: "character counts."
If John F. Kennedy were alive today to witness the depths to which his party has fallen, he would roll over in his grave.
I think of Obama and my mind pictures the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
that screaming you hear is the sound of the MSM whose candidate just got his tail caught under the rocking chair.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Nobody really belived that Nixon had ties to the mafia.
But the media wouldn’t stop asking about his friendship with Bebe Rebozo!
Lefties are a lower form of life. The exist on lies and lies on top of lies.
Is that you, Yogi?
Gibson was trying to assess the character of the two candidates, Stephanopoulos, no Bill Richardson he, was trying to support his Mistress by bringing up Obama's relationships.
One of the things the left doesn't want the American people to dwell on too much in this campaign is that character matters in a leader. As critical as I have been of President Bush the one thing I have never questioned is the man's character. You will note that his character is the one thing the leftist media exerts its greatest efforts to smear.
The left want voters to focus on technocratic proposals and imprint our values on the blank slates for their candidates. They would rather not look at the fact that nobody is going to follow a back stabbing traitor, no matter how well their proposals poll in focus groups. In a dangerous world having someone without the character to lead in a crisis could be a very bad thing.
You are forgetting the biggest of all...Making the lame walk!*
* Actual claim concerning Christopher Reeves.
Hey, if you don't go to their funerals, they won't come to yours.
They knew all along that Hillary was hated by nearly half of the voters. Now they have to hide the fact that their new star is in the process of imploding.
What are these people talking about? Oh, but if you screw a Republican in a debate, it’s all right. These critics don’t even have the first clue as to how biased they are. Obama should only answer the questions he wants to answer? That’s great qualifications for one of the hardest and most important jobs in the World. Boy, the inanity of some of these people makes you wonder, what’s wrong with America, that it produces such lame people?
“Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos turned in shoddy, despicable performances.”
But when MSNBC tried to run Hillary out of town, it was all right? How lame these people are.
Today’s Democratic Party has nothing to do with John F. Kennedy, or anything he stood for. They use him as a prop for sympathy, just as they use everything else they can find.
mark
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