Posted on 10/04/2012 5:33:52 AM PDT by Haiku Guy
NEW YORK — Jim Lehrer may be regretting his decision to come out of semi-retirement and moderate his 12th presidential debate.
The veteran PBS anchor drew caustic social media reviews for his performance on Wednesday, with critics saying he failed to keep control of the campaign's first direct exchange between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. The candidates talked over Lehrer's attempts to keep them to time limitations, and his open-ended questions frequently lacked sharpness.
The tough assessments crossed party lines: Republican commentator Laura Ingraham wrote on Twitter that Lehrer seemed "a bit overwhelmed." Comic and Democratic activist Bill Maher bluntly tweeted that "Lehrer sucked."
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Losers always blame the refs.
I think this debate format was intentionally picked in order to give Obama time for his “soaring rhetoric.” However, without the TOTUS, he sank like a brick. Romney took the economy, hung it around Obama’s neck and then choked him with it!
Oh, I think Lehrer was for Obama, all right. But there is only so much a Moderator can do. Lehrer had to at least pretend to be fair-and-square, but the suggested answers give the game away.
At the end of the day, it was like trying to hide the Grand Canyon under a Welcome Mat. The blowout was just too huge for the Moderator to get in the way.
A = I
Moderator Jim Lehrer did a GREAT job as a Moderator: He allowed the Candidates to debate during the debate that he was moderating.
Please, Hulka... This is still FR.
Do not make such a hugh and series error... The correct spelling of that comment:
Loosers always blame the refs...
Nice Vizzini reference. :)
lehrer did fine. He coached obama a few times but to no avail. I very much liked the format of this debate and hope it’s used going forward. It was almost a real debate. I also liked the fact that there was no audience participation. It was just the candidates going man to (ahem)man.
Actually, I saw today that Zer0 actually spoke for 4 more minutes than Romney. It didn’t seem like it though, because Romney dominated.
Its funny how liberals are so quick to eat their own.
Here’s the shocker...it seemed like Romney got a lot more time, but Cnn had the clock running below on the replay, and in fact they were almost dead even on time. It’s just that Romney can put 3X as much information out in one minute as Ah-ah-ah, uh-uh, eyyon’-eeyyon’, uh Obama.
THANK YOU NEWT, for teaching Mitt how to debate!
Lehrer gave Obama 4 1/2 minutes more speaking time than Romney. Maybe that’s what the Kool-Aid drinkers are moaning about this morning.
Romney was so serious, competent and in control that Obama dared not trot out his casual, cool, man-of-the-people, droppin’-his-g’s persona. He knows he would have looked like an idiot compared to Romney’s stainless-steel CEO chic.
But Obama’s casual, cool, man-of-the-people, droppin’-his-g’s persona is the only thing that works for him, anymore. The actual facts are too toxic to his re-election, so he must keep it glib and light to have a chance.
That is not going to fly in a serious debate...
One of the moonbats on Huffington Post using the RACE CARD to explain why Obama lost:
texadonkey .371 Fans
(9:38 AM) The real truth is. Obama the black man could not have been this aggresive in a a debate. The fear mongering GOP would be all over this. It would of been worse for Obama. Let them claim this big win. They have no chance of winning the election.
PBS/ Lehrer should send a heck to Romney for facilitating an actual debate.
Yup...it's hard to be a good ref when one of the teams is just playing horribly (the good part of that is that usually nobody notices that the refs are knocked off their game when the score is 55-7..).
Is there some law requiring it?
The question actually is, “Why ARE there debate moderators?"And why so few debates?
There are so few debates because it takes time to prepare for them, because they are such big deals. And they are such big deals because there are so few of them, and people take time to prep for them. They are also such big deals because of the logistics of assembling the candidates &c in one place.If you think outside the box, you realize that the debates are a rarity and a big deal because of TV. And there is a journalist moderator(s) because the TV execs want them.
If you really wanted informative debates which revealed the candidates warts and all, you would have more, smaller, debates. No one debate would be make-or-break. And there is no reason at all for a human moderator. All it needs is a chess time controlling the microphones. There is also no need to assemble the participants in one place - the candidates could just each use a studio convenient to his own locale/schedule.That would be trivial to accomplish via PCs and the Internet - but there wouldn’t be anything in it for the TV execs.
Jim Lehrer wasn’t responsible for Obama’s confused, disturbingly muddled closing statement, which made him seem worse than Reagan in his disastrous 1st 1984 debate. Obama almost seemed drugged at times.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.