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?”
I truly desire us to take the time to do just that. It only takes a second!
The pain you feel today is the strength you'll have tomorrow.
You comment referencing me prompted me to get up on the soapbox and make a general rant about my frustration with the R party.
I assumed you were complementing me so I sure wasnt trying to disagree :)
Hopefully Mitt will hit another home run tonight and I wont have to rant again tomorrow.
Bob Schieffer is a fossilized life-long Democrat who has absolutely no ability to think outside the Democrat template or to even understand that there is another side to the issues. He always seems confused to me.
Look for those pronounced facial expressions of confusion every time Romney offers a definitive conservative answer to anything. Those frequent looks of complete confusion are not just Bob Schieffer being cute - - they are genuine. You will see them, guaranteed.
The MotS interviews feature people who want to talk about economic issues and the academic they interviewed predicted (Prepped, massaged) that the debate will leave foreign policy (a huge deficit for Obozo) and careen back to economic issues and rising employment (Barky's lies).
This MSM coverage is so crooked, its indictable.
Thanks RDB3.
Okay great SickOfLibs. Thanks for your response.
The debate is over now, and frankly I wasn’t that impressed with Romney on first blush.
I actually walked in during the debate and caught it flat.
Then I started watching Obama, and by golly, the guy was pressing very hard. By contrast Romney seemed to be taking it all in stride. He looked poised and presidential.
Obama looked like he was looking for a place to deliver a knock-out punch, needed desperately to do it, and wasn’t getting there.
I’ll watch the whole think tomorrow, but the part I saw, Romney was the guy looking presidential, and Obama was the guy trying to prove he was presidential too, and seemingly failing.
Later.
I was posting a comment every 30 min or so during the debate to share my thoughts, but before bed my final summary was this: see #1079
I always want Romney to beat Obama up, but then I am not the mushy undecided woman in the swing state(who voted for Obama) who thinks I will learn something from the debates . However if Romney loses to Obama then he did us no favors by being so nice to Obama and talking about bipartisionship.
In typical Romney pattern he shot his wad on Libya attack in the last debate then dropped the entire subject this debate.
He had agreed with Obama on helping the rebels overthrow Qaddafi. Didnt Qaddafi give up his WMDs?
I guess Romney missed that FNC special this weekend or he was scared that O had info that could blow up anything he said about it.
I think it would have been very effective if Romney would have looked down and shaken his head when Obama was lying or acting the fool. That semi-simpering smile on his face for long periods didn’t help. I will admit it sort of reminded me of someone on meds that keep you very happy.
LOL,
The problem is he kept it up, on and off, for two hours.
Yes, I think a non-dramatic slowly shake his head would have worked.
The dreamy smily got old fast.
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