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The Democratic White House hopefuls vowed Wednesday to defend Israel against any Iranian attack but differed on how to engage the Islamic republic over its nuclear ambitions. At a televised debate ahead of next Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama agreed that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. Both called for diplomacy but Obama went further in renewing a promise of "direct talks" at a leaders' level with Tehran, along with other US foes. Iran should be presented with "carrots and sticks," the Illinois senator said, while stressing "they should also know that I will take no options off...

Last week's Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama really depressed me. And not just because the moderators spent the first 40 minutes on "gotcha" questions with no relevance to the problems we face. ABC News' Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos gave such short shrift to foreign policy queries, you'd think we had no overseas problems. Never mind that George W. Bush will leave behind a Mideast mess worse than any I've seen. Even more frustrating: On the few questions involving Iraq, there was no effort to get the candidates to flesh out their thinking. Both Democrats are more...

PHILADELPHIA -- Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton squared off last night in a debate to help Democrats choose their party's nominee, but the big winner wasn't either Democrat. It was Republican John McCain. Both Clinton and Obama were rattled as ABC moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous grilled them on a number of issues that have not been brought into focus before. Clinton came across as craven and dishonest, while the normally eloquent Obama buckled under tough questioning about his relationships with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. When the debate moved to policy, both candidates...

1. Senator Barack Obama’s strongest defenders, led by Andrew Sullivan, were furious at the questioning directed at Senator Obama by two of the best in the news business: ABC’s Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. In Sullivan’s words: The loser was ABC News: one of the worst media performances I can remember — petty, shallow, process-obsessed, trivial where substantive, and utterly divorced from the actual issues that Americans want to talk about. What really irritated Sullivan is that the early part of the debate focused on issues like Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr., Obama’s association with a former leader of...

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...

My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate. Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance? Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining. That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly...

ABC has broken MSM rule#1: Do not ask Democrats hard questions; just stick to the script/template. Upon breaking this rule in Thursday's debate in Philly; when Gibson and Stephanopolous dared to ask the "Exalted" Barack Obama tough questions about his recent problems on the campaign trail, a furor has erupted on the left. How dare they ask these types of questions(of a Democrat). If this were a GOP debate, this type of questioning would be required under MSM rule#2: Do not ask Republicans easy questions; just stick to the script/template. So now the Left is scrambling to boycott ABC/Disney and...

Barack Obama seemed puzzled. Angrily puzzled. The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question. At the April 16 Philadelphia debate, George Stephanopoulos, longtime aide to Democratic politicians, was asking about his longtime association with Weather Underground bomber William Ayers. The Weather Underground attacked the Pentagon, the Capitol and other public buildings; Ayers was quoted in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001, as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.” It was at Ayers’ house that Obama’s state Senate candidacy was launched in 1995; Obama continued to serve on a...

...Now comes 2008, a can’t-lose year if there ever was one. A united Democratic Party should be able to win this election in a walk. The economy is terrible and getting worse. The Republicans are demoralized. John McCain is no J.F.K. And the country wants to elect a Democrat. So what are the Democrats doing? The Clintons are running around with flamethrowers, gleefully trying to incinerate the prospects of the party’s leading candidate, Barack Obama. Senator Obama, for his part, seems to have lost sight of the unifying message that proved so compelling early in his campaign and has stumbled...

The left-wing blogosphere's outrage against ABC ["Boycott Fig Newtons!"] over its allegedly unfair questioning of Obama during Wednesday's debate has seeped over into the MSM in the form of Derrick Z. Jackson's Boston Globe column of this morning. While the headline moots the matter as a question "Tough questions or just plain bias?", there's no doubt of the answer in Jackson's mind. Just two paragraphs in, the columnist unleashes [emphasis added]: "In some 1,600 words of transcript, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos tried to eviscerate Obama in Philadelphia on Wednesday."

Wednesday night’s Pennsylvania Democratic debate hosted by ABC News’ Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos was a near revelation. Instead of snowmen asking inanities journalists were asking tough questions that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama seemed able to answer. The New York Times blog reports that “More than 10 million viewers tuned into Wednesday’s Democratic debate on ABC, making it the most-watched debate of the primary election season.” The poor performance by both Democrats -- in front of so large an audience -- benefits presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. The entire first 45 minutes of the debate was spent addressing...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Sen. Barack Obama, after accusing Sen. Hillary Clinton of "playing gotcha games," declined Thursday to commit to a debate in North Carolina before the state's May 6 primary. "We're trying to figure out what our schedule looks like, but I'll be honest with you, we've now had 21" debates, Obama said in response to an audience member's question at a rally at the state fairgrounds. Clinton has agreed to a debate proposed for April 27 in Raleigh. Over the last three days, Gov. Mike Easley, former Gov. Jim Hunt and Democratic leaders of the state legislature have...

Just how bad was Barack Obama's debate performance last night? Not as bad as Britney Spears' song-and-dance routine at the MTV Awards. Not as bad as Bill Buckner's legendary error during the '86 World Series. Not as bad as Bob Dylan's music during his God phase. Not as bad as John Travolta's Scientology cinema experiment in Battlefield Earth. Not as bad as Mike Dukakis' fateful ride in a military tank. In other words, Obama could have done worse. Neverthless, if he still harbors any hopes of driving Hillary Clinton from the Democratic race by scoring an upset victory in Pennsylvania,...

Amid a storm of criticism that Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate focused too heavily on “gotcha” questions and not enough on substance, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos defended his decision to ask Illinois Sen. Barack Obama about his relationship with former political radical William Ayers. Stephanopoulos denied he’d been spoon fed the question by Fox News host Sean Hannity. “We have been researching this for a while,” Stephanopoulos said in a phone interview from New York. ABC News political correspondent Jake Tapper, he said, had blogged about the issue April 10, after it was first reported by Politico, the political news website....

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Sen. Barack Obama is defending his relationship with a former radical whose provocative words were wrongly linked by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Facts were loose in both Democratic presidential campaigns Thursday as Clinton sought advantage from her rival's association with William Ayers, a college professor who was once part of the violent Weather Underground group. The dustup arose in their debate the night before when Obama was asked whether his connection to Ayers raised politically damaging questions about his patriotism. Obama struck back by calling attention to Bill Clinton's decision...

There's no debate: Pens trump politics tribune-review by salena zito Politics stops at the water's edge -- even if that water's frozen, apparently. About 57,000 more households in the Pittsburgh region tuned in to watch the Penguins beat up on the Ottawa Senators than tuned in to see two senators (Obama and Clinton) beat up on each other in the Democratic presidential debate, according to Nielsen Media Research. The hockey game played in 175,000 – or 23 percent – of all households in the Pittsburgh metro market, while the blame game played in 118,000 households – or 14 percent of...

The Debate: The mainstream media were taken aback by some of the questions asked of Barack Obama at the ABC-run debate in Philadelphia. We, on the other hand, were pleasantly surprised.We'll admit we weren't expecting much more of this debate than the earlier puffball affairs sponsored by CNN and MSNBC. And indeed, the first question out of ABC anchorman Charlie Gibson's mouth — about the chances for a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton dream team — had us muttering, "Here we go again." But when that went nowhere (Obama said such talk was "premature"), Gibson got down to business by asking about...

April 17, 2008 -- PHILADELPHIA - By sheer, drowsy default, Hillary Rodham Clinton won last night's debate against Barack Obama. Only because she came the closest to describing why everyone in America is so tired of this whole endless psychodrama.It came as she was trying to explain why she and Obama have both been making up so much nonsense on the campaign trail lately. "We both have said things that, you know, turned out not to be accurate," Clinton said. "You know, that happens when you're talking as much as we have talked."

Bitter: the gift that keeps on giving TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito John Brabender, a D.C.-based media strategist, put up the first "bitter" ad to be used in a congressional race -- for a Republican. "Barack Obama's statement about the small towns of Pennsylvania and the entire middle America for this cycle is the gift that you can use all year long," Brabender said. He said that you could say it is the gift that keeps on giving. Brabender's client Matt Shaner is in a tight Republican primary race to succeed retiring John Peterson in the biggest piece of congressional geography...

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.