'Grey's' Isn't Going Anywhere
'Red Widow' Gets The Axe
The presidential debate moderators are chosen
by Allison Waldman, posted Aug 5th 2008 5:21PM
John McCain wanted ten town hall style debates with Barack Obama, but after 22 Democratic debates, Barack said, "Thanks, but no thanks." So now the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates will meet three times: two traditional, one-on-one debates with a single moderator for each, and one townhall-style session with questions from the crowd. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced that NBC's Tom Brokaw, PBS's Jim Lehrer, and CBS's Bob Schieffer will be the moderators, with Gwen Ifill, the host of PBS's Washington Week handling the chores for the one vice presidential debate.
What's interesting here is that of the big three, ABC is not represented. Among the cable news crowd, Fox News and MSNBC were equally snubbed as was CNN.
I can't say why ABC was left out of the loop. However, George
Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson were both roundly criticized for their work on the Democratic debate they helmed.
Still, they could have gone with Diane Sawyer over Gwen Ifill if they were looking to throw all the networks a bone. The schedule for the debates is as follows:
-- September 26, University of Oxford, Mississippi. Jim Lehrer asking the questions in a debate on domestic issues.
-- October 2, Washington University, St. Louis. Gwen Ifill with the vice presidential debate.
-- October 7, Belmont University, Nashville. Tom Brokaw leading a townhall session with questions from Nashville locals.
-- October 15, Hofstra University, New York. Bob Schieffer will moderate in a foreign policy debate.
The times and TV coverage is still to be determined.
The choices are all tried and true news personalities and I doubt anybody will squawk about any of them. It's likely that, had Tim Russert not died early this summer, on June 13, he might have been in Brokaw's place.
By the way, the questioners do matter historically. In 1988, CNN's anchorman Bernard Shaw moderated the presidential debate between President George H. W. Bush and Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. Shaw asked Dukakis, whom he knew was against the death penalty, if he would be in favor of the death penalty for a man who hypothetically raped and murdered Dukakis's wife. When Dukakis answered, he came off as overly detached and legalistic, leaving viewers with the impression that he was soft on crime.
That question mattered a lot in 1998. You could say that Shaw's question, plus the image of Dukakis in a tank wearing a combat helmet, was fodder for the successful Republican campaign to defeat the Massachusetts governor.
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