If you're not a regular follower of political blogs, you may not know that a lot of people--and I do mean a lot of people--are pissed as hell at ABC for the debate they ran last night. Facile questions, no policy questions in the first half of the debate, attempted "gotcha" moments and apparently even George Stephanapolous taking notes from Sean Hannity to prepare for one question.
Visit some of my shared links in the sidebar if you want a sense of how upset people are. It will be interesting to see what happens.
It was also apparently one of the most watched debates to date. Alas, I didn't see, I was walking on Ruston.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
ABC's Debate
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10 comments:
Started watching the debate, but I just couldn't make myself keep watching. Gibson and Stephanopoulus seemed intent on keeping Obama on the defensive, and wasting time on non-policy questions. Now, from the perspective of it being a foregone conclusion that Obama will get the nomination (barring a party-schisming Superdelegate coup), it's fine to battle-test him a bit. It just would have been nice if they'd tossed more than a few softballs Hillary's way. After all, she's had a few things to say about working class people in the past, too.
Or are you just pissed that your guy didn't look so good.
Did they go after Obama more than Hillary last night? Yeah, I think they probably did. But that does not negate the fact that most of the media scrutiny thus far in the primary has been aimed at Hillary, not Barack. Remember the NBC debate and Russert playing "gotcha" with Hillary? Do you know who the new President of Russia is? Even Saturday Night Live poked fun at the softball questions asked of Barack. Obama has been getting a free ride, and it's about time he had to experience what Hillary has had to deal with for months now.
CA, I will allow that at one point in the campaign, when it became apparent that Obama actually had a chance to win this thing over Clinton, the media briefly was eating up the "Cinderella story" aspect of Obama's campaign. It's gone both ways at times. But at the same time, even as it's become more and more apparent that the pledged delegate count (and mythical crap metric "popular vote total") are firmly in Obama's favor, the media has absolutely let the Clinton machine work them like puppets into making small stories into big scandals...otherwise, they wouldn't have been grilling Obama for 45 minutes last night about non-issue-based topics. So sure, I'm sure my impressions are colored by who my horse is, but I still think the level of journalistic integrity here is something ABC should be embarrassed about. (Has this been the only primetime, major -network debate? Seems like most of the others were on CNN, FOX, etc., maybe a couple on PBS...)
"otherwise, they wouldn't have been grilling Obama for 45 minutes last night about non-issue-based topics."
Asking Hillary about sniper fire in Bosnia is an issue based topic????
CA,
My problem was that all of it (with the exception of Ayers) had been done and over with. The lapel pin thing was really old news, but there was nothing new about the "cling" and "bitter," nothing new about "Tulza" for Clinton, nothing new about Wright." It was all old stuff that didn't seem like there was anything new to get from it.
No question in the first 45 minutes to either Clinton or Obama was policy based or current.
This is better put than I could make it: http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/04/what_was_really_wrong_with_the_abc_debat
CA, the sniper fire line of questioning was indeed ridiculous and pointless. I cannot argue that.
I would be "pissed as hell" if I was an Obama supporter, too. He looked terrible.
Actually, this was the first debate since the bitter comment and since the Wright controversy blossomed. Even though pundits and bloggers have had plenty of time to discuss it, this was the first national forum for both candidates to discuss it. Same with Bosnia. Furthermore, the lapel pin question was asked by a viewer, not Gibson or Steph. Personally, I think Gibson did a great job of attempting to get both candidates to give straight answers (even though ultimately he was not particularly effective at it).
At this point, if a viewer doesn't know the differences in the two candidates' policies, they're probably not tuning in to learn them now. These debates serve much more to show the underlying characteristics of a candidate, and that's why Obama should be disappointed with his performance.
I should re-iterate that I didn't see it. I'm not actually pissed as hell but most of the political blogs I've read, even those who aren't Obamamaniacs, think it was poorly done.
That said, I have heard many people agree that Obama was really bad. Tired, just reciting rather than actually answering ... and bad questions should not excuse any bad performance on his part.
"I personally have no problem with a "one-sided" debate, particularly one that focuses on the de-facto nominee, on the the guy who wants voters to elect him to the most powerful office in the land. It also is illogical for Democrats to assert that simply because Republicans are likely to bring up certain issues and associations in certain ways, the media or other Democrats ought to be prohibited from bringing those up."
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/
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