Immediately following Tuesday’s presidential debate, I heard ABC News anchor Charles Gibson who is a friend of mine, say he didn’t see that much difference between the two candidate’s performances. I actually yelled at my television set, "Charlie, what debate were you watching?" Regardless of your candidate, if you thought there was little difference between them Tuesday night, you were not paying attention.
Perhaps Gibson was trying not to sound partisan, and in my view neither he nor the other network anchors should be offering their personal opinions. But these days there is certainly no shortage of opinion on the networks or the cable channels. In the 48 years since the first televised presidential debates, news coverage has changed dramatically. Nowadays about two dozen pundits are being paid to quote analyze the debates unquote. However, almost all of these so called analysts are either former or even current Democratic or Republican Party activists.
Such partisans have their place and deserve to be heard. But there is a dearth of objective analysts with knowledge of both current events and political history willing to be frank in their criticisms. That said, I hereby appoint myself to offer some opinions on the debates.
The "analysts" constantly complain that neither candidate is giving us enough detail about how they would solve the current economic crisis. In fact I believe it is wise not to insert presidential politics into an already fragile situation. At the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt refused to play any policy role whatsoever during the four months between the time he was elected and his inauguration. He didn’t want any responsibility until he had full authority to take action.
In the case of the vice presidential debate last week, nearly all of the pundits decided Governor Sarah Palin had held her own with Senator Joe Biden. Again, I disagree and can’t resist noting Palin’s linguistic incoherence, her winking at the camera, her refusal to answer questions, and the contradictions in her positions – in one breath threatening to punish the greedy people on Wall Street but at the next moment promising to keep government off people’s backs. This performance failed to meet even the minimum requirements to serve as vice-president of this country, much less president. And I fault, among others, the dean of political reporters David Broder of the Washington Post, for failing to say so.
It’s probably a good thing that technology, in the form of almost instant polling after the debates, allows the voters to shape the pundits opinions instead of the other way around. Shortly after each of the first three debates the American people said Obama and Biden had won. And a CNN poll after Tuesday night’s debate had even more bad news for the McCain campaign. By 65 to 28%, viewers of the debate found Obama more likeable than McCain. Remember that being likeable was a principal reason that both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were twice elected president.