Any Tim Russert-moderated debate is a good opportunity to remind everyone (especially professional journalists and bloggers) to read "Why Americans Hate The Media" by James Fallows. If you've read it before, read it again. So far, the print-and-TV-news blogs I've read have focused most on (1) Hillary Clinton's (fair!) complaint that Obama seems to get softer questioning, (2) Clinton (fairly!) running over Russert and Williams when she was trying to respond to criticism from Obama, and (3) the fact that Barack Obama didn't immediate respond to Russert's Farrakhan line of questioning by saying "I want to rip Louis Farrakhan's head off".
Let's take these in turn.
- I think it's hard to deny that Obama has received softer coverage; the various Pew studies have confirmed that Obama has more positive articles than any other candidate by a large margin. I'm less sure about the questions in debate formats, but I'd be willing to believe it. It appears to be bad form to use SNL to make this point, but I'm not sure how else to make it.
- Clinton tried to run over the moderators twice ... well, three times, if you count the very first attempt to thrust health care to the front of the debate, which I don't. The first time, Clinton wanted to make another point on health care, w hile the moderators wanted to move on to Nafta. Now, the political press corps has heard these arguments ad nauseum, but the overwhelming majority of debate watchers in Ohio and Texas have not. She should have had a chance to make her point. The second time, she wanted to respond to Obama's response on the far-reaching "genocide and Osama in Iraq" hypothetical, but MSNBC had to take a commercial break. Williams promised them they'd get back to which would have been fine, but instead the debate moved on to campaign hyperbole. Score one-and-a-half for Clinton.
- The Farrakhan smear was, as others have pointed out, completely asinine. The implication is that because Barack Obama's minister's daughter's magazine said some nice things about Farrakhan, and Farrakhan said some nice things about Obama, that somehow he's insufficiently anti-anti-Semitic. Obama reminds Russert he's denounced Farrakhan repeatedly points to his record of speaking out against anti-Semitism in black churches, and makes a clever point about the historic (but "frayed") relationship between American Jewry and the civil rights movement. Smehow this isn't enough for the political press, or,indeed for Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Clinton pushed this wedge by trying to make a distinction between "denouncing" Farrakhan and "rejecting" his support, as she did by taking a "bold" (but obviously correct!) stand against anti-Semitism while running for Senate in New York. Obama recognizes the parlor game for what it is and says "I am happy to concede the point, and I denounce and reject". Can we stop this now? Is Obama's scorn for Farrakhan, who has no direct connection to Obama's campaign, sufficiently clear that we can get back to something more important? Does Russert ask Republicans about equivalently distant Christian Right leaders, some of whom have unsavory views on Mormonism, Catholicism, Judaism, homosexuality, women who work, etc.?
In addition, there's no sense in writing the postgame spin so quickly (MSNBC's sub-head: "At end of debate, there is little evidence of a shift in course of campaigns"). Reactions will play out over the next few days. Perhaps Clinton being stymied by two male moderators and a male opponent will play well with women. Perhaps her performance played so poorly that Obama will win Ohio and Texas by five or more points. Perhaps the fact that Obama is campaigning eighteen hours a day and thus unable to follow events in Russia will make people have second thoughts about his foreign policy chops. Perhaps they'll resent the whole exercise and just not vote. We just don't know the answer to these questions, and we won't know until post-debate polls come out on Friday or so. Just let the thing play out!
I think I'm rooting for a decisive victory on March 4th just to spare us all from more Russert-moderated debates. Just a reminder: "Why Americans Hate The Media" is worth re-reading every few months
