Given some of the horrors we've seen over the past year, this debate has to count as fairly well moderated. The questions were mostly about genuine issue areas -- for example, the financial crisis, health care, abortion, and education, rather than trivia that doesn't actually affect anything. When Schieffer made room for candidates to inject trivia -- the "are you going to repeat your negative attacks here to the other guy's face" question, he did it in a relatively healthy way.
On the minus side, Schieffer advanced the neo-Hooverite premise that we must cut spending as the economy falls into recession, to which Obama gave the correct response that a properly structured bailout would give the taxpayers all their money back. But overall, a respectable performance.
The best thing Schieffer did was not make himself a player in the debate like Brokaw did with his annoying attempts to force the candidates to abide by the ridiculous time limits in the 2nd debate. The format and moderator of the first debate was still the best imo.
Posted by: Ron E. | October 16, 2008 at 11:56 AM