SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2012
As captured in one magic sentence: Incredible? Astounding? Beyond all belief?
Which of these terms would you apply?
No one ever believes Cassandra. But the soul of a rapidly dying culture was captured this morning in just one magical sentence.
How emptied out are this nation’s elites? We’ll rest our case on this sentence:
“I think I speak for all of America when I say nothing that interesting happened with the vice-presidential candidates.”
Surely, you know who wrote those words. But don’t worry!
This next time this life-form appears on TV, Rachel will kiss her ass—hard.
Postscript: The liberal world won’t complain about this.
Just as the citizens of a mythical empire couldn’t see their emperor’s lack of clothes, the folk who devise the scripts for that world can’t see that their culture is dying.
Plus, they bow down to the gods of the guild. Complaining? It just isn’t done!
Also this: Attempting to hold back the deluge, the editors stated a different view:
"Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate was one of the best and meatiest political conversations in many years, showing that real differences on public policy can be discussed with fervor..."
Over their shoulders, the sun is setting, as we can see in that other reaction.
Over their shoulders, the sun is setting. The editors don't know that yet.
Is there some way to deport Katty Kay?
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2012
Simpering ninnies, go home: Midway through last evening's hour, Katty Kay showed up to expound on the Charlie Rose show.
Katty was in a serious twit about the evening's debate. This is what Katty Kay saw when Biden and Ryan debated:
In fairness, Kay is a top-notch analyst. Consider this example:
“Some polls are giving it to Biden, some polls are giving it to Ryan, which suggests to me that it’s pretty much of a wash.”
Only the BBC presents such trenchant work.
Let us translate the rest of the commnents by this very bad person:
Katty Kay is paid large sums of money.
Katty Kay has excellent health care. She will never need Social Security. She eats in great restaurants; she drives great cars.
She doesn’t give a flying fuck. She lives to clown and piddle and diddle with others of her class.
Question: Is there some possible way to send this empty suit home?
Simpering ninnies, go home: Midway through last evening's hour, Katty Kay showed up to expound on the Charlie Rose show.
Katty was in a serious twit about the evening's debate. This is what Katty Kay saw when Biden and Ryan debated:
ROSE (10/11/12) Katty Kay, you are coming to us now from Washington. Your impressions?Asked to voice her basic reaction, Katty found nothing to comment on except Biden's body language. That's the feedback she was getting! From people who watched in their homes!
KAY: Yes, I agree, I think that Paul Ryan you know performed well and Republicans will be quite happy with him. He was clear, he was concise, he too was energetic. And look, we’ve never seen him perform on such a huge national platform as this one, and he held his own against Joe Biden. I mean, this debate— Some polls are giving it to Biden, some polls are giving it to Ryan, which suggests to me that it’s pretty much of a wash.
I wonder how much this helped Barack Obama. I think that one of the things that people are going to remember about this debate is less what Joe Biden or Paul Ryan said than Joe Biden's constant smiling, shaking his head, oh, my God, looking I thought at some point at something that was just suggesting maybe a little unhinged. I actually thought it came across as slightly condescending, patronizing, perhaps even a little arrogant and that's exactly the same rap that some people have against Barack Obama's performance just recently.
You know the shtick against Obama if there is one yet is that he has a tendency to be a little bit arrogant. The last thing the White House needs at the moment is for people to turn around and say, “Look this arrogant White House, they don’t listen to other people, they don't take this format seriously and they are not taking us seriously.” And I think that could have hurt with some swing voters.
I just, I— From the feedback I’ve had from people that were watching in their homes, there were even people who had a tendency to—
ROSE: Yes.
KAY: —want Biden to do well, they didn't like what they saw just in terms of his body language.
In fairness, Kay is a top-notch analyst. Consider this example:
“Some polls are giving it to Biden, some polls are giving it to Ryan, which suggests to me that it’s pretty much of a wash.”
Only the BBC presents such trenchant work.
Let us translate the rest of the commnents by this very bad person:
Katty Kay is paid large sums of money.
Katty Kay has excellent health care. She will never need Social Security. She eats in great restaurants; she drives great cars.
She doesn’t give a flying fuck. She lives to clown and piddle and diddle with others of her class.
Question: Is there some possible way to send this empty suit home?
Candidate Ryan restores specificity!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2012
Mathematical impossibility too: An interesting number returned to the discourse last night.
That number is twenty percent. Does Candidate Romney still intend to lower all federal income tax rates by twenty percent? While keeping the whole shebang revenue neutral by eliminating loopholes/deductions?
In August, the Tax Policy Center said it’s “mathematically impossible” to do such a thing without raising taxes on the middle class. Not long ago, at least one Romney surrogate seemed to be walking back the size of that cut in tax rates. Romney himself hasn’t seemed to be mentioning that "twenty percent" number lately.
But last night, twenty percent was back! Martha Raddatz mentioned it first. Candidate Ryan repeatedly seconded the emotion:
Raddatz let all that go. But Ryan repeatedly affirmed the idea that Romney would reduce all income tax rates by that ballyhooed twenty percent.
We mention this for a reason. At last week’s debate, Jim Lehrer didn’t confirm that number with Romney. A few days later, Romney did an interview with Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer pretended to question Romney’s proposal, but he didn’t bother confirming that one specific part of the plan.
Romney can always disavow Ryan's statement. We wouldn't be surprised if he did. But twenty percent was back last night. If that remains Romney’s intention, that would restore the mathematical impossibility of doing what has been proposed.
It’s been a long time since anyone confirmed with Romney that he stands by that twenty percent rate cut. Maybe someone should check this out with the Mittster next Tuesday night.
Mathematical impossibility too: An interesting number returned to the discourse last night.
That number is twenty percent. Does Candidate Romney still intend to lower all federal income tax rates by twenty percent? While keeping the whole shebang revenue neutral by eliminating loopholes/deductions?
In August, the Tax Policy Center said it’s “mathematically impossible” to do such a thing without raising taxes on the middle class. Not long ago, at least one Romney surrogate seemed to be walking back the size of that cut in tax rates. Romney himself hasn’t seemed to be mentioning that "twenty percent" number lately.
But last night, twenty percent was back! Martha Raddatz mentioned it first. Candidate Ryan repeatedly seconded the emotion:
RYAN (10/11/12): What we are saying is, lower tax rates across the board and close loopholes, primarily to the higher-income people. We have three bottom lines: Don't raise the deficit, don't raise taxes on the middle class, and don't lower the share of income that is borne by the high-income earners.Just for the record, six studies have not verified that this math adds up. And Ryan’s statements in that second large chunk don’t really make seem to sense. (For one thing, it sounds like he’s saying that “higher-income taxpayers” will end up paying more under Romney’s plan. Romney has never said that.)
He'll keep saying this “$5 trillion plan,” I suppose. It's been discredited by six other studies. And even their own deputy campaign manager acknowledged that it wasn't correct.
RADDATZ: Well, let's talk about this 20 percent. You have refused—and, again—to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the specifics? Or are you still working on it, and that's why you won't tell voters?
[...]
RYAN: What we're saying is, here's our framework. Lower tax rates 20 percent. We raise about $1.2 trillion through income taxes. We forego about $1.1 trillion in loopholes and deductions. And so what we're saying is, deny those loopholes and deductions to higher-income taxpayers so that more of their income is taxed, which has a broader base of taxation so we can lower tax rates across the board.
[...]
RYAN: What we're saying is, lower tax rates 20 percent, start with the wealthy, work with Congress to do it—
RADDATZ: And you guarantee this math will add up?
RYAN: Absolutely. Six studies have guaranteed—six studies have verified that this math adds up.
Raddatz let all that go. But Ryan repeatedly affirmed the idea that Romney would reduce all income tax rates by that ballyhooed twenty percent.
We mention this for a reason. At last week’s debate, Jim Lehrer didn’t confirm that number with Romney. A few days later, Romney did an interview with Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer pretended to question Romney’s proposal, but he didn’t bother confirming that one specific part of the plan.
Romney can always disavow Ryan's statement. We wouldn't be surprised if he did. But twenty percent was back last night. If that remains Romney’s intention, that would restore the mathematical impossibility of doing what has been proposed.
It’s been a long time since anyone confirmed with Romney that he stands by that twenty percent rate cut. Maybe someone should check this out with the Mittster next Tuesday night.
The tyranny of the split-screen presentation strikes the U.S. once again!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2012
Biden's grins fuel the search for distraction: Last night, the Biden-Ryan debate ended shortly after 10:30.
By 10:40, the discussion on MSNBC had descended to what follows. This isn’t Rachel Maddow’s fault—and what Steve Schmidt says here isn’t wrong:
(For the record, George Bush stealing a glance at his watch was captured before split screen.)
Later last night, the Charlie Rose panel was very concerned about the extent of Biden’s grinning. Can someone tell us why Katty Kay isn’t deported immediately? Do we really have to import the British to drive this kind of crap? Have we no fools of our own?
Let’s be candid. The split screen represents the latest in the press corps’ endless search for distraction. Our journalistic culture operates on a constant search for ways to avoid real discussions.
The split screen gives us one last way to avoid talking about whatever the candidates said.
This syndrome started with Gore’s alleged sighs. Now it has spread to Biden’s grins. Last week, it gave us the specter of Obama looking down too much.
(Obama may have over-applied a precept from 2004 or 2008. At that time, candidates began to be told that they should pretend to be taking notes while the other guy talks. This was invented as a way to avoid looking bad in split-screen presentation.)
Why do the networks give us split-screen? It’s done so millionaire journalists will have even more silly shit they can discuss—in some instances, so they will be able to drive the narratives they and their cohort prefer.
So they can have brainless discussions in which they pretend to talk about "character."
Schmidt was right in what he said—although he may have been reacting to texts from the RNC or other such source. But good grief! Adding possible injury to insult, Maddow of course said this:
Our view? On the substance, that’s a clueless interpretation of Biden’s grinning. (Biden isn't like that.) On the politics, it may give the RNC a tool made for the use.
Biden was calling Ryan a liar! That’s what he was trying to signal! Will the RNC use this talking-point? We don’t know, but Maddow can’t seem to get her political brain out of the pseudo-liberal ghettoes of western Massachusetts. From her famous Week of Dick Jokes forward, she has betrayed an uncanny failure to grasp the way national politics works.
Where will Biden’s grinning take the debate? We don’t have the slightest idea! Absent the tyranny of the split screen, no one would have to find out.
Biden's grins fuel the search for distraction: Last night, the Biden-Ryan debate ended shortly after 10:30.
By 10:40, the discussion on MSNBC had descended to what follows. This isn’t Rachel Maddow’s fault—and what Steve Schmidt says here isn’t wrong:
MADDOW (10/11/12): Let’s go now to Steve Schmidt, who’s a senior adviser to the McCain/Palin campaign in 2008.Schmidt wasn’t wrong in what he said. Since the networks started to air these debates in split screen, we have been saddled with the lunacy of these distractions-by-body language.
Watching this as a Republican, Steve—I will just say in the room here, us all watching together, we were all much more riveted than we were last week during the presidential debate. But, what’s your overall reaction…?
SCHMIDT: It’s a fiery debate. I don’t think I can’t remember a debate that’s been as fiery as this one at this level.
I think Republicans will watch this, they will say Paul Ryan won. They’ll be happy with this performance. I think Democrats who watched this will be fired up about Joe Biden’s performance. I think he did what he needed to do tonight which is to calm some of the panic in the Democratic base by having a fiery performance.
But I also think this— His smiling, the laughing, the grinning, if you look at the recent history of debates, whether it’s Al Gore sighing, president George Herbert Walker Bush looking at his watch, so many of these debates have come to be dominated by these personality quirks that manifested themselves over the course of the debate as opposed to the substance of the answers in the debate. It will be interesting to see—
I think Democrats are going to love that. I think Republicans will hate it. But the small middle of the electorate, how will they react to it and how will that be covered over the next couple hours?
(For the record, George Bush stealing a glance at his watch was captured before split screen.)
Later last night, the Charlie Rose panel was very concerned about the extent of Biden’s grinning. Can someone tell us why Katty Kay isn’t deported immediately? Do we really have to import the British to drive this kind of crap? Have we no fools of our own?
Let’s be candid. The split screen represents the latest in the press corps’ endless search for distraction. Our journalistic culture operates on a constant search for ways to avoid real discussions.
The split screen gives us one last way to avoid talking about whatever the candidates said.
This syndrome started with Gore’s alleged sighs. Now it has spread to Biden’s grins. Last week, it gave us the specter of Obama looking down too much.
(Obama may have over-applied a precept from 2004 or 2008. At that time, candidates began to be told that they should pretend to be taking notes while the other guy talks. This was invented as a way to avoid looking bad in split-screen presentation.)
Why do the networks give us split-screen? It’s done so millionaire journalists will have even more silly shit they can discuss—in some instances, so they will be able to drive the narratives they and their cohort prefer.
So they can have brainless discussions in which they pretend to talk about "character."
Schmidt was right in what he said—although he may have been reacting to texts from the RNC or other such source. But good grief! Adding possible injury to insult, Maddow of course said this:
MADDOW (continuing directly): Do you think the smiling and laughing—For me, the way I read that was Biden saying this guy right now is lying, like, “Come on, people, do you believe this guy? Look at this clown!” I thought that’s what he meant by his smiling.Just a guess: That is precisely what the RNC hoped some big liberal would say. They want to be able to say that Biden was being rude when he did that.
Our view? On the substance, that’s a clueless interpretation of Biden’s grinning. (Biden isn't like that.) On the politics, it may give the RNC a tool made for the use.
Biden was calling Ryan a liar! That’s what he was trying to signal! Will the RNC use this talking-point? We don’t know, but Maddow can’t seem to get her political brain out of the pseudo-liberal ghettoes of western Massachusetts. From her famous Week of Dick Jokes forward, she has betrayed an uncanny failure to grasp the way national politics works.
Where will Biden’s grinning take the debate? We don’t have the slightest idea! Absent the tyranny of the split screen, no one would have to find out.
It’s time for Jeff Zeleny to go!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2012
Fox friend steals from Goofus and Gallant: Whatever you think of last night’s debate, it’s time for Jeff Zeleny to go.
Zeleny is the timid fellow who represents the New York Times in panel discussions on Special Report. That's on the Fox News Channel.
He’s also the fellow who wrote the Times’ front-page report about last night’s debate. In our view, it’s time for this hackster to go:
We don’t think we’ve ever used the B-word in describing the work of a major reporter. But good God! You can’t call Zeleny subtle!
In Zeleny’s copy, Biden “uses cutting attack lines.” Ryan “delivers a spirited case for conservative policies.”
Ryan “displays a proficiency in areas like foreign policy.” Biden “shows no hesitation in hectoring, heckling and interrupting his challenger.”
In paragraph 3, the whole evening was built around possible shortcomings of the Administration. There was no discussion of possible flaws in Romney's proposals or outlook.
And the bullshit doesn’t stop there. The pencil-necked Fox friend continues:
“Goofus and Gallant” is written like this. But that feature offers morality plays intended for 8-year-old children.
Zeleny frequently types this way—and yes, this is a front-page news report! As an opinion column, this piece would be dumb.
It's on the front page of the New York Times, posing as news.
It’s time for this weak, timid Fox man to go. It’s time for him to be shown the door—to take his bullshit through it.
Fox friend steals from Goofus and Gallant: Whatever you think of last night’s debate, it’s time for Jeff Zeleny to go.
Zeleny is the timid fellow who represents the New York Times in panel discussions on Special Report. That's on the Fox News Channel.
He’s also the fellow who wrote the Times’ front-page report about last night’s debate. In our view, it’s time for this hackster to go:
ZELENY (10/12/12): Biden and Ryan Quarrel Aggressively in Debate, Offering ContrastsZeleny didn’t write that childish headline, but it’s closely drawn from his copy. And his copy betrays the bias we often see in his work.
It was the debate that President Obama and Mitt Romney did not have a week ago.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan fiercely quarreled at the vice-presidential debate here on Thursday night, with Mr. Biden using the cutting attack lines against the Republican ticket that Mr. Obama did not and Mr. Ryan delivering a spirited case for conservative policies that Mr. Romney had soft-pedaled.
The 90-minute debate, which unfolded in rapid tempo, offered a spirited airing of the sharp contrasts over the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack in Libya, the pace of the economic recovery at home and the role of government in addressing the nation’s fiscal burdens.
While Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney were not on stage, they were at the center of the conversation as their running mates made certain the evening was squarely focused on defining the men at the top of the ticket. But, under pressure to pass the test, Mr. Ryan displayed a proficiency in areas like foreign policy and kept pace with Mr. Biden, who is 27 years his senior.
It was Mr. Biden who sought to quiet the rising clamor among Democrats that the president was not assertive enough with Mr. Romney at their debate last week in Denver. A day after Mr. Obama conceded he was “too polite,” Mr. Biden showed no hesitation in hectoring, heckling and interrupting his challenger.
We don’t think we’ve ever used the B-word in describing the work of a major reporter. But good God! You can’t call Zeleny subtle!
In Zeleny’s copy, Biden “uses cutting attack lines.” Ryan “delivers a spirited case for conservative policies.”
Ryan “displays a proficiency in areas like foreign policy.” Biden “shows no hesitation in hectoring, heckling and interrupting his challenger.”
In paragraph 3, the whole evening was built around possible shortcomings of the Administration. There was no discussion of possible flaws in Romney's proposals or outlook.
And the bullshit doesn’t stop there. The pencil-necked Fox friend continues:
ZELENY (continuing directly): Within a single minute, Mr. Biden worked in three attacks on his rivals, referring to Mr. Romney’s opposition to the auto industry bailout, his statement that the foreclosure crisis would have to “run its course” and his comment about “47 percent” of Americans who he said were overreliant on government benefits.Biden’s “temperature was running close to boil.” Ryan “kept his composure for most of the night.”
“These guys bet against America all the time,” said Mr. Biden, whose temperature was running close to boil for most of the evening.
Mr. Ryan, who kept his composure for most of the night, suggested that Mr. Romney misspoke when talking about the 47 percent. He added pointedly, “I think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don’t come out of your mouth the right way.”
“Goofus and Gallant” is written like this. But that feature offers morality plays intended for 8-year-old children.
Zeleny frequently types this way—and yes, this is a front-page news report! As an opinion column, this piece would be dumb.
It's on the front page of the New York Times, posing as news.
It’s time for this weak, timid Fox man to go. It’s time for him to be shown the door—to take his bullshit through it.
LEHRER’S RERUN: Jim Lehrer, before and after!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2012
Epilogue—By law, the gods can’t be wrong: Did Jim Lehrer do something wrong at last week’s debate?
He may have been following orders! After Lehrer was criticized for his performance, the guild did what it always will do:
It rose in defense of its gods.
In Politico, Dylan Byers quoted Lehrer defending his own performance. “I’ve always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it,” Lehrer said. “The moderator should be seen little and heard even less.”
That was Lehrer on Lehrer. In a separate report, Byers quoted Janet Brown, boss of the debate commission. According to Brown, the criticism of Lehrer “misses the whole point of our July announcement about format.” Loftily sniffing at those who complained, she offered these further thoughts:
Later, we’ll show you what Brown said before last week’s debate. But first, a few final thoughts about Lehrer’s work in debates through the years.
Did Lehrer do something wrong last week? Without any doubt, he could have brought clarity to the discussion with a few well-placed questions. But however imperfect his work may have been, it was nothing compared to his misconduct in Campaign 2000—conduct which was prefigured in 1996 and extended in 2004.
For our money, Lehrer misbehaved extremely badly in the first two Bush-Gore debates. And in the book he wrote last year, he describes very strange conduct on his own part in the Clinton-Dole debates of 1996.
We can draw some valuable lessons from Lehrer’s past conduct and from his book. Before we return to Janet Brown, let’s focus on four basic learnings:
Lehrer’s book is extremely strange: Jim Lehrer’s book about past debates is just extremely strange. He makes factual statements straight outta la-la land when he discusses the 1996 sessions. His account of the 2000 debates is, in a word, dishonest.
Make that baldly dishonest. Lehrer settles scores all through these chapters, even as he acknowledges that he deals with criticism poorly.
In our series of reports, we haven’t even begun to critique Lehrer’s deeply selective account of the 2000 debates. But the gods of the guild are often dishonest. So it seems to be with this god in his extremely strange book.
The adepts will always agree not to notice: Second lesson: When the gods of the guild misbehave, the minions will agree not to notice. Consider what happened when Gloria Borger interviewed Lehrer about his book in an hour-long session for C-Span. (To watch the full program, click here.)
Borger is a full-blown, high-ranking mainstream hack. But as a god, Lehrer stands above her in the guild’s order. This guaranteed that Borger would challenge nothing the master said in their interview, no matter how inaccurate, strange or bogus his various statements might be.
Consider one example, an example derived from Lehrer’s book. In the following passage, he describes the terrible way Gore sighed in his first debate with George Bush.
This account is odd all the way through. But before he’s done, Lehrer makes an extremely odd statement:
That’s now The Official Guild Story, of course. But go ahead! Watch that debate! See if you understand why!
(As you watch, please understand one additional fact: In the actual word count for that debate, Candidate Bush spoke many more words than Candidate Gore. Try to reconcile that with Lehrer’s claim that “Gore violated the time limits for questions and responses, violated the polite pleas of the moderator.” If Gore was exceeding time limits so much, how the heck did Candidate Bush utter so many more words?)
By now, these are all parts of Official Guild Lore. That said, consider the ridiculous statement we have highlighted in that excerpt from Lehrer’s book.
According to Lehrer, “Gore was judged the clear loser in the debate, based almost entirely on his body language.” Lehrer then connects this claim to the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. In 2000 as in 1960, Lehrer says, “radio listeners came away with an almost entirely different impression than that of those who watched it on television.”
Surely, Lehrer must have known that one part of this claim is baldly inaccurate. In the case of that first Bush-Gore debate, five news orgs took overnight or next-day surveys of people who watched the debate. Gore was judged the winner in all five surveys, by an average margin of ten points.
Surely, Lehrer knew that fact as he wrote that past of his book. Meanwhile, by what flight of fancy does he imply that data exist about people who listened to that Bush-Gore debate on the radio?
The claim that Nixon won on the radio in 1960 is a hoary old urban legend, backed by no serious data. But Lehrer says in his book that Gore won on the radio, just as Nixon did, while losing on TV!
He must have known that Gore won on TV—and that no radio data exist. To all appearances, Lehrer was simply making this bullshit up, as he routinely does in the parts of his book where he’s settling scores.
That highlighted passage is truly absurd. It’s baldly false in one respect, delusional in another. And good God! Speaking with Borger for C-Span, Lehrer repeated that nonsense.
Obedient adept that she is, Borger of course played right along! She actually raced ahead of Lehrer, helping him with his weird thought:
Surely, Borger knows that Gore won all five overnight surveys. But Borger is an overpaid member of this truly horrible guild. And in this guild, the gods can’t be wrong! By law, the gods can't be crazy.
Borger understands how this game works. Lehrer, a god, can’t be wrong.
In that exchange on C-Span, Lehrer and Borger are almost surely lying or engaging in a near equivalent. This is the way these horrible people hand you the manufactured tales around which our political world is relentlessly forced to turn.
Lehrer’s book is a window into the world of the Clinton-Gore years: Lehrer’s account of the 1996 debates is a valuable historical document. The lunacy of some of his statements helps us see the way the guild had come to view President Clinton.
Lehrer makes many odd misstatements as he discusses the 1996 debates. But his desire to hear Gennifer Flowers discussed at those debates comes straight from the land of the lotus eaters.
Gennifer Flowers was out of the news by the time of the 1992 debates. It was crazy to think that Dole or Kemp would discuss her in 1996. But that’s what Lehrer says he wanted to hear, and he describes the ways he angled to get Dole and Kemp to go there.
The craziness of this obsession spilled over in the 2000 debates, when Lehrer kept instructing Bush to discuss Gore’s bad character problems.
Even in 2011, Jim Lehrer still had his head up his keister about the buxom Ms. Flowers. In 1999, the guild did attempt to rehabilitate Flowers in the wake of the Clinton impeachment. They brought her back for long stints on two major cable shows—first on Hardball, then on Hannity.
In those half-hour and hour-long efforts, she discussed a few of her favorite themes—the various murders the Clintons committed and the fact that Hillary Clinton is the world’s most gigantic lesbo.
That said, nothing will ever make people like Lehrer shrink from the tales of this major-league crackpot. Her story about her twelve-year affair had been shot full of holes in 1992. But so what? Four years later, Lehrer hoped that Dole would talk about Flowers in those debates! With respect, someone should lead this strange man away to a farm where his kind can be cared for.
Liberal stars will protect these tales too: American history bent, then broke, beneath the weight of these press corps obsessions. The turning-point was Campaign 2000, where Lehrer made sure that the first two Bush-Gore debates ended with long discussions of Al Gore’s supposed character problems.
People are dead all over the world because of the conduct of crackpots like Lehrer. But liberal stars still stand in line to tell us how brilliant he is.
We hope their money is spending real good. People have died for the obscenity of their magnificent pay-checks.
With those important lessons learned, let’s return to Janet Brown, discussing Lehrer's performance at last week’s debate.
In fairness, Lehrer did nothing at that debate which compared with his misconduct during the Clinton-Gore years. And not only that! As we showed you, Janet Brown said that Lehrer performed exactly as planned:
All along, the debate commission wanted to create “a serious discussion of the major domestic and foreign policy issues with minimal interference by the moderator.” That’s what Janet Brown was saying after last week's debate.
But uh-oh! According to Politico, here’s what she said before last week's debate:
But somehow, Byers came away from his interview with the idea that Lehrer would “play a more active role than ever” because of the new format. Some of the quoted statements by Brown seem to show where he got that idea.
Did Brown contradict herself? In a sense, but not as such! But have no fear:
If Brown had needed to change her story, that’s likely what she would have done! In this guild, the gods can’t be wrong—and Lehrer, with his love for Flowers, has long been numbered among this guild’s borderline crazy gods.
Visit our incomparable archives: We discussed Borger’s session with Lehrer last fall. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/3/11.
Epilogue—By law, the gods can’t be wrong: Did Jim Lehrer do something wrong at last week’s debate?
He may have been following orders! After Lehrer was criticized for his performance, the guild did what it always will do:
It rose in defense of its gods.
In Politico, Dylan Byers quoted Lehrer defending his own performance. “I’ve always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it,” Lehrer said. “The moderator should be seen little and heard even less.”
That was Lehrer on Lehrer. In a separate report, Byers quoted Janet Brown, boss of the debate commission. According to Brown, the criticism of Lehrer “misses the whole point of our July announcement about format.” Loftily sniffing at those who complained, she offered these further thoughts:
BROWN (10/5/12): The format for the first and fourth presidential debates calls for six 15-minute segments on topics selected and announced in advance by the moderators. After the moderator asks a question, the candidates each have two minutes to answer. After their answers, the moderator’s job is to facilitate a conversation on the topic for approximately 9 minutes before moving to the next topic. The Commission on Presidential Debates’ goal in selecting this format was to have a serious discussion of the major domestic and foreign policy issues with minimal interference by the moderator or timing signals. Jim Lehrer implemented the format exactly as it was designed by the CPD and announced in July.Lehrer got it "exactly" right! The guild's gods can’t be wrong!
Later, we’ll show you what Brown said before last week’s debate. But first, a few final thoughts about Lehrer’s work in debates through the years.
Did Lehrer do something wrong last week? Without any doubt, he could have brought clarity to the discussion with a few well-placed questions. But however imperfect his work may have been, it was nothing compared to his misconduct in Campaign 2000—conduct which was prefigured in 1996 and extended in 2004.
For our money, Lehrer misbehaved extremely badly in the first two Bush-Gore debates. And in the book he wrote last year, he describes very strange conduct on his own part in the Clinton-Dole debates of 1996.
We can draw some valuable lessons from Lehrer’s past conduct and from his book. Before we return to Janet Brown, let’s focus on four basic learnings:
Lehrer’s book is extremely strange: Jim Lehrer’s book about past debates is just extremely strange. He makes factual statements straight outta la-la land when he discusses the 1996 sessions. His account of the 2000 debates is, in a word, dishonest.
Make that baldly dishonest. Lehrer settles scores all through these chapters, even as he acknowledges that he deals with criticism poorly.
In our series of reports, we haven’t even begun to critique Lehrer’s deeply selective account of the 2000 debates. But the gods of the guild are often dishonest. So it seems to be with this god in his extremely strange book.
The adepts will always agree not to notice: Second lesson: When the gods of the guild misbehave, the minions will agree not to notice. Consider what happened when Gloria Borger interviewed Lehrer about his book in an hour-long session for C-Span. (To watch the full program, click here.)
Borger is a full-blown, high-ranking mainstream hack. But as a god, Lehrer stands above her in the guild’s order. This guaranteed that Borger would challenge nothing the master said in their interview, no matter how inaccurate, strange or bogus his various statements might be.
Consider one example, an example derived from Lehrer’s book. In the following passage, he describes the terrible way Gore sighed in his first debate with George Bush.
This account is odd all the way through. But before he’s done, Lehrer makes an extremely odd statement:
LEHRER (page 94): [D]espite being the closest person in the room, I ended up missing what turned out to be the most important story of that debate.Go ahead! Watch that full debate on C-Span! From this point in time, see if you can make any sense of the account Lehrer gives in that passage. Is it true? Does Gore “sigh heavily and repeatedly?” Do you see him “shaking his head, frowning, rolling his eyes and sneering” in such a way that this “body language” should have become “the most important story of that debate?”
Through the television device of a split screen, the world watched as Gore on that October 3 evening expressed disgust and displeasure with Bush’s answers.
Gore sighed heavily and repeatedly. He shook his head, frowned, rolled his eyes, and sneered. And—one thing I did know for sure—he also violated the time limits for questions and responses, violated the polite pleas of the moderator, and, generally, came across as overbearing—unlikable.
That, at least, was the consensus reaction from even his own supporters as well as much of the public. Gore was judged the clear loser in the debate, based almost entirely on his body language and not on what he actually said. As with the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, radio listeners came away with an almost entirely different impression than that of those who watched it on television.
That’s now The Official Guild Story, of course. But go ahead! Watch that debate! See if you understand why!
(As you watch, please understand one additional fact: In the actual word count for that debate, Candidate Bush spoke many more words than Candidate Gore. Try to reconcile that with Lehrer’s claim that “Gore violated the time limits for questions and responses, violated the polite pleas of the moderator.” If Gore was exceeding time limits so much, how the heck did Candidate Bush utter so many more words?)
By now, these are all parts of Official Guild Lore. That said, consider the ridiculous statement we have highlighted in that excerpt from Lehrer’s book.
According to Lehrer, “Gore was judged the clear loser in the debate, based almost entirely on his body language.” Lehrer then connects this claim to the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. In 2000 as in 1960, Lehrer says, “radio listeners came away with an almost entirely different impression than that of those who watched it on television.”
Surely, Lehrer must have known that one part of this claim is baldly inaccurate. In the case of that first Bush-Gore debate, five news orgs took overnight or next-day surveys of people who watched the debate. Gore was judged the winner in all five surveys, by an average margin of ten points.
Surely, Lehrer knew that fact as he wrote that past of his book. Meanwhile, by what flight of fancy does he imply that data exist about people who listened to that Bush-Gore debate on the radio?
The claim that Nixon won on the radio in 1960 is a hoary old urban legend, backed by no serious data. But Lehrer says in his book that Gore won on the radio, just as Nixon did, while losing on TV!
He must have known that Gore won on TV—and that no radio data exist. To all appearances, Lehrer was simply making this bullshit up, as he routinely does in the parts of his book where he’s settling scores.
That highlighted passage is truly absurd. It’s baldly false in one respect, delusional in another. And good God! Speaking with Borger for C-Span, Lehrer repeated that nonsense.
Obedient adept that she is, Borger of course played right along! She actually raced ahead of Lehrer, helping him with his weird thought:
From the C-Span interview:How odd! Sitting a mere ten feet away, Lehrer didn’t see (or hear) any of the “heavy” sighing in which Gore “repeatedly” engaged! But please note: When Lehrer introduced his bogus claim that Gore won on the radio/lost on TV, Borger simply rushed ahead to help the nonsense along.
LEHRER: When [the first Bush-Gore debate] was all over, I’m walking out of the hall with my family and one of my daughters says, “Oh Dad, that was, that was incredible what Gore did!” And I just stopped and I said, “What did Gore do?” And she talked, mentioned about the sighing and the grimacing and all that. I didn’t see any of that.
But it was a perfect case. People who listened to that on the radio thought Gore won that debate hands on [sic]. People who watched it on television thought—
BORGER: Kennedy-Nixon? Didn’t that, didn’t that happen the same way?
LEHRER: Kennedy-Nixon. Exactly! Kennedy-Nixon, it’s exactly the same parallel!
Surely, Borger knows that Gore won all five overnight surveys. But Borger is an overpaid member of this truly horrible guild. And in this guild, the gods can’t be wrong! By law, the gods can't be crazy.
Borger understands how this game works. Lehrer, a god, can’t be wrong.
In that exchange on C-Span, Lehrer and Borger are almost surely lying or engaging in a near equivalent. This is the way these horrible people hand you the manufactured tales around which our political world is relentlessly forced to turn.
Lehrer’s book is a window into the world of the Clinton-Gore years: Lehrer’s account of the 1996 debates is a valuable historical document. The lunacy of some of his statements helps us see the way the guild had come to view President Clinton.
Lehrer makes many odd misstatements as he discusses the 1996 debates. But his desire to hear Gennifer Flowers discussed at those debates comes straight from the land of the lotus eaters.
Gennifer Flowers was out of the news by the time of the 1992 debates. It was crazy to think that Dole or Kemp would discuss her in 1996. But that’s what Lehrer says he wanted to hear, and he describes the ways he angled to get Dole and Kemp to go there.
The craziness of this obsession spilled over in the 2000 debates, when Lehrer kept instructing Bush to discuss Gore’s bad character problems.
Even in 2011, Jim Lehrer still had his head up his keister about the buxom Ms. Flowers. In 1999, the guild did attempt to rehabilitate Flowers in the wake of the Clinton impeachment. They brought her back for long stints on two major cable shows—first on Hardball, then on Hannity.
In those half-hour and hour-long efforts, she discussed a few of her favorite themes—the various murders the Clintons committed and the fact that Hillary Clinton is the world’s most gigantic lesbo.
That said, nothing will ever make people like Lehrer shrink from the tales of this major-league crackpot. Her story about her twelve-year affair had been shot full of holes in 1992. But so what? Four years later, Lehrer hoped that Dole would talk about Flowers in those debates! With respect, someone should lead this strange man away to a farm where his kind can be cared for.
Liberal stars will protect these tales too: American history bent, then broke, beneath the weight of these press corps obsessions. The turning-point was Campaign 2000, where Lehrer made sure that the first two Bush-Gore debates ended with long discussions of Al Gore’s supposed character problems.
People are dead all over the world because of the conduct of crackpots like Lehrer. But liberal stars still stand in line to tell us how brilliant he is.
We hope their money is spending real good. People have died for the obscenity of their magnificent pay-checks.
With those important lessons learned, let’s return to Janet Brown, discussing Lehrer's performance at last week’s debate.
In fairness, Lehrer did nothing at that debate which compared with his misconduct during the Clinton-Gore years. And not only that! As we showed you, Janet Brown said that Lehrer performed exactly as planned:
BROWN (10/5/12): The format for the first and fourth presidential debates calls for six 15-minute segments on topics selected and announced in advance by the moderators. After the moderator asks a question, the candidates each have two minutes to answer. After their answers, the moderator’s job is to facilitate a conversation on the topic for approximately 9 minutes before moving to the next topic. The Commission on Presidential Debates’ goal in selecting this format was to have a serious discussion of the major domestic and foreign policy issues with minimal interference by the moderator or timing signals. Jim Lehrer implemented the format exactly as it was designed by the CPD and announced in July.Within the guild, the gods must be right! At any rate, that’s what Janet Brown was saying after last week’s debate.
All along, the debate commission wanted to create “a serious discussion of the major domestic and foreign policy issues with minimal interference by the moderator.” That’s what Janet Brown was saying after last week's debate.
But uh-oh! According to Politico, here’s what she said before last week's debate:
BYERS (9/29/12): The Commission reached out to Lehrer because it needed an experienced hand to launch the new debate format, which for the first time will divide the 90-minute debate into six, 15-minute segments focused on different policy issues.Did Brown contradict herself after the criticism started? Not exactly, no! Before the debate, she did make that statement about not “inserting one’s self into the conversation.”
“The new format is going to require a lot of experience and a lot [of] skill,” Janet Brown, the Commission’s executive director, explained to POLITICO. “The moderator will open the first segment, Gov. Romney and President Obama will each have two minutes to answer, and the remaining 11 minutes will be an open conversation.”
Many of Lehrer’s colleagues noted that the moderator’s job is to keep himself out of the conversation—to punch the clock or, as Brokaw put it, “to fire the gun to start off the race”—but because of the new format, Lehrer will actually play a more active role than ever.
“Those remaining 11 minutes are not timed, and that means the moderator has to pursue the topic at hand for an extended amount of time,” Brown explained. “That requires a lot of skill under pressure, it requires an understanding of how live television works, and it requires an ability to focus on the candidates without inserting one’s self into the conversation.”
But somehow, Byers came away from his interview with the idea that Lehrer would “play a more active role than ever” because of the new format. Some of the quoted statements by Brown seem to show where he got that idea.
Did Brown contradict herself? In a sense, but not as such! But have no fear:
If Brown had needed to change her story, that’s likely what she would have done! In this guild, the gods can’t be wrong—and Lehrer, with his love for Flowers, has long been numbered among this guild’s borderline crazy gods.
Visit our incomparable archives: We discussed Borger’s session with Lehrer last fall. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/3/11.
Dee Dee Myers gets it right!
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012
What the world needs from Joe Biden: A week went by before we saw it.
Yesterday, we finally saw a major pundit explain what was wrong with last Wednesday’s performance. Dee Dee Myers did the honors on Hardball.
In our view, she got it right:
Last Wednesday, one of the candidates had such a frame. The other candidate had agreed to take a couple of questions.
Mitt Romney had a basic claim. Here's what it was: That fellow over there is a nice enough guy. But he can’t do the job. I can! Just listen to all my ideas!
Obama had no central point. He had agreed to take questions.
As incumbents in a difficult time, Obama and Biden face a tough task. But they have to be making some sort of a point. As incumbents, there are three basic approaches they could take:
One final point: If you’re going to say what’s wrong with the other guy, you have to know what the other guy’s saying. Last Wednesday, Obama chose to make Romney’s tax proposal the centerpiece of his early statements.
But Obama seemed hugely unprepared. He seemed surprised by the things Romney said, even though Romney has said those same things many times in the past. Beyond that, what was his central claim about Romney?
Candidate Obama was disastrously under-prepared.
Obama has a very tough day job—and everybody screws up at some point. But the lack of prep was disastrous last week. Tonight, Biden needs to assert a strong central point.
Dee Dee Myers got it right. Let’s hope Biden does too.
Matt Miller got it right: We still think Matt Miller did a good job defining a central framework for Biden. To peruse his "primer for Biden," click here.
What the world needs from Joe Biden: A week went by before we saw it.
Yesterday, we finally saw a major pundit explain what was wrong with last Wednesday’s performance. Dee Dee Myers did the honors on Hardball.
In our view, she got it right:
MYERS (10/10/12): The president’s problem wasn't that he was too polite. The president’s problem was that he didn’t come with a strong narrative frame, right, both for defending his own accomplishments and his own record, giving us some idea of where we’re going in the next term and holding Mitt Romney accountable for having 87 positions on every issue.What does she mean by “a “narrative frame?” Essentially, she means this: You have to have a central point, a central claim you’re making.
Yes, it gets repetitive, but if you continue to frame the issue, you know, in a more elegant way, which we know the president’s capable of, you can remind the audience over and over, because Mitt Romney has flip-flopped over and over.
So, I hope we see not only a— And the president can remain polite. I just hope we see a more aggressive defense and a better frame, a better narrative around who he is and what he’s done and where we’re going as a country.
Last Wednesday, one of the candidates had such a frame. The other candidate had agreed to take a couple of questions.
Mitt Romney had a basic claim. Here's what it was: That fellow over there is a nice enough guy. But he can’t do the job. I can! Just listen to all my ideas!
Obama had no central point. He had agreed to take questions.
As incumbents in a difficult time, Obama and Biden face a tough task. But they have to be making some sort of a point. As incumbents, there are three basic approaches they could take:
Approaches Obama and Biden could take:Obama had no narrative focus—no central claim. Tonight, we need one from Biden.
They could stress the things they’ve achieved over the past four years.
They could stress the things they plan for the next four years. (Problem: They don’t seem to have any such plans.)
They could stress the three million things that are wrong with Candidate Romney.
One final point: If you’re going to say what’s wrong with the other guy, you have to know what the other guy’s saying. Last Wednesday, Obama chose to make Romney’s tax proposal the centerpiece of his early statements.
But Obama seemed hugely unprepared. He seemed surprised by the things Romney said, even though Romney has said those same things many times in the past. Beyond that, what was his central claim about Romney?
Candidate Obama was disastrously under-prepared.
Obama has a very tough day job—and everybody screws up at some point. But the lack of prep was disastrous last week. Tonight, Biden needs to assert a strong central point.
Dee Dee Myers got it right. Let’s hope Biden does too.
Matt Miller got it right: We still think Matt Miller did a good job defining a central framework for Biden. To peruse his "primer for Biden," click here.
Are you still sure Mitt Romney can't win!
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012
The laziness of his opponents: Our side is so dumb it just hurts.
Consider what happened when E. J. Dionne showed up to chatter with Rachel.
The nonsense in question occurred Tuesday night. E. J. offered this:
In truth, Obama did a very poor job at last week's debate. In truth, he was unprepared. He seemed to be completely surprised when Romney said various things about his tax proposal he has said many times in the past.
But then, if Dionne represents our brain trust, perhaps the president shouldn’t be blamed. Just look at what Dionne was still saying, six days later, concerning Romney’s proposal:
First, Dionne said he had just noticed something Romney said at the debate. Sad! Romney has made that very same statement many times in the past, extending back to the very day he unveiled his tax proposal.
In Dionne’s account, here's what Romney said: “I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.”
Even now, does Dionne know what Romney means by that? It seems that he doesn’t know. (But then again, Dionne seems to think that this is some sort of new statement!)
Good grief! In making that statement, Romney doesn’t mean that he’s going to “cut rich people’s taxes by a whole lot of money” but cut everyone else’s taxes too, thus keeping rich people’s share of taxes the same. Whatever Romney would end up doing, that just isn’t what he means when he makes that statement.
You know that isn’t what he means because, at that same debate, Romney said that any tax reform he signs will have to be revenue neutral. That completely contradicts what Dionne says Romney “was really saying.”
Next, Dionne entertained us rubes with an apparent contradiction. “He said he’s going to cut everybody’s taxes by 20 percent. And then he said in the debate, we’re not going to have tax cuts that add to the deficit.”
That would be a ludicrous pair of claims. But that isn't what Romney has said.
In fact, Romney has said, from the beginning, that he would cut everyone’s tax rates by twenty percent (with deductions and loopholes to be eliminated). But duh! Cutting someone's tax rates is not the same thing as cutting that person's taxes.
Does E. J. really not know that? How about Our Own Rhodes Scholar? She just bumbled ahead!
Romney’s original proposal didn’t add up. It was mathematically impossible, the Tax Policy Center said, in early August.
Beyond that, it’s amazingly stupid to cite PBS as the way to balance large cuts in tax rates. Romney proposed that too, as Dionne somehow managed to note.
But Obama seemed surprised when Romney said various things about his tax plan—things he has said many times in the past. And six days later, E. J. Dionne still wasn’t making much sense.
Romney is smart and facile. In debate, it’s easy to beat such opponents.
Finally, look at Bill Clinton. Last night, Lawrence exulted over the big pile of piffle which follows. We're sorry, but this is just wrong:
Nor did Romney change his plan in the three or four days before the debate. The things he said at that debate he had said many times in the past, including on Meet the Press.
Obama showed no sign of knowing. Six days later, E. J. Dionne still seemed basically clueless.
Our leaders are lazy, indifferent, dishonest. Given the laziness of his opponents, are you still sure Mitt Romney can’t win?
The laziness of his opponents: Our side is so dumb it just hurts.
Consider what happened when E. J. Dionne showed up to chatter with Rachel.
The nonsense in question occurred Tuesday night. E. J. offered this:
DIONNE (10/9/12): In preparing for this show, I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before. Romney said in the debate, “I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.” Now, that’s exactly what George W. Bush said in the 2000 debate.Valiantly, Rachel defended Obama. He tried, but he couldn’t connect!
You can cut rich peoples’ taxes by a whole lot of money and still have them pay the same share of the total. So that’s what he was really saying.
He was also— He said he’s going to cut everybody’s taxes by 20 percent. And then he said in the debate, we’re not going to have tax cuts that add to the deficit. Now, if this is math, it’s math on meth. I mean, it just doesn’t add up at all. And I think that’s the issue that has to be raised over and over again.
And then Big Bird is really a good illustration of how—in addition to all these tax cuts, in addition to all the military spending, all he talks about is Big Bird, and it’s got to be turned on him.
MADDOW: In terms of the way the president tried to make that case during the first debate, that is what the president returned to over and over and over again. That’s why he kept saying $5 trillion, talking about the extra trillion of dollars in defense spending and how expensive the tax cuts were going to be. The president, I think, was trying to make that case, but wasn’t able to connect with it.
In truth, Obama did a very poor job at last week's debate. In truth, he was unprepared. He seemed to be completely surprised when Romney said various things about his tax proposal he has said many times in the past.
But then, if Dionne represents our brain trust, perhaps the president shouldn’t be blamed. Just look at what Dionne was still saying, six days later, concerning Romney’s proposal:
First, Dionne said he had just noticed something Romney said at the debate. Sad! Romney has made that very same statement many times in the past, extending back to the very day he unveiled his tax proposal.
In Dionne’s account, here's what Romney said: “I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.”
Even now, does Dionne know what Romney means by that? It seems that he doesn’t know. (But then again, Dionne seems to think that this is some sort of new statement!)
Good grief! In making that statement, Romney doesn’t mean that he’s going to “cut rich people’s taxes by a whole lot of money” but cut everyone else’s taxes too, thus keeping rich people’s share of taxes the same. Whatever Romney would end up doing, that just isn’t what he means when he makes that statement.
You know that isn’t what he means because, at that same debate, Romney said that any tax reform he signs will have to be revenue neutral. That completely contradicts what Dionne says Romney “was really saying.”
Next, Dionne entertained us rubes with an apparent contradiction. “He said he’s going to cut everybody’s taxes by 20 percent. And then he said in the debate, we’re not going to have tax cuts that add to the deficit.”
That would be a ludicrous pair of claims. But that isn't what Romney has said.
In fact, Romney has said, from the beginning, that he would cut everyone’s tax rates by twenty percent (with deductions and loopholes to be eliminated). But duh! Cutting someone's tax rates is not the same thing as cutting that person's taxes.
Does E. J. really not know that? How about Our Own Rhodes Scholar? She just bumbled ahead!
Romney’s original proposal didn’t add up. It was mathematically impossible, the Tax Policy Center said, in early August.
Beyond that, it’s amazingly stupid to cite PBS as the way to balance large cuts in tax rates. Romney proposed that too, as Dionne somehow managed to note.
But Obama seemed surprised when Romney said various things about his tax plan—things he has said many times in the past. And six days later, E. J. Dionne still wasn’t making much sense.
Romney is smart and facile. In debate, it’s easy to beat such opponents.
Finally, look at Bill Clinton. Last night, Lawrence exulted over the big pile of piffle which follows. We're sorry, but this is just wrong:
CLINTON: I had a different reaction to that first debate than a lot of people did. I mean, I thought, "Wow! Here’s old moderate Mitt. Where you been, boy? I missed you all these last two years!"We're sorry, but that's total horseshit. In fact, Romney hasn’t had his tax plan “for the last two years.” At the debate, Obama said eighteen months. Clinton is even more wrong.
But I was paying attention in the last two years. And it was like one of these Bain Capital deals where, you know, he’s the closer. So he shows up, doesn't really know much about the deal and says, "Tell me what I’m supposed to say to close." Now the problem with this deal is, the deal was made by severe conservative Mitt. That was how he described himself for two whole years.
Until three or four days before the debate they all got together and said, "Hey, Mitt, this ship is sinkin’ faster than the Titanic. But people are still frustrated about the economy, they want it fixed yesterday. So just show up with a sunny face and say, “I didn’t say all that stuff I said for the last two years. I don’t have that tax plan I’ve had for the last two years. You’re going to believe me or your lyin’ eyes here? Come on.”
Nor did Romney change his plan in the three or four days before the debate. The things he said at that debate he had said many times in the past, including on Meet the Press.
Obama showed no sign of knowing. Six days later, E. J. Dionne still seemed basically clueless.
Our leaders are lazy, indifferent, dishonest. Given the laziness of his opponents, are you still sure Mitt Romney can’t win?
The hopeless decline of the liberal world!
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012
Watching us act just like Fox: Last evening, the cry was made all over cable, from Hardball through the Maddow Show.
Let’s present the point as the hapless Gail Collins presents it this morning. Last evening, on pseudo-liberal cable, you saw the highlighted point belabored all night long:
All last night, you saw that highlighted pair of statements presented as Romney’s latest flip-flop and/or contradiction. But that was just a big pile of crap—a marker of the liberal world’s headlong descent into the realm which once belonged only to Fox.
Is Romney involved in a new contradiction, a flip-flop? Just look at the two short statements there, even as they have been clipped.
In one statement, Romney says he knows of no legislation that would become part of his agenda. Is there some such proposed legislation that he is passing over?
We don't know what that would be. And no one felt the need to speak to this point last night on Our Own Liberal Fox.
In the second statement, a Romney aide says that he would be willing to support some such legislation. As anyone with two brain cells can see, that doesn’t contradict what Romney told the editorial board.
But so what! In truth, we liberals simply aren’t smart enough to create an actual politics! As the buffoons have always done on Fox, we have to gin up our cries of rage.
So it went all night on liberal cable, as we screamed about this fluff.
By the way: What did Romney really say to the board, if you read his fuller statement? At the Des Moines Register, Jennifer Jacobs gives her account of what happened.
More significantly, she provides the text of Romney’s fuller statement:
To our ear, it sounds like Romney couldn’t think of a piece of legislation to endorse, then compensated by offering a long spiel about Mexico City.
But that is all speculation. In the real world, there is no contradiction between Romney’s statement and the subsequent statement made by his spokesperson. Nor did Romney contradict some previous stance he has taken.
But so what? We need to offer cries of rage. And in truth, we don’t really know how.
By light years, Romney is the worst nominee for president of the modern era. He is a horrible candidate.
Despite that, our side is unable to formulate a serious case against him. We could all see that very clearly when Obama debated last week.
The gent arrived with nothing to say. But then, all summer long, our strategy had been the following: Wait for Romney to make a gaffe. Then, yell loud and long.
We don’t know how to build real claims, from our hapless president down. (He was just too polite!)
Sorry. There’s no contradiction in what Romney said to that editorial board. As far as we know, he didn’t reverse some previous stance.
The children looked very feeble last night. Good lord! We are so much like the buffoons we once mocked at Fox!
Our next post: Same problem, different horseshit
Watching us act just like Fox: Last evening, the cry was made all over cable, from Hardball through the Maddow Show.
Let’s present the point as the hapless Gail Collins presents it this morning. Last evening, on pseudo-liberal cable, you saw the highlighted point belabored all night long:
COLLINS (10/11/12): You have to calm down, Democrats. Romney hasn’t turned into some new super-candidate. You were just underestimating him during September. He’s the same old Mitt. This week in Des Moines, he told an editorial board that he doesn’t have any plans for pushing anti-abortion bills if he’s elected. (“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”) Meanwhile, back at headquarters, his spokeswoman was assuring National Review that he “would, of course, support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life.”Collins has one of the laziest minds in the known world. For the latest proof, just click here. (With several citations of Seamus!)
Maybe this will come up in the vice-presidential debate. Do you remember how well Joe Biden did against Sarah Palin?
All last night, you saw that highlighted pair of statements presented as Romney’s latest flip-flop and/or contradiction. But that was just a big pile of crap—a marker of the liberal world’s headlong descent into the realm which once belonged only to Fox.
Is Romney involved in a new contradiction, a flip-flop? Just look at the two short statements there, even as they have been clipped.
In one statement, Romney says he knows of no legislation that would become part of his agenda. Is there some such proposed legislation that he is passing over?
We don't know what that would be. And no one felt the need to speak to this point last night on Our Own Liberal Fox.
In the second statement, a Romney aide says that he would be willing to support some such legislation. As anyone with two brain cells can see, that doesn’t contradict what Romney told the editorial board.
But so what! In truth, we liberals simply aren’t smart enough to create an actual politics! As the buffoons have always done on Fox, we have to gin up our cries of rage.
So it went all night on liberal cable, as we screamed about this fluff.
By the way: What did Romney really say to the board, if you read his fuller statement? At the Des Moines Register, Jennifer Jacobs gives her account of what happened.
More significantly, she provides the text of Romney’s fuller statement:
JACOBS (10/10/12): In the face of polls indicating eroding voter support and a shrinking gender gap, Obama aides worked feverishly Wednesday to try to enmesh Mitt Romney in a controversy over his abortion stance, turning a 30-second slice of a 40-minute interview in Iowa into a hotly discussed national news story.Read that fuller statement by Romney. Does that sound like someone who is trying to hide his anti-abortion stance?
Romney told The Des Moines Register’s editorial board Tuesday there’s no legislation regarding abortion “that would become part of my agenda.” The remark sparked a tidal wave of spin from Obama backers, even as Romney backers stated that he had not reversed his anti-abortion position in any way and has maintained consistency since he began running for president.
[...]
So, here's what Romney really said
Here’s an instant replay of what happened:
During a meeting before a campaign rally at a family farm in Van Meter Tuesday, The Des Moines Register’s political editor followed up a question about legislation on women’s issues by asking Romney if he intends “to pursue any legislation specifically regarding abortion.”
Romney answered: “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda. One thing I would change, however, which would be done by executive order, not by legislation, is that I would reinstate the Mexico City policy, which is that foreign aid dollars from the United States would not be used to carry out abortion in other countries. It’s long been our practice here that taxpayer dollars are not to be used to fund abortion in this country. President Obama on the 10th day of his administration changed the Mexico City policy to say that abortion services were not prohibited in our foreign aid dollars. I would go back to the original so-called Mexico City policy.”
The Obama re-election campaign immediately seized on those remarks, drumming up news coverage by reaching out to reporters in emails and phone calls. And their comments quickly caught fire in the Twitter-verse and mainstream media.
To our ear, it sounds like Romney couldn’t think of a piece of legislation to endorse, then compensated by offering a long spiel about Mexico City.
But that is all speculation. In the real world, there is no contradiction between Romney’s statement and the subsequent statement made by his spokesperson. Nor did Romney contradict some previous stance he has taken.
But so what? We need to offer cries of rage. And in truth, we don’t really know how.
By light years, Romney is the worst nominee for president of the modern era. He is a horrible candidate.
Despite that, our side is unable to formulate a serious case against him. We could all see that very clearly when Obama debated last week.
The gent arrived with nothing to say. But then, all summer long, our strategy had been the following: Wait for Romney to make a gaffe. Then, yell loud and long.
We don’t know how to build real claims, from our hapless president down. (He was just too polite!)
Sorry. There’s no contradiction in what Romney said to that editorial board. As far as we know, he didn’t reverse some previous stance.
The children looked very feeble last night. Good lord! We are so much like the buffoons we once mocked at Fox!
Our next post: Same problem, different horseshit
LEHRER’S RERUN: Jim Lehrer's autumn of 96!
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012
Part 6—A prequel to Campaign 2000: Did Jim Lehrer do something wrong at last week’s debate?
That is a matter of judgment. Without question, the debate would have gained, at several points, if he had asked a few clarifying questions.
Lehrer didn’t ask those questions. In the aftermath of the debate, he took a lot of criticism.
That said, Lehrer was criticized once before for his conduct in presidential debates. In Campaign 2000, we think he did something very wrong, as described in yesterday’s post:
In each of the first two debates that year, Lehrer lobbed a softball to Candidate Bush, urging him to speak at length about Candidate Gore’s bad character problems.
He ended the first debate that way. Then, he did the same damn thing at the end of the second debate!
At best, he showed appalling bad judgment. And good God:
Four years earlier, when Clinton fought Dole, Lehrer had behaved in a similar fashion! In last year’s peculiar book, Tension City, he described his thinking—and his conduct—during those earlier debates.
Forgive us for coming away with this thought: Jim Lehrer seems to be very peculiar. And it seems that he was a genuine, full-bore Clinton-Gore hater.
As he starts chapter 4 in Tension City, Lehrer sets the scene for those 1996 debates. In this passage, he discusses the first Clinton-Dole debate, held in Hartford:
Are those debates “remembered mostly for what did not happen?” Are they mostly remembered for the fact that Dole and Kemp didn’t go after the Woman Problem?
Already, Lehrer is making things up. That said, did Lehrer “toss a few opportunities their way” in those 1996 debates? People! Did he ever!
In the following passage, Lehrer explains his own strange thinking before the first Clinton-Dole debate. In the process, he says one thing that’s just extremely strange:
We’re sorry to interrupt Lehrer’s reveries, but Gennifer Flowers was not in the news in 1996. She had burst on the scene in January 1992. Her fact-challenged story was largely spent by the time of that year’s debates.
The notion that Dole might have cited Flowers is pretty much batty. Beyond that, Lehrer should be ashamed of himself for the way he describes Flowers. He writes as if it has somehow been shown that she and Clinton actually did have “a twelve-year affair.”
Simply put, that hasn’t been shown; almost surely, the claim is false. As he strokes his thigh with anger at Clinton, Lehrer should be ashamed of himself for acting as if that extremely shaky claim has somehow been established.
It’s hard to believe that Lehrer thought that Dole would cite Gennifer Flowers. If Dole had actually done such a thing, he would have become a laughing-stock, despite the press corps' later attempts to restore Flowers’ reputation.
(Flowers became their hero again after the Lewinsky story broke. At that point, in 1999, they tried very hard to pretend they knew that Flowers had been "telling the truth all along.")
At any rate, Lehrer says he was expecting Dole to drop this October surprise. It’s one of the balmiest statements we’ve ever seen—but so what? Soon, Lehrer explains what he decided to do when Candidate Dole failed to go there:
In “the first twenty minutes and beyond,” that debate centered on “tort reform, Social Security, taxes, the deficit” because those were the topics Lehrer presented. Presumably, he asked about those topics (and others) because they’re important topics.
And yet, inside Jim Lehrer’s head, a familiar old drama was churning. Who gives a shit about Social Security, this multimillionaire's mind was saying. We want to get to the sex!
And so, sure enough, the moderator decided “to shake things up!” In a prelude to the softballs he would later lob at Candidate Bush, Lehrer tossed this question to Dole:
Under the rules, a discussion between Clinton and Dole ensued. To Lehrer, though, this wasn’t enough. Remarkably, this was his next question. Again, it went to Candidate Dole:
Once again, Dole failed to discuss the luscious Ms. Flowers. (“I happen to like President Clinton personally,” he said as part of his answer.) In his strange and remarkable book, Lehrer explains where his frustration led him.
First, Lehrer notes a fact which came to light a bit later. At the time of that first debate, the Washington Post and other news orgs were working on a story about an alleged affair Dole allegedly had some 28 years before.
That is the story to which Lehrer refers as he explains where his frustrations led him:
How did Lehrer “give the Dole campaign a second chance to engage the Clinton character issue?” We think you can probably guess that by now. Incredibly, this was the very first question at the Gore-Kemp debate:
Poor Lehrer! In two consecutive questions, he tried to get Candidate Dole to discuss Ms. Flowers. When Dole wouldn’t take the bait, he opened the vice presidential debate by trying to get Kemp to go there! In his book, he offers a very strange thought about Kemp’s refusal:
“Kemp, inexplicably, seemed unprepared for what, according to every preview story in the press, would be a first question along those lines.”
So writes Lehrer, in delusional fashion, on page 81 of his book.
Did “some supporters of Senator Dole” express disappointment over his unwillingness to draw personal and ethical differences between him and President Clinton? More strikingly, did “every preview story in the press” assume there would be a first question for Kemp along these lines?
Last fall, a Nexis search found very few Dole supporters complaining along these lines. Having said that, let’s also say this:
On the morning of the Gore-Kemp debate, the preview stories did not suggest that Kemp would get such a first question. That includes a pair of preview stories in the conservative Washington Times.
Lehrer simply made that up in his very peculiar book.
Beyond those two points, let’s state the obvious: No one thought Candidates Dole and Kemp were going to wax about Gennifer Flowers! Her name barely appeared in the press in the week before these debates.
According to Nexis, her name wasn’t mentioned in the New York Times or the Washington Post—or in the Washington Times. Simply put, Flowers wasn’t part of the landscape at that point in time—except inside Jim Lehrer’s head, if he was remembering correctly when he wrote his book.
Lehrer’s book is very strange. That said, it gives us a glimpse into the heart and soul of the press corps elite during the Clinton-Gore years. And it shows us that Lehrer’s conduct in the Bush-Gore debates didn’t come out of thin air.
If Lehrer’s book can be believed, he still had Flowers on the brain as he approached the Clinton-Dole debates. Social Security? Who care about that! He wanted to hear about that torrid twelve-year affair! The affair Flowers seems to have imagined, earning big bucks in the process.
And so, in a very peculiar book, Jim Lehrer describes himself doing a very odd thing. As moderator, Lehrer of course had to decide what topics were worth discussing. But his book makes it seem that he was very much rooting for certain answers and certain outcomes—that he very much wanted Dole, then Kemp, to go after Bill Clinton’s character.
He threw two leading questions to Dole. When his advances were rebuffed, he opened the Gore-Kemp debate with a similar softball for Kemp. It was his very first question!
Four years later, he was still at it! He ended the first Bush-Gore debate by engineering a long discussion of Gore’s deeply troubling character problems. Incredibly, he then did the same thing as he ended the second debate.
Nor was Lehrer done at that point! In 2004, he moderated the first Bush-Kerry debate. Midway through, something inspired him to ask this question of Bush:
Lehrer’s book is extremely strange. His judgment in those 2000 debates was horrendous—and needless to say, it may have changed world history.
But so what? Just two weeks ago, Lehrer was being lionized in Politico, praised by one and all as our “master of moderation.”
Two pseudo-liberal TV stars added their voices to the praise being showered on this god’s head. Now that you know how strange Lehrer is, we want you to look, one more time, at what those TV stars said:
Let’s be fair! Given the way the liberal world has functioned in the past twenty years, Wagner and Harris-Perry probably had no idea what Lehrer had done in these past debates.
They were repeating a mandated script. In fairness, they probably had no idea how absurd their script really was. They just said it because you’re supposed to. That way lies (their own) success!
Alas! The career liberal world has always fawned and pandered to major gods of the guild like Lehrer. In part because of all this fawning, Lehrer was dragged out one more time last week.
The cheers of your favorite liberal stars rang in his very strange ears.
Tomorrow: Three or four final points
Part 6—A prequel to Campaign 2000: Did Jim Lehrer do something wrong at last week’s debate?
That is a matter of judgment. Without question, the debate would have gained, at several points, if he had asked a few clarifying questions.
Lehrer didn’t ask those questions. In the aftermath of the debate, he took a lot of criticism.
That said, Lehrer was criticized once before for his conduct in presidential debates. In Campaign 2000, we think he did something very wrong, as described in yesterday’s post:
In each of the first two debates that year, Lehrer lobbed a softball to Candidate Bush, urging him to speak at length about Candidate Gore’s bad character problems.
He ended the first debate that way. Then, he did the same damn thing at the end of the second debate!
At best, he showed appalling bad judgment. And good God:
Four years earlier, when Clinton fought Dole, Lehrer had behaved in a similar fashion! In last year’s peculiar book, Tension City, he described his thinking—and his conduct—during those earlier debates.
Forgive us for coming away with this thought: Jim Lehrer seems to be very peculiar. And it seems that he was a genuine, full-bore Clinton-Gore hater.
As he starts chapter 4 in Tension City, Lehrer sets the scene for those 1996 debates. In this passage, he discusses the first Clinton-Dole debate, held in Hartford:
LEHRER (page 77): [T]he 1996 debates were remembered mostly for what did not happen. No one, including the Republican nominees Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, went after Clinton on the so-called character issue—a code phrase for the Woman Problem.Lehrer injects the word "neutral." History suggets something different.
As moderator, I did toss a few neutral opportunities that way, but no one caught them.
Are those debates “remembered mostly for what did not happen?” Are they mostly remembered for the fact that Dole and Kemp didn’t go after the Woman Problem?
Already, Lehrer is making things up. That said, did Lehrer “toss a few opportunities their way” in those 1996 debates? People! Did he ever!
In the following passage, Lehrer explains his own strange thinking before the first Clinton-Dole debate. In the process, he says one thing that’s just extremely strange:
LEHRER (page 78): As Hartford approached, Dole was down twenty points in the polls. It was now or never for the former World War II hero and U.S. Senate leader from Kansas. He either went for broke against Clinton in their first debate, or the 1996 presidential election was over.Did you know that moderators think that much about candidates’ strategies? In our view, it’s odd to hear Lehrer sharing his thoughts about the things Dole needed to do in this debate. But his remarks about Gennifer Flowers are 1) just extremely strange and 2) in our view, extremely unfortunate.
My own preparations centered on the belief that if Dole was going to do something that mattered it had to happen in the first twenty minutes to hold the big national television audience.
This was pre-Monica Lewinsky but there was already much in the public discourse about Clinton’s alleged womanizing, especially related to a twelve-year affair with a singer/actress named Gennifer Flowers.
I assumed that if Dole tried to break things open, he would try to use it.
We’re sorry to interrupt Lehrer’s reveries, but Gennifer Flowers was not in the news in 1996. She had burst on the scene in January 1992. Her fact-challenged story was largely spent by the time of that year’s debates.
The notion that Dole might have cited Flowers is pretty much batty. Beyond that, Lehrer should be ashamed of himself for the way he describes Flowers. He writes as if it has somehow been shown that she and Clinton actually did have “a twelve-year affair.”
Simply put, that hasn’t been shown; almost surely, the claim is false. As he strokes his thigh with anger at Clinton, Lehrer should be ashamed of himself for acting as if that extremely shaky claim has somehow been established.
It’s hard to believe that Lehrer thought that Dole would cite Gennifer Flowers. If Dole had actually done such a thing, he would have become a laughing-stock, despite the press corps' later attempts to restore Flowers’ reputation.
(Flowers became their hero again after the Lewinsky story broke. At that point, in 1999, they tried very hard to pretend they knew that Flowers had been "telling the truth all along.")
At any rate, Lehrer says he was expecting Dole to drop this October surprise. It’s one of the balmiest statements we’ve ever seen—but so what? Soon, Lehrer explains what he decided to do when Candidate Dole failed to go there:
LEHRER (page 79): Nothing happened. The debate proceeded quietly, routinely for the first twenty minutes and beyond about tort reform, Social Security, taxes, the deficit, drugs and guns. There were no fireworks, not even any sparklers.In our view, that’s an astonishing statement. Before we explain, let’s state an obvious point:
It was time for me as the moderator to shake things up.
In “the first twenty minutes and beyond,” that debate centered on “tort reform, Social Security, taxes, the deficit” because those were the topics Lehrer presented. Presumably, he asked about those topics (and others) because they’re important topics.
And yet, inside Jim Lehrer’s head, a familiar old drama was churning. Who gives a shit about Social Security, this multimillionaire's mind was saying. We want to get to the sex!
And so, sure enough, the moderator decided “to shake things up!” In a prelude to the softballs he would later lob at Candidate Bush, Lehrer tossed this question to Dole:
LEHRER (10/6/96): Senator Dole, we've talked mostly now about differences between the two of you that relate to policy issues and that sort of thing. Are there also significant differences in the more personal area that are relevant to this election?Candidate Dole wasn’t buying. “I'm not—I don't like to get into personal matters,” he said, part way through his response. “As far as I'm concerned, this is a campaign about issues.”
Under the rules, a discussion between Clinton and Dole ensued. To Lehrer, though, this wasn’t enough. Remarkably, this was his next question. Again, it went to Candidate Dole:
LEHRER (10/6/96): Senator Dole, if you could single out one thing that you would like for the voters to have in their mind about President Clinton on a policy matter or a personal matter, what would it be? Something to know about him, understand it and appreciate it?At the time, that question may have seemed a bit odd. Thanks to Lehrer’s peculiar book, we now know what he was angling for when he asked it.
Once again, Dole failed to discuss the luscious Ms. Flowers. (“I happen to like President Clinton personally,” he said as part of his answer.) In his strange and remarkable book, Lehrer explains where his frustration led him.
First, Lehrer notes a fact which came to light a bit later. At the time of that first debate, the Washington Post and other news orgs were working on a story about an alleged affair Dole allegedly had some 28 years before.
That is the story to which Lehrer refers as he explains where his frustrations led him:
LEHRER (page 80): That Dole story still had not been reported two days later when I gave the Dole campaign a second chance to engage the Clinton character issue.Actually, it was three days later. But why get bogged down in the math?
It occurred at the beginning of the October 9, 1996, vice presidential debate between the Democratic incumbent Al Gore and Jack Kemp, a former Republican congressman and pro football quarterback, at the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg, Florida.
How did Lehrer “give the Dole campaign a second chance to engage the Clinton character issue?” We think you can probably guess that by now. Incredibly, this was the very first question at the Gore-Kemp debate:
LEHRER (10/9/96): Welcome to the 1996 Vice Presidential Debate between Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, and Jack Kemp, the Republican nominee…Like Dole before him, Kemp refused. “Jim, Bob Dole and myself do not see Al Gore and Bill Clinton as our enemy, we see them as our opponents,” he said.
The order for everything was determined by a coin toss. There will be three-minute closing statements, but no opening statements
So we go now to the first question and to Mr. Kemp.
KEMP: Jim.
LEHRER: Some supporters of Senator Dole have expressed disappointment over his unwillingness—in Hartford Sunday night—to draw personal and ethical differences between him and President Clinton. How do you feel about it?
Poor Lehrer! In two consecutive questions, he tried to get Candidate Dole to discuss Ms. Flowers. When Dole wouldn’t take the bait, he opened the vice presidential debate by trying to get Kemp to go there! In his book, he offers a very strange thought about Kemp’s refusal:
“Kemp, inexplicably, seemed unprepared for what, according to every preview story in the press, would be a first question along those lines.”
So writes Lehrer, in delusional fashion, on page 81 of his book.
Did “some supporters of Senator Dole” express disappointment over his unwillingness to draw personal and ethical differences between him and President Clinton? More strikingly, did “every preview story in the press” assume there would be a first question for Kemp along these lines?
Last fall, a Nexis search found very few Dole supporters complaining along these lines. Having said that, let’s also say this:
On the morning of the Gore-Kemp debate, the preview stories did not suggest that Kemp would get such a first question. That includes a pair of preview stories in the conservative Washington Times.
Lehrer simply made that up in his very peculiar book.
Beyond those two points, let’s state the obvious: No one thought Candidates Dole and Kemp were going to wax about Gennifer Flowers! Her name barely appeared in the press in the week before these debates.
According to Nexis, her name wasn’t mentioned in the New York Times or the Washington Post—or in the Washington Times. Simply put, Flowers wasn’t part of the landscape at that point in time—except inside Jim Lehrer’s head, if he was remembering correctly when he wrote his book.
Lehrer’s book is very strange. That said, it gives us a glimpse into the heart and soul of the press corps elite during the Clinton-Gore years. And it shows us that Lehrer’s conduct in the Bush-Gore debates didn’t come out of thin air.
If Lehrer’s book can be believed, he still had Flowers on the brain as he approached the Clinton-Dole debates. Social Security? Who care about that! He wanted to hear about that torrid twelve-year affair! The affair Flowers seems to have imagined, earning big bucks in the process.
And so, in a very peculiar book, Jim Lehrer describes himself doing a very odd thing. As moderator, Lehrer of course had to decide what topics were worth discussing. But his book makes it seem that he was very much rooting for certain answers and certain outcomes—that he very much wanted Dole, then Kemp, to go after Bill Clinton’s character.
He threw two leading questions to Dole. When his advances were rebuffed, he opened the Gore-Kemp debate with a similar softball for Kemp. It was his very first question!
Four years later, he was still at it! He ended the first Bush-Gore debate by engineering a long discussion of Gore’s deeply troubling character problems. Incredibly, he then did the same thing as he ended the second debate.
Nor was Lehrer done at that point! In 2004, he moderated the first Bush-Kerry debate. Midway through, something inspired him to ask this question of Bush:
LEHRER (9/30/04): New question, President Bush.Why in the world did Lehrer ask that? We have no idea. That said, this was the fifth straight debate, in a span of eight years, where Lehrer asked the Republican candidate to discuss the character problems of his Democratic opponent! Except perhaps in one question to Kerry, he never posed a similar question to the Democratic contenders.
Clearly, as we have heard, major policy differences between the two of you. Are there also underlying character issues that you believe, that you believe are serious enough to deny Senator Kerry the job as commander in chief of the United States?
Lehrer’s book is extremely strange. His judgment in those 2000 debates was horrendous—and needless to say, it may have changed world history.
But so what? Just two weeks ago, Lehrer was being lionized in Politico, praised by one and all as our “master of moderation.”
Two pseudo-liberal TV stars added their voices to the praise being showered on this god’s head. Now that you know how strange Lehrer is, we want you to look, one more time, at what those TV stars said:
BYERS (9/27/12): For all the talent on television today, few besides Lehrer meet those qualifications. Indeed, colleagues say, moderators of Lehrer’s ilk are severely lacking in today’s media landscape, where partisanship and showmanship trump once-sacred notions of fairness and balance.That was the ened of the profile. According to Dylan Byers, “the entire industry” felt secure in knowing that Lehrer would be in that chair! That seemed to include a pair of “liberal” TV stars.
“Jim represents a version of American political journalism that is much less prominent now,” Melissa Harris-Perry, the MSNBC host and academic, told POLITICO. “I have my own viewpoints, I regularly insert and assert—as much as I love what I do, that’s insufficient for a presidential debate.”
[...]
Given all that is at stake on Oct. 3, the entire political-media industry seems secure in knowing that Lehrer will serve as moderator. Even younger generations of television journalists, who noted a lack of demographic diversity or new-media savvy among this year’s moderators, feel comforted by Lehrer’s presence.
“Speed has not particularly been of service to American political landscape: Voters get little chance to sit back, soak in and really breathe deeply as far as where these guys stand,” Alex Wagner, the 34-year-old MSNBC host, told POLITICO. “The campaign feels like a washing machine...so I like the idea that Jim, who has so much experience in politics and understands the nuances of these issues, will be moderating.”
“Jim Lehrer moderating a debate is like Dick Clark hosting New Year’s Eve,” said the 38-year-old Harris-Perry. “It just seems right.”
Let’s be fair! Given the way the liberal world has functioned in the past twenty years, Wagner and Harris-Perry probably had no idea what Lehrer had done in these past debates.
They were repeating a mandated script. In fairness, they probably had no idea how absurd their script really was. They just said it because you’re supposed to. That way lies (their own) success!
Alas! The career liberal world has always fawned and pandered to major gods of the guild like Lehrer. In part because of all this fawning, Lehrer was dragged out one more time last week.
The cheers of your favorite liberal stars rang in his very strange ears.
Tomorrow: Three or four final points
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