Right now Mitt and Obama are reviewing their debate contracts and going over their carefully scripted spontaneous remarks, stances, facial expressions, etc. CNN's Candy Crowley is getting ready for her close-up.
Crowley's vision of her role at tonight's debate is in keeping with past town hall debates, but it would defy the expectations agreed to by both campaigns in the co-signed memorandum of understanding, obtained and released yesterday by Time's Mark Halperin. From section 7, part (c), sub-part (iv) (italics mine):Don't get too excited. Crowley isn't actually going to ruffle any feathers even if she is technically stating an intention to violate the ground rules. She's only up for that insofar as it advertises Candy Crowley: Independent Journalist in some benign way.
7. Additional Rules Apllicable to the October 16 Debate...There is hardly any gray area here. Crowley is expected to do nothing except to acknowledge questioners, enforce the time limits, and invite candidate comments. Many people -- especially journalists -- would and have objected to that, but that's the agreement.
(c) With respect to all questions...
(iv) The moderator will not ask follow-up questions or comment on either the questions asked by the audience or the answers of the candidates during the debate or otherwise intervene in the debate except to acknowledge the questioners from the audience or enforce the time limits, and invite candidate comments during the 2 minute response period.
Just this afternoon, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, whose claim to a right of participation in this show is at least based on her presence on the ballot and not her celebrity status as a TV personality, was led away by police for even presuming to attend the debate. If Crowley were actually a threat to the message, there's no way she'd be allowed to participate either. Rest assured, the scope of the debate will remain well within the agreed upon establishment parameters.
And I'm sure that will be just fine with most professional observers. If they were pleased with Martha Raddatz's performance during last week's Vice Presidential debate, then we know the bar is already set embarrassingly low. Raddatz received plaudits from the pundits last week for actually kind of doing her job a little bit as she occasionally insisted that Paul Ryan actually answer a question or two. But beyond that she pretty much sucked.
In this Democracy Now! segment Geroge Farah and Glenn Greenwald pick apart Raddatz's questioning and the already skewed frame it set for the conversation.
MARTHA RADDATZ: Let’s talk about Medicare and entitlements. Both Medicare and Social Security are going broke and taking a larger share of the budget in the process. Will benefits for Americans under these programs have to change for the programs to survive?AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, can you comment on the question?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the question is grounded on an assumption that is not just dubious but very vociferously debated among the nation’s leading economists, which is the idea that Social Security and Medicare are going broke. In the case of Social Security, it’s almost impossible to make that case that it actually is going broke. The Social Security actually makes money. To the extent that it is burdened with that, it’s because other government programs, whether it be military spending or all kinds of corporate cronyism, create all kinds of debt that Social Security essentially ends up funding.
And with regard to Medicare, the same thing. Lots of economists have pointed out that Medicare, with a few minor alterations, will be economically sound for many decades. This notion that it’s going broke is something that lots of right-wing millionaires have promulgated as a way of pressuring Americans into feeling like they have to give up their basic entitlements.
And so, to watch Martha Raddatz, posing as an objective journalist, embracing what is an extremely controversial premise in her question, and then watching both candidates accept that assumption rather than challenge them, sort of is the microcosm of how these debates work, which is, they pose as objective, neutral moderators designed to have this wide-ranging debate, when in reality it takes place within a very suffocating, small confine of ideas. And as George has been detailing, that’s what it’s designed to do.
Crowley will pose as tonight's neutral moderator only without the supposed gravitas we were told Raddatz's presence brought to the VP debate. Let's look at that gravitas in action one more time. Here were Raddatz's final three questions to the candidates.
1) I want to move on, and I want to return home for these last few questions. This debate is indeed historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time on a stage such as this, and I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion. Please talk about how you came to that decision. Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And please, this is such an emotional issue for so many —
Because of course the only correct way to ask about a candidate's views on abortion is through the prism of his(!) faith.
2) I recently spoke to a highly decorated soldier who said that this presidential campaign has left him dismayed. He told me, quote, "The ads are so negative and they are all tearing down each other, rather than building up the country."
What would you say to that American hero about this campaign? And at the end of the day, are you ever embarrassed by the tone?
Because, as we all know, harboring "negative" feelings about the state of the country during an election season is so thoroughly un-American that it makes the troops cry.
And finally there's this.
And I want to talk to you very briefly before we go to closing statements about your own personal character. If you are elected, what could you both give to this country as a man, as a human being that no one else could?
What the... look, I don't even want to start figuring out what that means. But obviously it's quite serious and filled with gravitas and such.
Crowley tonight will only continue this game. And the game is all about pretending our closed election system that pits millionaires against millionaires in a contest to determine which millionaire will further seal the wealth and status of his fellow millionaires against intrusion to the ever increasing detriment to the rest of us.
Just make sure that whatever you do, you don't protest too hysterically about any of this.
But another possibility is that political reporters, largely through social media, converged on a shared and exaggerated reaction that became magnified. E.J. Dionne fingers the role of Twitter:
As the first presidential debate went on, the feeds of progressives went almost silent. After the debate, Obama-leaning commentators might have been even more critical of his performance than neutral analysts were. The negativity built and metastasized to the point where Obama’s “defeat” looked far worse 24 and 48 hours later than it did at the time. To invoke a football metaphor, it would be as if postgame commentary had the power to spin a 24–14 defeat into a 38–3 catastrophe. That can’t happen in sports, but it can happen in political debates.
Be happy with the oligarchs who control your lives and the fake reporters who lie to you about them. After all you ultimately have only your own "negativity" to blame for your predicament. Oh and pass the Zingers. Chocolate helps. It really does.
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