The Nation: Gotcha Debate

[DerekJ]

We're into the 21st debate. We've been through fifteen months of this primary calendar or, as ABC's Charles Gibson put it in introducing what may well be the last....we're into "round 15."

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These boys love their sports metaphors.

But tonight it's not those sports metaphors that have me throwing my Subway sandwich at the TV. It's the relentless stream of "gotcha" questions that ABC's top news commentators pose that have me angry, frustrated and, yes, bitter. Whether it's George Stephanopolous pushing Obama and Clinton to make a "No New Taxes" pledge....(George--please reconnect with your inner self: the intelligent, humane guy who did good battle with Alan Greenspan and Bob Rubin in trying to stop them from putting profits before people)...Or Gibson making the leap of equating electability with Obama's decision not to wear a flag pin? (Patriotism, as Obama explained, slowly, carefully, means ensuring that we take care of veterans who've served their country and done real patriotic duty.) These kinds of questions foreclose room for a full, real and honest debate about this country's future, and its politics and policies at home and abroad.

Barack Obama put it well when he spoke of how the two anchors of this evening's debate (and so much of our elitist media & punditocracy) seem interested mainly in "manufactured issues"-- Jeremiah Wright, dodging bullets in Tuzla, flag lapel pins and Bill Ayers-- a major reason so many decent and generous Americans tune out this media.

"Pain trickles up" is how Obama tonight described John McCain's economic policies. That smart riff brought pain to Charles Gibson's face. In a previous debate, Gibson, who must make a few million a year, made a class gaffe when he estimated that professors in a small New Hampshire college made close to $200,000. Laughter filled the hall that night. Americans of Main Street got a glimpse into a media that has far more friends on Wall Street.

Tonight, Gibson seemed shocked when the two candidates spoke of raising taxes on the very richest in this country. He seemed far more concerned about the Democratic candidates' proposal to raise the capital gains tax--and what he claimed would be the lost revenue-- than the fact, as the New York Times's Steven Greenhouse reports in his new must-read book, The Big Squeeze, that "since 1979, hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers have risen by just 1, after inflation...the nation's economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece"

A one percent raise in almost thirty years? Still not bitter?



http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?pid=311578

[DerekJ]

1. Gotcha debate will be the keyword for the next few days in the MSM.

[ihelpu2see]

2. Great point, My thoughts exactly... Charlie Gibson sucked, 2 seconds in I thought uhhgg here we go

lets play GOTCHA!

[AZBlue]

4. And why was a former Clinton staffer a moderator???

George worked for Bill - WTF?

[DerekJ]

3. kick