In the latest installment of “The Good Fight” series, Timothy Noah of The New Republic and Joshua Trevino of the Texas Public Policy Foundation discuss Candy Crowley’s role in the second presidential debate:
In the latest installment of “The Good Fight” series, Timothy Noah of The New Republic and Joshua Trevino of the Texas Public Policy Foundation discuss Candy Crowley’s role in the second presidential debate:
Even before the Candy Crowley disaster, I was making the point on various blogs here that moderators were playing too big a role in Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. I was defending Jim Lehrer for his appropriately minimal role in the first debate. After all, we are not electing a national moderator. Let the debate participants ask questions of and challenge their opponents as best they can, and let the viewing public make their judgments without the assistance of words from the moderator. Lincoln and Douglas did not have a moderator at their famous round of debates.
Since I don’t watch CNN, that was the first time I saw Candy Crowley in action. She may be the best reporter in the world, but she showed abysmal judgment by injecting herself in the middle of the debate—-and she would have equally wrong even if she been correct about her interpretation of Obama’s Sept. 12 remarks. I believe I am intellectually honest enough to think that my reaction would have been the same even if the moderator had been a right wing conservative attempting to help Romney. That’s why I am encouraged to hear Timothy Noah, much more liberal than I, essentially agreeing with my position, or, to show true bipartisanship, that my ideas agree with his.