A Romney victory will make it possible for future candidates to take the same path of secretiveness. Non-disclosure could become the norm.I don't think he even has to win to change future elections in terms of candidate transparency. By the simple fact his tax records have not been opened beyond the minimum 2 years, he has campaigned on vague plans with no real content, promised tax cuts that have yet to add up, a budget proposal so vague you can only guess at what might be cut (he's placed some things on the "do not cut" list, but that list has changed quite a bit over the past months), and a donor list that is more secretive than Reagan's or George W Bush's (though their disclosures were personal choices, like Romney's father's choice to provide more than 2 years of tax history).
Perhaps just as interesting, Romney has demonstrated that the press is relatively toothless — that a candidate who is willing to take the heat for a while can outlast the media. During the Republican convention in Tampa, Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster, famously said, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” In private, some of Newhouse’s Republican colleagues said that they thought he was making a mistake by throwing down the gauntlet to a group of reporters like that. In practice, his challenge was never taken up.
Finally, the moderator isn’t the story.Interesting view of Schieffer, as compared to the other moderators, but I think the assessment of Crowley is off-base, especially with her after-debate comment that she was trying to move the debate along.
The cardinal rule of debate moderation is this: it isn’t about the moderator. But in the first three debates of the 2012 presidential campaign, the moderator invariably became part of the story: Jim Lehrer lost control; Martha Raddatz took too much; and Candy Crowley stole the spotlight when she decided, on a whim, to fact-check the candidates.
"It didn't come to me as I'm going to fact check that. It came to me as let's get past this... To me I was really trying to move the conversation along... This is a semantic thing," Crowley told the hosts of "The View."Also on Politico: Schieffer: 'I don't think I'll do it again'
Come 2016, Bob Schieffer, the moderator of last night's foreign policy debate, would like to see six presidential debates instead of three, and he'd like all of them to take place at a table. But he doesn't plan on moderating any of them. Last night's debate will, according to him, likely be his last.I agree with Schieffer. The debate was largely polite, with neither candidate running over the other too much (until the end, when Schieffer stepped in), and both Obama and Romney got their talking points out. Sure, there could have been more useful foreign policy topics covered, but it was a good debate that contrasted the candidates (or didn't, when Mitt wanted to be Just Like Obama).
"I don't think I'll do it again," he said. "I never say never, but we'll see what happens."
Schieffer, who spoke to POLITICO from his beach house in Sea Island, Ga., was very happy with the debate, and with his performance: "I thought this was a debate worthy of the presidency," he said. "The point was for people to get a better understanding of the candidates, and I think that happened."
Schieffer rarely spoke during last night's debate, other than to keep time and ask questions. His performance was widely praised, but even he acknowledges they drifted off-topic at times -- to the economy, education, the auto bailout. But Schieffer said it was the candidates' responsibility to determine the course of the conversation.
"This is the candidates' campaign. These are the two guys running for president. If they think something is important, you have to give them some leeway," he explained. "So if they wanted to talk about education -- and personally, I believe education is our first line of defense -- I let that run its course, and then tried to get them back on foreign policy."
« Older Japanese Prints Online... | Lo Pan Style!... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Mental Wimp at 3:46 PM on October 22, 2012 [5 favorites]