2008 Presidential Debate Round 2: Showdown at the Town-Hall - Page 2

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3601

Here's video: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210890.php

http://mediamatters.org/items/200809280007

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/ar...gewanted=print

I would say that even though I think Brokaw has tremendous sympathy for John McCain personally, I don't think he leans right at all. And no matter his personal or political leanings, I would trust him to moderate the debate fairly.

Brokaw wishes he was born 30 years earlier.

Nobody said that.

Zeus, ElCap is completely independent and non-partisan, and can clearly see into the hearts and minds of our sickeningly partisan ways. I mean, expressing surprise ("Brokaw is conservative???) just proves he never assumed anything about the man at all.

It doesn't invalidate it. It does make him look kind of a poor journalist for not being up to date on his poll numbers while interviewing the lead spokespeople for both campaigns on the weekly political show of record but whatever.

This is how you conduct a debate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R54Jq3D7Ck

Would anything less than a pro-McCain slant pass for fair to the Obama's A Terrorist campaign? These people cancelled out on Larry King because someone ELSE at CNN had the audacity to ask basic questions about Sarah Palin. Larry King.

Oh gimme a break. You sure as hell weren't implying he was center.

And this may come as a shock to you, but I don't think yt was basing her opinion on just "watching his reports".

I gave my opinion after having observed him on TV (which I try not to watch but have been forced to lo these past few months). I don't remember him being partisan from way back in the day when I used to watch the MSM, but something is very different about him now. Maybe he always did and said the kinds of things I've been seeing lately, or maybe I just didn't see it before, but watching him on this election coverage on MSNBC has been painful for me.

Again, this is my opinion. Also: why is the McCain campaign calling Brokaw to implore, "What's going on in Florida?" when the poll numbers dropped. He mentioned this on TV not long ago. Seriously, wtf?

ps. LOL, i didn't read the rest of the thread until after I posted this. So, the order goes, I observed him first and was shocked at how slanted I perceived him to be, and then, I read about his reference to the McCain campaign calling him for advice, which he mentioned freely on-air, and that seems very bizarre.

I love how you think you have to be taken completely literally on these boards, and that your aggregate posts and post history don't inform the posts we read today.

Anyways, sorry for the derail, back to the non-debate.

That's awesome, but it requires some sharp candidates.

Yes and a debate should be all about that, revealing who is on-the-fly sharp and who is a party puppet armed with talking points. We conduct our debates similarly in my country and it makes the actual debate much more important cause it's rarely a tie.

ETA: and no time to write down silly talking points while the other person speak.

Brokaw has often and loudly expressed displeasure with the tack the MSNBC commentators have taken. I don't think this is because he disagrees with them, he just doesn't think what they do is "news." And I think he leans right not out of personal belief but to keep the ship from capsizing to the left.

Taken by itself, no. But a blanket refusal to do the Town Hall thing that McCain's been jerking off about all year with ANY NBC moderator other than Brokaw? That's pretty transparent.

ElCap, I think you're a fine, intelligent person, and I welcome your presence in the forums and always read what you have to say. But just like most of my own posts here have defined me in various ways, your own have as well, just like everyone else who posts here.

Do I know what you really think? Of course not, I'm no mind reader. But if you think you haven't developed a bit of a "I'm above all this silly partisanship" persona you're mistaken. And you're just as guilty of making assumptions about people's opinions in these threads as anyone, so let's not get into that.

I'm not calling you out or picking on you, because I like you.

Again, sorry for the derail folks.

And for the record, conservatives mostly hate Brokaw, so I don't think he's very right-leaning personally. I just think, like many journalists these days, he bends too far over backwards to seem "fair".

why are we discussing him again? He won't have any influence on anything anyway!

I think basically ElCap was saying, [citation needed]. If Brokaw has repeatedly or demonstrably shown that he is biased to the 'Right' please provide sources. You can't just throw it out there ... especially since I don't really think it's a common perception.

Seriously, guys, watch that Royal/Sarkozy vid.

If there are no questions about the economy and lots about Funkadelic, maybe there's some moderator bias. But it turned out not to be an issue in the last debate, and I doubt it'll be one here. The bigger issue will be lack of any moderation, or any actual debate.

But I'm still gonna watch in case McCain winks/has aneurysm/says terrorist in regard to Obama/suspends his campaign halfway through the debate.

It looked like the numbers started at 0:00 and went up. I don't know what exactly they counted for.

I guess my ultimate point is, what is considered "fair" for the McCain campaign? On one hand, they are vociferously criticizing the NYT, banning Mo Dowd, saying that it is not actually a newspaper. On the other hand, they are citing (erroneously mind you) a NYT article in order to build up their case against Obama.

So by gaming the refs, the McCain campaign are presenting an impossible standard for journalists to meet. Any journalists who do try to bend with them are really doing a disservice to journalism and Americans, in general.

A lot of that debate looked just as asshole-y as ours.

Explain why?

This is a real debate. Not a "here's your question now hold a preprepared speech un-interrupted"

Well, the back and forth trying to get a word in, the mischaracterizations of their opponents positions. Their picking on a single word like 'immoral' and then making overly-broad statements about what it means and the intentions behind the person who said it.

Sure it seems different at some superficial level because there is much more requirement in other political systems for direct face to face debating. In all actuality there is very little debating that actually goes on in the US political system.

Sure people will get up in congress and talk but half the time there is not even anyone in the room, they're all just sitting in their offices and watching it on C-SPAN or whatever. And it's highly unlikely anyone is going to be convinced by anything that is said in public like that anyway. People just go up and do it because otherwise their constituents are just sitting around being jackasses and not getting enough done.

ETA: I also think that part of the reason it seems better is that most likely we don't know the issues in France like we do in the US and you don't have a position or all of the media noise or candidate history clouding your impression of the debate. For all you know it could be the same dog-whistle politics that goes on here but since it's in French and you're reading subtitles and you don't know the actual context in which these things are being said (additionally there are a lot of edited and condensed sections of the video).

Well I saw the whole 2 hrs and I don't know anything about french politics but the debate was so engrossing and it seems like a much much much more intelligent approach.

You would think so too if you saw it, cause I know any intelligent person would.

I'm sorry ... I watched the 10 minute clip posted and not an entire 2 hour debate for a country I don't live in? In that 10 minutes I saw what I thought were examples of exactly the same kind of stuff that happens in US debates and it didn't strike me as substantively much better.

Nachos,

I liked it because of the format. Of course the candidates are always ready to score cheap points as they would be anywhere, but this face-to-face style helps for two reasons. One, it goes toward separating the event from a speech or press conference. They're supposed to be talking to the other guy instead of to the viewers, and they can be interrupted, etc. So it creates much more openings to display quick thinking and other skills. And secondly, the endless follow-ups that they have to answer when they are being antagonized the whole time from across the table - that's something most of our candidates never have to go through in public. (Unless you are Palin and think Katie Couric is your nemesis.)

ETA: I agree with the principle of what you're saying, which is that we are inclined to see these foreign politicians differently than we see our own, when they're really the same breed everywhere.

They both have stay in designated areas and can't speak to each other? Good Lord, this is gonna suck.

Not to depress anyone, or belabor the obvious, but I loved this brief article back in February recalling the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Even judged by the Kennedy-Nixon debates, these events have become a joke. 8-minute opening? Will never happen again.

I was doing a lot of driving during the summer and was listening to a lot of POTUS 08 on XM radio. They were pretty good about braodcasting McCain's Town Hall meetings and I listened to quite a few of them. So I feel informed when I ask this question: How exactly did this guy get a reputation as the master of the Town Hall meeting? Whenever I listened he unfailingly stammered, gave non-answers to real questions, went for the "cheap pop" (to borrow a bit of jargon from our carny/wrestling brethren) of saying something about the military "heroes" whenever backed into a corner (which was often). And this was going on with crowds that were easily 99& favorable to him.

It was all horrible, but when I would listen I found the most egregious thing to be the constant non-answers. He would sometimes give an answer almost totally unrelated to the question asked.

I don't know. I think this "Master of the Town Hall" is a holdover from the days as a media darling. I certainley heard very little to indicate mastery of anything. But maybe he was just off his game for three months straight.

A question I would like asked tonight, because I don't think I've heard it asked of him and I think its relevant, is whether John McCain will release, fully with no time preconditions, his medical records.

Huffington Post says that there will be follow up questions, just in case anyone was wondering.

Apologies if I missed this in the thread.

Well I'm sorry too cause if you can't see the difference between these two formats or at least acknowledge that one format is more debate-like than the other (and they do call it "debate" in your country you know), then that's fine.

I'm sure most people can see the advantage of the French format if you want anything close to a real debate.

Loss goes to the first candidate who, after a Brokaw follow-up, blinks and says, "It was my understanding there would be no follow-ups..."

Of course they might just be saying that to get viewers as they'd felt the displeasure of this format and are trying to make it look more interesting than it is. I can imaging McCain or Obama, whoever put that stipulation in for this Town Hall, back stage upon hearing this news.