I know this will make me look bad.
I didn't watch the Trump-Harris debate the other night, nor did I watch the Trump-Biden debate in June. I haven't watched a Presidential debate since 2016.
I used to be a consummate political junkie. Now, not so much.
I don't know if I have become disillusioned, cynical, or just plain old grumpy in my old age.
I mean, I get the history of it and all that. Nixon had a heavy beard and Kennedy was tanned, tested, and ready. Ford freed Poland. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, yadda, yadda.
I just think it has passed its expiration date. Maybe at one time we needed to have a joint press conference where the candidates express their positions on the issues of the day.
But Presidential debates have basically become NASCAR races that we watch to see if anybody crashes.
Last June, President Biden crashed, and it sent Democrats into full panic mode because they spent a lot of time telling us Biden was fit as a fiddle when it was pretty obvious he didn't have a lot going on upstairs.
News reports say Trump crashed the other night. Yet, I get the impression it doesn't really matter because this is the Trump people have always seen, and when he acts like a baboon, nobody is surprised.
News reports say Harris hit all her marks, whatever that means. I think it means she didn't act like Trump, but that can't be that difficult.
The moderators asked her about "fracking," which she was against back in ancient history (2019). Now, she is pro-fracking. She likes it, she loves it, she wants some more of it.
Harris announced that she is a gun owner. I guess this was her attempt to win the White Evangelicals With Less Than Three Years Of College Who Like To Shoot Things. I just never thought of her as a pistol packing mama, but what do I know?
I don't understand why she was not asked about President Biden unless I missed it. A question like: When did you realize President Biden was non compos mentis?
The moderators had no interest in that. Which is part of the problem because the interest the moderators from ABC News had was making sure The Vice President had a good night.
Two things can be true at the same time. Trump did an awful job. ABC did an awful job too.
I remember watching a debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in 1996 In his closing remarks Bill Clinton gave out his internet address, which sounded funny at the time. When the debate ended, Dole made a bee-line to the moderator and said, "Why did you ask him all the easy questions?"
In 2008, the moderator for a debate against Barack Obama and John McCain was the late Gwen Ifill. Ifill had signed a book contract weeks before to write about Obama and his undeniable holiness. I think that qualifies as a conflict of interest.
Then in 2012, in a debate between Republican candidates, George Stephanopoulos, who somehow has become an anchor of sorts despite working for President Clinton, asked Mitt Romney why Republicans want to outlaw birth control. Which, as history has shown, none of the Republican candidates that year were even talking about birth control.
Later the same year in the Presidential Debate with President Obama, Mitt Romney was fact-checked by moderator Candy Crowley. It turns out that Romney was right and Crowley was wrong.
There are other examples, but one thing that is common to each is that the "refs" (the press) interfered with the game (the debates) for the Democrats and against the Republicans. In that sense, David Muir and Lynsey Davis was just carrying on an old family tradition.
That should not be.
Charles C.W. Cooke of The National Review said:
"But I’m outraged by the moderation nevertheless, because it existed
independently of Donald Trump’s flaws, and because, in a republic such
as ours, it should not have. I am, in other words, outraged by the
moderation per se — not because it was aimed at Donald Trump
(whom I dislike and for whom I do not intend to vote) or because I think
it materially altered the outcome of the debate (which it did not), but
because the press should not be doing what it did in presidential
debates, and because it will not always be Donald Trump who is the target."
He continues:
"If Republicans wish to fix it — and they ought to — they need to start
now. You don’t ignore the cracks in a bridge because you happen to
dislike the person who is currently driving over it. You get on the case
immediately. Trump or no Trump, the GOP needs to start informing the
media that it will no longer play ball unless massive reforms are made.
No more Candy Crowleys. No more David Muirs. No more selective
fact-checking, absurd framing, or glaring double-standards. If the press
can manage that, it gets to play dress-up again. Until then, though,
the game ought to be over."
