In response to our Kicker post about Jon Stewart’s satirical analysis of the ABC debate—and to our general frustration with the questions asked of candidates during that debate—reader Mark Richard makes some interesting points:
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.I’m sorry, but the only people complaining about the ABC debate are transparently Obama supporters upset because he is finally getting tough questions that go to his weaknesses. Election history has
demonstrated that the questions asked by Stephanopoulos and Gibson
matter to voters. Cultural values are important—I mean, isn’t world
politics currently driven by these differences with the rise of
militant Islam?—and since cultural values generally put the
Democrats at a disadvantage with voters, there is a mantra of ‘these
aren’t the real issues’ when Obama starts to squirm.
The differences between Obama and Clinton on ‘the real issues’ as
defined by the pro-Obama media are in fact miniscule. Another 20
minutes on the difference between Clinton’s health-care mandates and
Obama’s more voluntary plan wouldn’t not have added much to what we
know about the candidates. The issues upon which the Democrats want
the election to focus have been hashed over time and again. Clinton
and Obama are really fighting each other over the identity
culture/electability issues that presently divide them and their
constituencies. It is clear that questions decried by the disgruntled
chorus of bloggers and other media people are in fact questions that
have a heavy bearing on how swing voters assess whether or not a
candidate is ‘on my side’. Obama is the Democratic front-runner, yet
his ideological background is not well known to the average voter. I
suspect the Obama supporters complaining about the ABC debate are
worried that the more that is known about their man, the more voters
will be alienated rather than won over, and that’s really the root of
the matter.
Jon Stewart and others would never complain about moderators asking
tough and persistent questions along the same lines of a Republican,
i.e., do you support the flying of the Confederate flag in South
Carolina? What about your association with Rev. Hagee? Do you belong
to any country clubs with discriminatory policies? (Charlie Rose
grilled Bill Clinton intensively in 1992 for simply playing golf at a
club with no black members, and was praised for his persistence.)
McCain will get these questions in the general election; Obama is
facing them now, which actually is doing him a favor.
