Also during Tom Brokaw’s appearance on MSNBC this morning, Joe Scarborough asked Brokaw, since he “had the best seat in the house,” to “tell us what your takeaway was from the debate? Did we have a turning point last night?”
BROKAW: I doubt that we did have a turning point in a dramatic sense. There was no knockout punch, whatever metaphor you happen to want to use here. There was no show-stopping tune. In fact, both of them carried out their brief I thought pretty well about what they had to do. John McCain stayed on the offensive raising questions about Barack Obama’s lack of experience at the national security level and of course the country is now focused 1 to 100 on what’s going on in the economy. And Senator Obama, as you’ve been saying all morning, continued to attach Senator McCain to George Bush and the policies of the past. So I don’t think there was a game changing moment last night.
Is it just me, or is it kind of awkward to have how’d-it-go post-debate recap from the person who moderated the debate? From someone who had a direct hand in how it went? And then to hear that person say that the two candidates “carried out their brief I thought pretty well about what they had to do?” In other words, the two candidates were able to stick to their talking points pretty well at the debate? Says the person (journalist!) who had the some power to make it otherwise?
Not that I think Brokaw’s observation is incorrect (that the candidates were largely able to stick to their stump speech sound bites last night).
So much for my Fantasy Brokaw.
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.