During the recent Debate Over The Debate, one of the arguments marshaled by ABC News’s defenders was that, by this point in the Democratic primary, the candidates’ policy views are well-known, and they don’t diverge much anyway. So there’s no harm in focusing on more trivial issues.
As Adam Nagourney of The New York Times put it:
For all the concern voiced about the lack of discussion about issues like Iraq and health care, it seems fair to say that even the most slightly attuned Democratic voters already have a well-formed sense of the views of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. Further, one of the central dynamics of this campaign—and why things have seemed so strained as the candidates have sought areas of difference—is that these are two Democrats with fairly similar views of the world.
The editors of the Los Angeles Times appear to disagree. In an unsigned editorial, the paper today urges the three presidential candidates to “challenge reporters who dwell on gossipy or tangential subjects to ask instead about issues voters care about it.”
Ten such questions follow. We’d love to hear the Democrats answer this one:
You have criticized President Bush’s expansion of executive power. Detail for us how you intend to legally forbid yourself—and your successors—from using signing statements to alter legislation. Don’t tell us that your judgment will be better than Bush’s, so not to worry. Give us specifics.
Or to hear any of the three answer this:
How exactly would you ensure that no American citizen can be declared an “enemy combatant”? Explain what you believe a president ought and ought not to be able to do with a foreigner captured abroad and suspected of having plans to kill Americans.
Or this:
Describe a situation in which you would defend the president’s asserted power to monitor telephone conversations and e-mails of U.S. citizens without a warrant.
What this exercise makes clear, once again, is the extent to which ABC News failed to do its job. However well-known the candidates are at this point in the race, it’s still relatively easy, with a bit of thought and research, to come up with questions whose answers will help shed light on what each contender would do in office. And which might even help spur a more public debate on crucial issues that we face, like torture and wiretapping. To suggest that the candidates have been as clear as we need them to be about all the various issue one of them will confront as president is absurd.
As the LA Times’s thoughtful and timely list reminds us, the fact that ABC News didn’t ask those kinds of questions wasn’t because it’s not possible to do so. It’s because the network chose not to.
Zachary Roth is a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly. He also has written for The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Talking Points Memo, among other outlets.