Tag: debates

Candy Crowley was wrong. Here's why.

In the Saturday Night Live skit, above, that pokes fun at President Obama’s lousy performance in the first presidential debate, there is a point — at 4:24 into the clip — when a daydreaming Obama is interrupted by the moderator who asks: “Mr. President: Governor Romney has has just said that he killed Osama bin Laden. Would you care to respond?”

That, in my view, is exactly how a debate moderator should respond when the moderator perceives a blatant falsehood has been put forward by a candidate. Simply ask the other candidate to respond. Continue reading Candy Crowley was wrong. Here's why.

How'd Obama do tonight? Not so good, says Michael Moore and other Obama-maniacs

How’d President Obama do tonight in the first of three presidential debates? I think he tanked. But don’t take my word for it. Look at the Twitter feed for some well-known Obama-maniacs. Cue Storify:  Continue reading How'd Obama do tonight? Not so good, says Michael Moore and other Obama-maniacs

Thumbnail history of televised political debates

Writing in the New Yorker last month, Hendrik Hertzberg digs up this interesting history:

Television debates were a long time coming, and the road was rocky. The first nationally broadcast faceoff between Presidential candidates was on the radio, in 1948, between Thomas E. Dewey and Harold Stassen, who were contending for the Republican nomination. (Dewey insisted on a single topic for the entire hour: “Shall the Communist Party in the United States be outlawed?”) The first such debate to be televised, in 1956, was also an intra-party affair, between the Democratic rivals Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver. Newton Minow, who was later President Kennedy’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (and won fame for calling television “a vast wasteland”), was Stevenson’s top aide, and it was largely his and Stevenson’s efforts that made possible the seminal Kennedy-Nixon debates. Newt Minow was also instrumental in reviving Presidential debates in 1976, after a sixteen-year hiatus, and in making them practically mandatory in every election since then.

via Presidential Debates, Citizens United, and the Politics of Media : The New Yorker.

So who won that GOP debate? Take our poll

The pundits think Rick Santorum missed his chance and that Mitt Romney looked best at the Arizona Republican Primary Presidential debate. It’s the last debate before Super Tuesday and the primaries in Arizona and Michigan. Did you watch the debate? Who do you think won? Vote in the poll and, in the comment section here, tell us why you voted the way you did. Continue reading So who won that GOP debate? Take our poll