Washington Post columnist and MSNBC regular Eugene Robinson ably demonstrated the double standard of the liberal media on debate moderators. On Tuesday, he mocked “The GOP’s deranged list of debate demands.” But on April 18, 2008, he whacked the ABC moderators of a Democratic debate for “the meaningless inquisition about loose semantics and questionable acquaintances.”
Robinson allowed “It’s true that some of the queries at last week’s CNBC encounter seemed designed to provoke rather than elucidate,” and “An argument could be made that such horse-race questions are a waste of valuable airtime. But the other lines of inquiry that [Ted] Cruz blasted in his soliloquy were substantive and legitimate — and apparently made the candidates uncomfortable. Time to put an end to that.”
Robinson mocked the Republicans just as Obama did, as divas and cream puffs who can’t handle tough questioners, so they won’t be tough abroad: “In past cycles, the RNC was the final arbiter. But the party is in chaos and the candidates, led by Trump and Carson, are driving the bus. We’ll face down Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Iran, the contenders all say, but somebody save us from reporters asking rude questions.”
But in 2008, after Stephanopoulos and Gibson asked Obama about his ties to Reverend Wright and to Weather Underground bomber Bill Ayers and gaffes about bitter clingers, and asked Hillary about bald-faced lies about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, an annoyed Robinson began:
Once the meaningless inquisition about loose semantics and questionable acquaintances was done, Wednesday night's debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton got interesting.
Granted, it's likely that only the most intrepid viewers made it to the Promised Land of actual substance. For some reason, ABC News moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos -- smart and skilled interviewers who, to put it mildly, had an off night -- spent what seemed like an eon grilling Obama and (to a lesser extent) Clinton about verbal gaffes they had already corrected and problematic entanglements they had already disentangled. You know the litany: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the "bitter" working class, sniper fire in Bosnia, blah, blah, blah.
I'm guessing that public regard for the media's role in our great democracy was not enhanced.
Then, Robinson elaborated, Barack’s and Hillary’s answers on guns, taxes, and “affirmative action” were “illuminating.”
