Ifill’s Moderation
I’m not sure if Gwen Ifill was cowed by the rightwing mau-mau brigade or what, but I thought Ifill’s handling of the debate was pretty disappointing. Palin was clearly operating with a game plan that involved simply refusing to answer certain questions in order to drift over to her pre-prepared text, and Ifill didn’t ask any followups or challenge either candidate to address the questions she was asking. Indeed, at time Ifill was barely even asking questions — just suggesting topics.
As I predicted yesterday the lack of followups allowed Palin to avoid any Couric-style gaffes. All of her bad screwups in interviews, after all, came during followups. If she becomes president and, miraculously, manages to get through a term in office without ever needing to address a topic outside the three or four things she’s comfortable talking about she might even do a good job.
58 Responses to “Ifill’s Moderation”
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October 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 pm
I don’t think that not answering is going to play well with undecideds.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Exactly. No follow up or even meaningful accountabilty. I actually think Ifill did a tragic job for debate moderation.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
100% correct. She sucked because there was no “facing the music” moments for either participant. Listen lady, we’ve had a rough 8 years HAVE YOU NOTICED? Boring, call someone out.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Judging by the fact that Palin’s answers were a combination of nonsense and lies, I’d say she is going to get a huge bump in her approval ratings come the next few days.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 pm
She did what the McCain campaign wanted by beating the bushes about her upcoming book. She dialed way back & we (the viewers) were all losers.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 pm
The CNN focus group clearly favored Biden. The Fox News one favored Palin. It’ll be a wash. McCain won’t gain back anything in the polls.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Wanted: debate moderator strong enough to take charge of the debate, but self-effacing enough to resist making the debate about himself/herself. Would seem to be kind of a tall order.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I think the fact that Palin is not ready for prime time showed through pretty clearly. I would much rather have a hands-off moderator than some of the douchebag pundits who think they should be the center of attention.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
and were delivered confidently, with a smile and a wink (many winks).
the substance won’t matter because neither of their answers were focused enough to matter. they just recited off-topic talking points.
she won it.
(i thought McPOW won the last one, too. so i’ll happily accept being in disagreement with the polls)
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I have to say I was most struck by Palin’s endorsement of same sex domestic partnerships at the national level. I would welcome the removal of gay marriage as a wedge issue and this would go a long way toward that. Unfortunately, I’m sure that the right wing groups will force a retraction tomorrow if not sooner.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:59 pm
If I had to pick a “moment” out of that nonsense, I would pick Biden slamming McCain on not being a maverick, using the two questions I use on undecided voters:
1) Is America better off than it was 8 years ago?
2) If no, name a single major issue where John McCain differs from George Bush.
She had nothing. They have nothing. Let’s hope the public noticed it.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Joe Biden was awful. But Palin was even worse. It was a brutal debate, with a terrible moderator. I was bored to tears.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Worst debate moment: obligatory Israel ass kissing by both. Upshot: m.e. policy set by AIPAC no matter who wins, but that’s not news, is it?
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:03 pm
I think the thing that really works for Palin is her inability to articulate well. I spend so much time trying to figure out what she means “You know nuclear weapons are the be all and end all, and you know, there are so many people and nations in the world…” I can’t remember the question, I can’t think critically about the answer, I just remeber ‘win the war, America’s great’ and my critical thinking faculties are out the window.
Our best hope is that undecideds are largely teachers, because they’ll instinctively recognize the stalling for what it is.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I’d be surprised to learn that MattY doesn’t know about my plan that would be an actual real debate, not like something ripped from the Politburo: nomoreblather.com/policy-debates
Oddly enough, neither he nor anyone else who whines about things like this for a living has ever even tried to pretend pushing that plan. I guess whining pays better than actually putting country first.
As for tonight’s debate, I noticed something odd about CNN’s “uncommitted” voters.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I will say this about Ifill, she did pale in comparison of her last debate she moderated. However, as the terms of the debate were changed by one party (and accepted by another), and that any press on a question to Palin would have been pointed out by the GOP that Ifill was indeed ‘in the tank’ for Obama, or that she was being hard on a woman, I think she did as good as she could.
However, one thing that did come out of this debate…god forbid she does win in this election, at least the Secret Service can have a genuine code name for the VP….Harpy
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Ifill phoned this one in. I ’spose the wingnuts will complain anyway, but it looks like she was cowed into letting the candidates answer just WTF they wanted to.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I’m not sure that Ifill letting Palin hang herself wasn’t a bad strategy.
Everybody’s writing and talking about how Palin didn’t answer the questions.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:35 pm
One point that I think cried out for a follow up is when Palin talked about how she signed some budgets even though she didn’t like elements in some of them. It’s the one time she talked like someone who has worked in government, and she was absolutely right when she said that sometimes you have to make decisions like that.
Obviously, however, this is impossible to square with McCain’s vow to veto any and all bills with any kind of earmarks or “pork” in them. So how does she square her experience with McCain’s most sacred of campaign promises?
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Three words:
Vic O Din
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:47 pm
What MattY doesn’t understand is that the Mexicans are coming, and they’ll turn you all into tacos, and unless you put me on the television like my past eight years of whining about the BrownMenace demands, it’ll be your own fault, because only I know TheTruthAboutHowThey’reAllWorkingForTheMexicansOhYesTheyAreNoNurseDontTurnOffMyInter
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:13 am
Ifill wasn’t mau-maued by the right. This is the exact same way that she moderated the 2004 VP debate. You are right regarding Palin and follow-up questions–she will not be doing another interview with a non-conservative reporter for the rest of the campaign. That was what her comment about the MSM at the end was about.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:17 am
Fine by me. A universe in which this actually helps her is a universe in which McCain has already lost.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 am
Ifill wasn’t mau-maued by the right. This is the exact same way that she moderated the 2004 VP debate.
Yes, exactly. Ifil is an empty suit. Find her interview with Gore about “The Assault of Reason.” She might as well be snapping gum during the whole thing. Ifil will bend over backwards to pretend that both sides are always equally at fault, no matter what the evidence suggests. Pathetic.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:30 am
A universe in which this actually helps her is a universe in which McCain has already lost.
Exactly. She can phone into the D-list local wingnuts at WGOP 550 Bumfuck from now till November, and woohoo, she makes sure that McCain takes Alabama.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 am
Ifill’s moderation approach was “ok, I say the name of a topic, and you say whatever you want about it, then you go Joe, then you can say some more Sarah, then maybe a bit more from Joe.” Relative to Lehrer she sucked.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:38 am
I agree with you, Ron (#26). Ifill takes a “no harm, no foul” approach to debates. It’s ok for VP debates, and better than a bad Gibson debate, but she’s not the best out there.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:41 am
Great point, Mr. Yglesias. But maybe Ifill figured that Palin would impale herself either way and didn’t want to give the right an excuse for her disastrous performance.
And it was disastrous; count how many times she said “also,” “makin’ sure,” and “we’re mavericks.” I found it downright hilarious that she said near the end “You gotta walk the walk, not just talk the talk.” She can do neither, of course.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:47 am
She got pretty close to a Couric-style (or perhaps more Gibson-style) gaffe. Biden misspoke at one point, saying “John continues to tell us that the central war in the front on terror is in Iraq.” Then Palin took that mis-phrasing and used it twice in her response to Biden (at 43:55 in the video, this is my transcription, which mostly matches the transcript):
“And as for who termed that central war on terror being in Iraq, it was General Petraeus and al Qaeda, both leaders there, and it’s probably the only thing that they’re ever going to agree on, but that it was a central war on terror is in Iraq.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:05 am
Ifill is just a disappointing moderator. I don’t remember the 2004 debates, but she was a pile of crap during the primaries. She combines the worst parts of “On the one hand…”-ism and the lack of a follow-up. The lady needs to acts like she knows when folks are lying to her.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:14 am
I went into the debate armed with comments from Andrew Halcro, who debated Sarah Palin more than two dozen times, during the 2006 Governor’s race. Thus, I expected Palin to ignore the questions and go off on her own tangents. Still, I was surprised to hear her acknowledge and defend the tactic.
I was glad to hear Joe respond to one of her riffs on Iraq by saying “Gwen, with all due respect, I didn’t hear a plan”, and not let her get away with the “looking back” B.S.
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:00 am
I actually think Ifill’s nonconfrontational style was ideal for Biden’s (and hence Obama’s) purposes. Biden was able to say everything he wanted against McCain and in favor of Obama without substantial interference (given that Palin herself was incapable of substantial rebuttals), and as others noted, giving Palin ample opportunity to just ramble on doesn’t really help her (and thus doesn’t help McCain).
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:31 am
I’ve always found Ifill to be the ultimate Washington insider, rarely challenging the consensus, and generally respectful of the Right’s party line. Her dislike of Al Gore seems to be on a personal level in many of her comments (in Washington Post livechats and elsewhere, and the answers she gives seem to show she really doesn’t like answering questions. They are mostly one or two sentence answers, and often could be interpreted as slams at the questioners.
And I’ll second the folks who think her lack of confrontation actually helped Biden. Palin’s “I don’t answer the questions the way the moderator or Biden want” statement early on should clue folks in that she was, so to speak, a hostile witness…
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:33 am
I heard the pre-debate exchange (”Can I call you ‘Joe’?”) and decided that if I listened to 10 more seconds, it would take a pound of elephant tranquilizers to get me to sleep.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:45 am
you’re kidding, right? pick any of the topics palin’s “comfortable talking about” and i’ll point out six ways from sunday why anything she would do in office would be very bad for all of us.
i wish the transcript was up so i could go look at palin’s response to the vp office question. it sounded to me that she was suggesting that she would have her own agenda and help out mccain when she could.
pretty damn scary.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 am
i was right … she said i thought i heard her say.
scary to contemplate.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:11 am
This is ridiculous. Ifill was the perfect moderator: she let them say what they wanted to say, and she pointed out when those answers didn’t respond to the questions. This isn’t supposed to be about the moderator, and last night it wasn’t, so all credit to Ifill. From the comments above, it’s clear that even liberals have accepted the hegemonic notion of journalist-as-protagonist. I’m glad Ifill and Lehrer haven’t.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am
If she did ever make it to serve I’m sure she do as well as Bush. Who ever asks Bush a follow-up question? I never see it. And no one ever challenges him when he flat-out lies during interviews either. One example, can you remember when he denied saying ‘Stay the course’? He should’ve been ripped by the interviewer, instead he barely responded to Bush’s answer. Just another example of the MSM media being afraid to question authority.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am
I don’t even think you can call Ifill a moderator. She did nothing. They could have had a robot reading the questions.
I lost all respect for Ifill.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 am
Active moderation can be a trap. If one side just evades the questions and talks total nonsense, the necessarily one-sided intervention by the moderator can be characterized as bullying and partisan. In practice, moderators have tended to interject trivial gotchas which enhance their own reputation among those who don’t really understand the issues.
It’s probably better just to let the candidates speak for themselves. A giant of the media such as Walter Cronkite might be able to intervene with constructive effect, but Gwen Ifill does not have that kind of stature, nor does anyone in these days of cable-news infotainment.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I won’t go as far as oracle regarding Ifill’s alertness or lack of same, but she was moderating this debate shortly after suffering a very painful injury. Simple humanity (always in limited supply in comments threads) suggests we might want to cut the lady some slack.
Besides, when was the last time a moderator imposed substance and responsiveness on presidential or vice-presidential debaters?
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I agree. Somebody (kos maybe?) said she was great because you could hardly tell she was there. Doesn’t that make it a series of short speeches and not a debate? I want moderators that are going to challenge the candidates to a) actually answer the questions, and b) press for answers that make sense. This is probably the last time Candidate Palin is going to talk to a member of the legitimate press and she wasn’t asked to make sense out of any of the gibberish she’s said in the last few weeks, or last night.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I’m really curious when the Mau Mau became an uncapitalized adjective available for uncritical use by white elites? Do you think that comparing right-wing American politicos to, you know, freedom fighters in 1950s Kenya might be a bit problematic? Do you think that the debates over the truth and legacy of Mau Mau in Kenya and its shameless appropriation by Kenyatta and other elites who had absolutely no stake in the freedom struggle might warrant at least a bracketed mention?
I really believe that this kind of comment serves to make folks less aware and less concerned; apparently, freedom struggles in other parts of the world are simply a buffet from which lazy American writers can come up with shiny new adjectives. Matthew, you can do better than this.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Hate to ruin the narrative but the no follow up questions and no questioning each other were part of the rules both parties agreed to. Gwen had nothing to do with it.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Ifill should not have allowed Palin to walk all over her and the format; as far as I see it, she should have asked follow-ups to even out the unfairness to Biden.
October 4th, 2008 at 6:55 am
I agree that Ifill was probably cowed into doing softball by the right-wing talking heads. Ifill let Palin ‘dis’ her by simply refusing to answer a question she didn’t like.
Also, I think that cutesy ‘Hey, can I call you Joe’ request to Biden backfired on her. Throughout the night, Biden called her ‘Governor’; showing respect for the office she holds. Palin seemed to really want to use that ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe’ line very badly.
What will the ‘October Surprise’ be this year??
October 4th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I agree with everyone’s disappointment with Ifill. Yes, the Republicans cleverly attacked her in the days before the debate, keeping her from aggressively responding. But she could have at least demanded, or asked, that her questions not be laid aside as Palin did so she could persue who own well-practiced speaking points.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Oops. Pursue her own well-practiced speaking points.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Hey folks this is probably why Ifill didn’t object to the right-wing format – check out this site.
http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/ifillin_and_i_cant_get_up.php
Update: Ifill, CJR has learned, has just received a “get well” gift from the McCain campaign: a tub of Crisco and a magazine-cutout-lettered note reading, “Watch your step on Thursday. Or we’ll get back to ya.” (Just kidding.)
CJR
October 5th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Perhaps she was limited by the debate rules. Perhaps she took the McCain camp’s complaints about bias too seriously. Perhaps she’s just not a very good journalist. Whatever the reason, Ifill was a great disappointment as a moderator. She was more like a timekeeper who announced topics rather than a knowledgeable, probing questioner. Considering the stakes in this election, the whole affair left me rather queasy. Palin skated by like she was in a freshman debate club that her parents made her join.
Not that anyone noticed, focused as they were on whether Palin would have a meltdown, but Biden was tougher on McCain than anyone, Dem or Rep, has been in the entire campaign. He was tougher than Obama has been so far certainly. The SNL skit last night was great – with Biden saying, I love John McCain, but he’s dangerously unstable. Biden didn’t actually go that far in the debate, but he made a pretty strong argument that McCain is not the leader he wants us to believe he is.
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