With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
Saturday September 9, 2000; 7:40 PM EDT
The Presidential Debate Commission Trap
Will Texas Governor George W. Bush allow himself to be set up by
the Presidential Debate Commission, the same way his father was
in 1988 and 1992?
The Bush 2000 campaign never articulated its best argument for
the candidate's initial decision to minimize his participation in
these rigged forums. But the fact is, in the last 10
presidential and vice presidential debates sponsored by this
so-called bipartisan organization, the Republican candidate faced
a veritable buzz saw of liberal journalists gleaned from the same
mainstream media ranks that supported the Clinton-Gore ticket by
a margin of 10 to one in 1992.
The press is fond of citing the debate commission's leadership,
Paul Kirk and Frank Fahrenkoph - former heads of the Democratic
and Republican parties - to bolster its pretense of objectivity.
But the list of left-leaning moderators and panelists selected by
the commission since its 1988 inception foreshadows the stacked
deck George W. Bush will likely face unless he insists on some
journalistic balance this time around.
Andrea Mitchell, currently heading up NBC's Hillary for Senate
cheerleading squad, ABC News Clinton apologist Ann Compton and
PBS's Margaret Warner, then with Newsweek, were the panelists
picked by the debate commission to grill George Bush Sr. in his
October 13, 1988, face-off with Massachusetts Governor Michael
Dukakis.
The moderator was Bernie Shaw, anchorman for the media operation
now widely known as "The Clinton News Network."
To be sure, Bush Sr. out-debated Dukakis, but that was mainly
because the Massachusetts governor failed to endorse the death
penalty even for someone who had raped and murdered his wife.
Even the liberal debate panelists couldn't put a happy face on
that gaffe.
The same year more debate commission "objectivity" was on display
with the selection of CNN's Judy Woodruff to moderate the match
between vice presidential candidates Dan Quayle and Lloyd
Bentsen. Woodruff, who makes little effort to disguise her own
pro-Democrat leanings on the air, is married to notorious
Republican basher Albert Hunt, whose anti-Bush screeds resulted
in a famous 1984 public confrontation between the columnist and
George W.
For the only other presidential debate that year, Bush Sr.
faced ABC anchorman Peter Jennings and two panelists from
mainstream newspapers. Jennings relinquished his last vestige of
any pretense to objectivity when he publicly scolded voters
during a post-1994 election broadcast for delivering both houses
of Congress into Republican hands.
In 1992 the Presidential Debate Commission positively outdid
itself with the selection of ABC's Carole Simpson to moderate the
face-off between Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.
There were no other panelists for the October 15 get-together,
which allowed plenty of Simpson's own biases to slip into the
dialogue.
After an audience member questioned the failure of America's high
schools to adequately prepare students for the job world, Simpson
turned to Bush and asked sarcastically, "Who would like to begin
- the education president?"
Then there was this telling exchange, just after Bush began to
make the case that character in a president was important:
GOVERNOR CLINTON: Wait a minute. Let's don't - you don't have to
believe it. Here's my point. I'm not interested in his
character. I want to change the character of the presidency.
And I'm interested in what we can trust him to do and what you
can trust me to do and what you can trust Mr. Perot to do for
the next four years. So I think you're right and I hope the rest
of the night belongs to you.
SIMPSON: May I - I talked to this audience before you gentlemen
came and I asked them about how they felt about the tenor of the
campaign. Would you like to let them know what you thought about
that, when I said are you pleased with how the campaign's been
going? (Audience: "No.")
SIMPSON: Who wants to say why you don't like the way the campaign
is going? We have a gentleman back here.
AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT: And forgive the notes here, but I'm shy on
camera. The focus of my work as a domestic mediator is meeting
the needs of the children that I work with, by way of their
parents, and not the wants of their parents. And I ask the three
of you, how can we, as symbolically the children of the future
president, expect the two of you, the three of you to meet our
needs, the needs in housing and in crime and you name it, as
opposed to the wants of your political spin doctors and your
political parties?
With that exchange Simpson skillfully steered the conversation
away from Bill Clinton's greatest vulnerablity, right into a
moment tailor-made for the "feel your pain" candidate.
The other commission-sponsored debate that year featured
panelists Susan Rook of CNN, Reuters' Gene Gibbons and Helen
Thomas, who was with UPI till she resigned in a huff earlier this
year over the wire service's new conservative ownership.
But what probably sealed Bush Sr.'s fate that year was the debate
commission's decision to allow Ross Perot into the show.
Perot was polling in the single digits before voters were
introduced to his plain-speaking style and Texas twang over four
and a half hours of national prime-time TV. The result? Perot
won the hearts of 19 percent of the voters, many of whom were
Reagan Democrats who would have otherwise voted for Bush.
This year the debate commission is taking no such chances,
especially with Ralph Nader's third-party bid poised to draw
support from Gore. Without 15 percent support in five major polls
by Labor Day (which neither Nader nor Pat Buchanan had), no
third-party candidate has a shot at the same goldmine of TV time
that made Perot viable.
The Labor Day cutoff is particularly intruiging, since Perot
wasn't even a candidate - let alone one with 15 percent support -
on Labor Day 1992.
In 1996, the commission debates switched to a single moderator
format without panelists. For all three events, PBS's Jim Lehrer
was selected to do the honors. Lehrer had also presided over the
two 1992 presidential debates not hosted by Carole Simpson and
the one not hosted by Bernard Shaw in 1988.
Lehrer's prominence in the commission debate process speaks
volumes. Not only has he been the commission's moderator of
choice in six out of its last 10 presidential and vice
presidential events, its Web site boasts:
"In 2000, the CPD (Commission on Presidential Debates), with
McNeil/Lehrer Productions, will produce 'Debating Our Destiny,' a
two hour PBS special featuring interviews with participants of
presidential debates since 1976."
It sounds like the debate commission and Mr. Lehrer have a very
cozy relationship. Which is all the more troubling considering
last year's revelation that several flagship PBS operations that
carry Lehrer's "NewsHour" have been caught helping to bankroll
the Democratic Party.
By the time the full dimensions of the scandal had emerged, PBS
mainstays like WGBH in Boston and WETA in Washington, D.C., had
admitted to sharing thousands of names from their donor lists
with the Democratic National Committee, a blatant violation of
PBS's charter to operate as a non-partisan entity.
It might also be noted that PBS was one of the so-called
independent government agencies that the Clintons sought to
politicize with appointments like Diane Blair to the board of its
parent operation, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.
Blair, who died of cancer earlier this year, was especially close
to Hillary Clinton, going back to the earliest days of her
husband's regime in Arkansas. She was married to Jim Blair, who
as outside counsel to Tyson Foods helped engineer Mrs.
Clinton's $100,000 miracle of the cattle futures.
Between its fund-raising shenanigans and appointments like Mrs.
Blair, the entire CPB-PBS operation gives off the aura of a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.
Then there's Mr. Lehrer's own debate performance. In the fall
of 1996, a year that saw startling new evidence emerge in the
Whitewater and Travelgate scandals, the first revelations of
Filegate, and only weeks before the debate, the eruption of the
Chinagate campaign finance scandal, Jim Lehrer asked neither Bill
Clinton nor Senator Bob Dole a single question about any of it.
It's perhaps no accident that in January 1998, when Clinton
needed to publicly deny reports that he was having sex with a
23-year-old White House intern, Jim Lehrer was one of the first
reporters he picked to lie to.
It's impossible to know whether George W. Bush appreciates the
obstacles he faces now that he has agreed to participate in two
out of three of the commission's proposed debates.
But if he allows the line of questioning to be determined by the
likes of Judy Woodruff, Peter Jennings and Jim Lehrer, it will be
the fourth time the GOP standard-bearer has fallen into the
Presidential Debate Commission trap.
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Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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