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 the debatesA Glimmer in the Vast Wasteland By NEWTON N. MINOW Chicago ON Wednesday night, President Obama and Mitt Romney will meet in Denver for our nation’s 28th televised presidential debate. The first was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon squared off in Chicago. After he was elected, Mr. Kennedy told me he would not have not have won without the four debates that year. The debates are an institution now, and among the most watched television events in America. They are one place in the modern campaign — perhaps the only place — where the voter is treated with respect. They are the one time when the major candidates appear together side by side under conditions they do not control. They are a relief from the nasty commercials that dominate the campaign, fed by donations that are effectively unlimited and anonymous. Broadcasters provide the television time for the debates, without commercials, as a rare public service. I have been privileged to participate in some form in all 27 presidential and 8 vice presidential debates so far. In 1960, I helped my boss, the former Illinois governor and presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson, persuade Congress to exempt debates from the equal-time law, making it possible for broadcasters to cover them without having to include every candidate for the presidency, no matter how marginal. (Congress failed to provide the same exemption in 1964, 1968 and 1972, so there were no debates those years.) After the Federal Communications Commission acted to exempt the debates from the equal-time law, the League of Women Voters revived the debates, in 1976, and asked me to help. Critics have sometimes charged that the debates, and their format and substance, are controlled by the two major parties and campaigns. This was once true. In 1980, for example, the negotiations between the League of Women Voters and two skilled Texas political hands — James A. Baker III for the Republicans and Robert S. Strauss for the Democrats — reached an impasse. That’s when Jim Baker looked at me and said, “Newt, excuse me, I have to go to the men’s room.” Two minutes later, Bob Strauss similarly excused himself. About 10 minutes later, they came back together with handwritten notes on the back of an envelope and told us, “Here’s the way it’s going to be.” At that time, the debates were still a fragile institution. We had no leverage to compel the candidates to participate, so we accepted their compromise. Eventually, this led to a showdown: In 1987, the parties established the Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan nonprofit organization, to organize the debates, and the following year, the League of Women Voters withdrew its sponsorship. (I serve on the commission.) Once derided as a creature of the parties, the commission has gradually become independent of them. In 2004, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry tried to force us to accept a 32-page “memorandum of understanding” setting out debate details; we refused, and they backed down. In 2008, Senator John McCain asked for a postponement of the first debate, citing the turmoil in the financial markets. We said we would hold it as scheduled, and he agreed to participate as planned. This year, each of the 90-minute presidential debates will be moderated by a single individual (on Wednesday night, Jim Lehrer), not a panel. The first and third debates will be divided into six 15-minute segments. Each segment will open with a question, followed by two minutes for each candidate, with the balance of time for informal discussion. (The second presidential debate will be a town-hall-style discussion.) We hope the new format will provide for focused, extended discussion and be entirely different from the disappointing primary and caucus debates, where we saw moderators preening for the camera, demanding yes-or-no answers, asking candidates to raise their hands to respond to questions, and forcing candidates to shout to be heard. We even observed media handlers urging the audience to boo, applaud and jeer. Sadly, the marriage of television and politics in our country has been mostly a history of disappointment. In 1952, television stations — which are licensed by the F.C.C. to serve the public interest — began selling commercials to political campaigns. Other democracies have rejected this idea, and instead provide public service time to candidates during campaign periods. Over the next 60 years, more and more political commercials flooded the airwaves, forcing candidates to raise more and more money. Many of the slurs and slogans in these commercials — which are often truth-free — are now paid for by “super PACs” and secretive 501(c)(4) groups. I believe it is unconscionable that candidates for public office have to buy access to the airwaves — which the public itself owns — to talk to the public. The debates are one of the few features of our political campaigns that are still admired throughout the world. Candidate debates are still new in most democratic countries, even in Western Europe. Britain, often held up as a model for how to hold a proper election, only in 2010 began to have televised live debates among the party leaders vying to be prime minister. Let me suggest that after you watch the debate on Wednesday night, you turn off your television set and do your best to avoid the spin that will follow. Talk about what you saw and heard with your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers. You are smarter than the spinners. It’s your decision that matters on Nov. 6, not theirs. Newton N. Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1961 to 1963, is the author, with Craig L. LaMay, of “Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future.” |
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Baker or Strauss, anyone? considering the political reality in which he inhabits, swimming like a minnow, and not the utopia to which Minow aspires (and claims to some extent has helped partially achieved), ========> his words would make me want the leader of my country to be able to transcend the worst political impasse in achieving legislative results (in the U.S. since 1947), and to elect an effective realist like a Jim Baker or a Bob Strauss. |
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hennybogan1953 03-Oct-12, 19:42 |
THE MITT ROMNEY SHOW!!!!!!!! THIS IS A DEFINING MOMENT!!!!!! MSNBC IS UPSET!!!! ROMNEY KICKED BUTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GET ER DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
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romney obama does need to attack more. on the other hand, he had some excellent points. when he called romney out for not having any details - wants to repeal all this stuff, but has no plan. i also thought he had an excellent point about medicaid changes affecting those who are 53 or 54. romney made some good points too. he looked passionate and human. he belabored how much he cares for working people. |
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Jeff Hard to debate Romney on education. The thing is on health care I think both candidates care about the people its just which plan will work better. I was actdually prooud of Obama not harping on blaming Bush too much. You know he has to say he started in the hole but he didnt play the blame game too much. I honestly feel like Romney won this debate, Obama looked defeated at times. The vice president debate should be a laugher. I think Biden is the biggest idiot I have ever seen and not sure Ryan is much better. |
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Obama |
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Stinky ... Obama was exceedingly careful, polite, and diplomatic in the debate. He listed many administration achievements focusing on a few in general, Obamacare in particular. Other details regarding sure and steady job growth, explanations for tax changes, oil company profits were well-presented to name a few. There was appropriate substance in these presentations. The left will argue there were a considerable number of other points of substance. Of course. You may choose to argue naught, but (as I've said) I think Romney did better on stage (he looks better on television). I remain Independent and in the middle. I know you look at these things through red-colored glasses. |
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Chaz How you can say Obama had substance and Romney didn't kinda bewilders me. If anything he outlined things in great detail on each point. Chaz to say Romney looks better on television is pretty much telling me what you think. I dont care either way except you keep claiming to be middle and say the most leftist things. I did not look at this like you might thing chaz, as a matter of fact most of you here assume too much about me at times. I sat down and I listened. I listened to Obama try and explain why he did some of the things he did. I was not at all totally against Obama as much as I was trying to figure out where he was going with his ideas. Romney was exceedingly careful, polite and diplomatic in the debate as well. He listed many failures of the administration focusing a few in general and obama care in particular. Obama looked good on stage tho. |
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By the way |
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. .By Chris Moody, Yahoo! News Political Reporter . President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney squared off in their first face-to-face presidential debate Wednesday, battling for more than an hour over the future of the economy, the federal budget, tax cuts, education, health care and even the future of Big Bird. Faced with several recent polls showing Romney falling behind, the GOP candidate may have bought himself some added time after Wednesday's debate, where he appeared on the offensive against Obama. Romney's answers to questions from the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS Newshour, who played a subdued role over the course of the evening, were crisp and appeared well-rehearsed. His responses included as many specifics as the limited time would allow, and Romney seemed to hit his marks in a way Obama was not able to. The "zingers" promised for the debate were scarce, and both instead used their time to carefully outline ideas for how they would govern. Romney and Obama used personal examples to supplement their points. In perhaps the most anticipated moment of the debate, Romney survived the session on health care reform, which could have been a major liability for the Republican nominee. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney championed a state health care law that later became the partial blueprint for Obama's national health care overhaul that Romney now says he wants to repeal. During the debate, Romney worked to show the difference between the two laws, while Obama aimed to tie them together. Obama scored points in noting that many of the ideas that made it into the final health care law originated with with Republicans, but Romney escaped the exchange with only minor wounds. "There's a reason why Governor Romney set up the plan that he did in Massachusetts," Obama said. "It wasn't a government takeover of health care. It was the largest expansion of private insurance." Although the debate began awkwardly with both candidates discussing the president's 20th wedding anniversary, the contest quickly moved into what at times became a tense conversation that showed the difference between their competing visions for the future of the country and the role of government. But for much of the first part of the contest, both Obama and Romney spent a lot of time working to fact check the other. Obama launched an early attack on Romney for proposing a tax plan that cuts federal government programs but does not include tax increases on the wealthy. He knocked the former governor for not providing specifics about his own plan for tax reform and said his initiative would raise taxes on middle-income families by $2,000 and lower them for millionaires. "Virtually everything he just said about my tax plan is inaccurate," Romney shot back, adding that he doesn't intend to raise taxes under his plan. Obama pressed that there was no way to achieve sound deficit reduction without what he called a "balanced approach" that includes tax increases and spending cuts, forcing Romney to double down on a policy against raising taxes under any circumstances. The debate, which lacked the contentious moments of the Republican primary contests, marked nearly five years since Obama and Romney have seen each other in person. Both men, however, have studied the other from afar through campaign ads, briefing books and tapes of old debates during preparations for the big night. For some voters, Wednesday's debate was Romney's first real opportunity to make an impression. As the challenger, Romney was tasked with showing voters what distinguished him from the president and his policies, and how his own ideas would make the country better off. The debate also offered the Republican nominee an opportunity to display his personality, which at times can appear stiff or halted when portrayed in news coverage. In a way, Obama faced an even deeper challenge. After four years under his watch, the unemployment rate remains above 8 percent and the national debt now tops over $16 trillion. Indeed, the president inherited a post over a nation facing one of the deepest recessions in recent history, but Obama had to make the case that his policies were the right ones without merely saying "it could have been worse." If the end of his first term is a performance review and the debates are his time to make a defense, it's crucial for him to hit his marks. In a race in which more than 90 percent of the electorate has already made up their minds, both of the candidates' remarks over the course of the debate were intended for the ears of the few, albeit powerful, undecided voters living in swing states. Each in their own way made pitches to these prospective supporters, while still giving confidence to their respective bases that they would not veer from their principles. National polls show the race for the popular vote is at a near dead-heat just a month before the election, but an examination of surveys conducted in battleground states suggest Romney could face a deficit of support in areas he must win to best the president. Wednesday night Romney made a solid first step. |
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dmaestro 03-Oct-12, 23:10 |
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by MARK MEMMOTT and SCOTT MONTGOMERY In their first of three debates, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney "traded barbs" and stretched some facts, say the nonpartisan watchdogs at PolitiFact.com. Similarly, the researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org found examples of truth-stretching by both men. Overall, it was a debate packed with facts, a wonk's delight. From the very first remarks, with President Obama saying 5 million jobs have been created in the private sector over the last 30 months, the debate was very number focused. So there were some things to check. And because Romney made more factual assertions, he's getting dinged more — at least in the early hours after the debate — by the fact checkers. Here is a sample of what's being reported about the truthiness of what Obama and Romney had to say Wednesday night on stage at the University of Denver: — One of the biggest disputes was over tax cuts. Obama argued that Romney's plan to stimulate the economy includes a tax cut totaling $5 trillion that, Obama said, isn't possible because the Republican nominee is also promising to spend money in other places. Romney flatly disputed that number. "First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut," he said. Who's right? The Washington Post's Fact Checker says the facts on this one are on Obama's side. The New York Times notes that Romney "has proposed cutting all marginal tax rates by 20 percent — which would in and of itself cut tax revenue by $5 trillion." FactCheck.org has weighed in too, tweeting during the debate that "Romney says he will pay for $5T tax cut without raising deficit or raising taxes on middle class. Experts say that's not possible." PolitiFact has given a "mostly true" rating to the charge that "Romney is proposing a tax plan "that would give millionaires another tax break and raise taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year." — Has the president put in place a plan that would cut Medicare benefits by $716 billion? Romney says yes. The president says no. According to PolitiFact, Romney's charge is "half true." "That amount — $716 billion — refers to Obamacare's reductions in Medicare spending over 10 years, primarily paid to insurers and hospitals," says PolitiFact. So there is a basis for the number. But, it adds, "the statement gives the impression that the law takes money already allocated to Medicare away from current recipients," which is why it gets only a "half true" rating. The New York Times writes that Obama "did not cut benefits by $716 billion over 10 years as part of his 2010 health care law; rather, he reduced Medicare reimbursements to health care providers, chiefly insurance companies and drug manufacturers. And the law gave Medicare recipients more generous benefits for prescription drugs and free preventive care like mammograms." Still, as NPR's Julie Rovner has reported, "some of the money does indeed reduce future Medical spending, and the fact is, you can't reduce health care spending and preserve Medicare for 78 million baby boomers without slowing its growth." — In listing his objections to the Affordable Care Act, Romney said it "puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people, ultimately, what kind of treatments they can have. I don't like that idea." But the Times and National Journal have reported that the board in question wouldn't make treatment decisions, a point Obama made during the debate. National Journal called Romney's characterization of what this board would do "one of the biggest whoppers of the night." PolitiFact gave Romney's claim a "mostly false" rating. Under the law, the board's job would be to keep Medicare spending within a particular target (not a dollar figure, but as a factor of GDP) but the board is prohibited from choosing the benefits to be restricted to achieve savings, so it cannot make treatment decisions. FactCheck.org, which has likened the charge about this panel to the earlier claim from Republicans that Obama would create "death panels," writes that "the board, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, cannot, by law, 'ration' care or determine which treatments Medicare covers. (mrindependent's fantasy 'death panels) — On cutting the federal deficit, PolitiFact writes, "Romney claimed that Obama had said he would 'cut the deficit in half.' That's the case. ... Obama said he put forward 'a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan.' That's true if you combine the 10-year impact of his budget with the 10-year impact of cuts already approved. (For that reason, we've previously found his claim that his budget plan would 'cut our deficits by $4 trillion' Half True.)" — As for Obama's claim that under his watch the economy has created 5 million jobs in the past 30 months, NPR's John Ydstie says that's true. But it also ignores an inconvenient truth (for the president), that about the same number of jobs were lost during Obama's first year in office. — And on a lighter note, the debate opened with a tender moment and a fact that soon was disputed on Twitter. In acknowledging his wedding anniversary, Obama said that "20 years ago I became the luckiest man on Earth because Michelle Obama agreed to marry me." An astute tweeter noted that 20 years ago, the first lady's last name was Robinson. |
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t.co |
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Stinky ... Romney was good in front of the camera; it was obvious he knew he was being filmed even when the prez was speaking, and he knew how to "look." Obama seemed much too serious except for that occasional grin. There are many things (some I know you disagree with) that Obama successfully presented to support positive things occurring over the last four years ... yet, he was (deliberately?) polite ... he never once mentioned those 47%, an excellent fencing point that he could have used. It's become my impression that the prez did not want to look too aggressive despite having the ammunition to do so. Romney also misstated the Medicare $716B reduction as a reduction of benefits ... but that was for stage impact. Again, over coffee, we might see more eye to eye than you think; but, you have some pretty educated Liberals here who are good at fact-checking. Keep your open mind open; I'll try too. |
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he was for women's right to choose, not he is against it. he was for the mandate, now he is against it. he implemented romneycare in mass., then completely condemned obamacare (which is virtually the same), and now say he would keep some of it. he will repeal obamacare, but won't say what he will replace it with - just trust him it will ahve all the good parts of obamacare and none of the bad parts. he will repeal dodd-frank, but won't say what he will replace it with - but trust him it will have all the good parts and none of the bad stuff. he is going to cut the tax rate, and replace the lost revenue by reducing deductions - but he won't say what they are... just trust him. his tax plan, his medicaid plan, his health care plan all lack important details - infact any details. and they seem to have magically changed in the last few weeks - although since we do not have any details, we just should trust him. |
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z ... |
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dmaestro 04-Oct-12, 13:10 |
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I think Thats actually one of my big knocks on Obama is his willingness to get involved in domestic matters he knows nothing about. He should let locals handle it and avoid that stuff. |
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fact check if you care about truth, this is worth a look. if presentation is your main concern, never mind. elections.nytimes.com |
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Jeff Also some of the stuff is bologna for instance they used a different poll to rank Massachusetts 2nd instead of first. Come on stop grasping! |
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stinky i could go on. but you appear disinterested in facts, so never mind. as i said, if truth is unimportant to you, don't read it. |
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stinky |
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OK Jeff |
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oh. i see |
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If the stock market is expected to go up will you put your life savings into it? No because there is no guarantee. |
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whatever so he can claim to create the jobs that are already expected to be made. i can create those jobs too! you can too! even the kids can get in on it. why not? lol |
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Obama Saying that Romney is lying about jobs because they MIGHT be created anyway is simply false. So basically you are saying that Romney has to say he will create 0 jobs to be honest? It doesn't make sense. I think what you mean to say is that Romney is trying to take credit for something that might just take place anyway. Obama would do the same. Hell Obama took credit for a bad economy saying that if not for the bailout things would have been worse. Its fortune telling. |
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stinky |
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This |
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