I'm watching the video of the "Townhall Meeting" that ABC's George Stephanopoulos held for Hillary this morning and it's astounding how bad Stephanopoulos is. Let me give you two prime examples.
1. Gas tax.
Stephanopoulos' first question is about Hillary's plan to rescind the gas tax this summer. Does he tell the audience, or ask Hillary about, the fact that she opposed rescinding the gas tax - she opposed her own proposal - when running for the Senate in 2000? No. That would be the hardest question of all to answer, the question that goes to the issue of her credibility on this and every other issue, and Stephanopoulos doesn't even mention it. Here is George's really tough question for Hillary:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Good to be here.
Gas tax has become the defining issue in this primary and in North Carolina. You and Senator McCain called for suspending the 18.4 cent federal gas tax. Senator Obama calls it a gimmick. He says it's pandering. He says it won't really bring any help to consumers, and he also said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: Same thing that John McCain's offering on the cheap. That means we're not presenting a truthful response to the challenges that we face in America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: What's your response? He says you're not being truthful.
He says? How about "YOU SAID during your first campaign?" Jesus, George. Come on.
2. NAFTA.
Hillary totally rolled over Stephanopoulos on this one. She started by saying, oh George, during the 1990s you and I were in meetings where we both opposed NAFTA. Stephanopoulos says nothing. Not only does he tacitly agree with her claim that he was in meetings with her and that she did oppose NAFTA in those meetings - which is a lie - he doesn't respond by telling us what actually happened in those meetings, that Hillary was such a NAFTA booster it wasn't even funny (see the video below), and worse, he doesn't note that Hillary publicly embraced NAFTA during her time in the White House. They have her on film doing it. Stephanopoulos doesn't even note that she's again flip-flopped on the issue. Hillary lied in front of Stephanopoulos on national TV, invoked Stephanopoulos' name to "prove" she was telling the truth, and Stephanopolous said nothing when he knew for a fact that she was lying.
Here's a video showing just how much of a NAFTA booster Hillary was in the 1990s:
And here's the video of Hillary rolling Stephanopoulos, invoking his name to "prove" her point against Obama, and him saying nothing in response, including him not even noting that she publicly came out for NAFTA in the 1990s. Also note how 42 seconds into the video it seems, suddenly, that Stephanopoulos has come to life. He's going to ask her about her flip-flop, about the fact that she's lying, invoking his name to prove her lie, and he isn't going to stand for it! But then he doesn't:
Now here's the transcript of that video:
CLINTON: Now, you remember this, because George did work in that '92 campaign, and George and I actually were against NAFTA. I'm talking about him in his previous life, before he was an objective journalist and didn't have opinions about such matters.
(LAUGHTER)
STEPHANOPOULOS: (inaudible) opinion.
CLINTON: Yes, but we were in meetings together where we said, look, we think there's going to be a lot of downsides, and we're not really thinking through that.
But in the 20th century and until relatively late in the 20th century, we dominated the world economy. And we had an...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, what...
CLINTON: ... opportunity to really see our jobs grow here by being smart about how we traded.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But Senator...
CLINTON: But then we've got to make changes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: ... you really have it both ways there. You talked about being against NAFTA in 1992, 1993. Yet President Clinton has said time and time again, NAFTA and free trade agreements were part of the economic success in the 1990s. How can you claim credit for the good things but not take blame for the bad?
Now do you understand why we have a problem with you, George? Now do the rest of you in the media understand what we mean when we talk about bias? When we talk about how you people have no spine whatsoever? How you've become court stenographers rather than reporters? You know the truth, you know these people are lying, and you say nothing to stop them, to contradict them, to put them on the spot. And in so doing, you are complicit in these people lying to the public with your stamp of approval. and you wonder why so many Americans have lost faith in the media.
I did an insanely long segment (well, long by TV standards) of 15 minutes this morning on CNN's Reliable Sources about the now-infamous ABC Democratic presidential candidates debate and the NYT story about the Bush administration wooing retired military pundits to push their point of view on TV. Here is the part dealing with the ABC debate - I broke it into two clips, below. Oh, and the Huffington Post did an analylsis of the past few debates and found that the ABC debate was far more biased, and far more scandal-question-prone, than any of the other recent ones.
Unless some new shocking revelation turns up, I think this is the last I'm going to say about Wednesday night's debacle. But the powers-that-be thought a post I wrote earlier today on my personal site might be of interest here too.
Now that the initial anger has subsided, bloggers and blog readers are taking a closer look at the bit players in Wednesday night's debate. Specifically flag pin lady Nash McCabe. Josh and a reader point out just how un-random this woman actually was:
Ask whom she might vote for in the coming presidential primary election and Nash McCabe, 52, seems almost relieved to be able to unpack the dossier she has been collecting in her head.
It is not about whom she likes, but more a bill of particulars about why she cannot vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
"How can I vote for a president who won't wear a flag pin?" Mrs. McCabe, a recently unemployed clerk typist, said in a booth at the Valley Dairy luncheonette in this quiet, small city in western Pennsylvania.
Josh's got more about why he thinks including McCabe was an ethical breach on ABC's part:
Now, as JL noted in his email to TPM, I'm not sure precisely what's any less ethical about finding Nash at random to come on and slam Obama about whether he believes in the flag versus seeing her in the Times and saying, 'Wow, this woman clearly has it in for Obama. Wouldn't that make for great TV giving her a chance to crap on Obama's head in front of a nationwide audience?
I think there's something wrong with it. And part of it is that you usually assume that these citizen questions come from people who are at least partly conflicted about their support if not undecided. But it does reinforce my sense that the disgraceful nature of the debate wasn't just something that came together wrong, some iffy ideas taken to far, but was basically engineered to be crap from the ground up.
Besides giving the impression they planned to stack the debate, here's what else is wrong with what ABC did:
1. They went into their debate prep with a preconceived notion of the topics they wanted to push to the forefront as opposed to taking the pulse of the electorate and prioritizing.
2. They took the lazy way out and copped a source from the NYT. How many registered voters are there in PA? How hard is it to do your own legwork and find someone to talk about the issues that matter to him/her?
and perhaps the most egregious of the errors...
3. They gave Nash McCabe and her stupid question an audience of 10+ million on prime time TV. ABC legitimized the dumb dumb dumb lapel pin discussion by default. If you couldn't find anyone but the exact same lady quoted by the NYT, then maybe that would have been a good indication that skipping the topic altogether was the way to go.
"You can't do a tougher question for Senator Clinton than 'six out of 10 Americans don't think you're honest.' "
Oh please. How about any question that starts with the words "Monica Lewinksy."
The fact is that ABC thought it would be rude and boorish to ask anything about Monica or Bill Clinton's affairs, even though we will most certainly be hearing about them in the fall should Hillary be the nominee. (And after all, isn't that ABC's standard for smut? If it's going to come up in the fall, we'll ask it first!) And it didn't have to be a sex question for Hillary, it could have been a character question.
For example... I spoke a short while back with a women's rights leader about Hillary, and asked her why she was upset with Hillary for not leaving Bill Clinton. I argued - believe it or not - that Hillary was right to get some return on her investment in this marriage in order to finally help her career too. The women's leader responded: "Your self-respect is more important than a job." That's the kind of Monica question ABC could have asked Hillary, one that would have been relevant to her character. But they didn't.
ABC went there with Obama - I mean, come on, asking him if his pastor loves America? - but ABC didn't go there with Hillary. I'm not sure going there with both candidates would have made anyone happier, but please don't insult our intelligence and suggest that there were no harsher questions you could have asked Hillary. ABC decided to make no topic untouchable in Obama's life. But they did in Hillary's.
