Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.
Monday, October 15, 2012
After a New-Look Debate, a Harsh Light Falls on the Moderator
Mr. Lehrer’s light touch was widely criticized during and after the debate on Wednesday night, particularly by Democrats who felt that President Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, effectively moderated the debate himself. Speaking to CNN after the debate, Stephanie Cutter, the president’s deputy campaign manager, said, “I sometimes wondered if we even needed a moderator because we had Mitt Romney. We should rethink that for the next debate.” But conservatives suggested that critiques of Mr. Lehrer were just excuses for Mr. Obama’s own poor performance in the debate. Mr. Lehrer, 78, the former anchor of the “NewsHour” on PBS, moderated 11 presidential debates between 1988 and 2008. He had decided to do no more, but the Commission on Presidential Debates persuaded him to come back this year. He said he was persuaded by the potential of the new format: it allowed for six 15-minute conversations, each starting with a question and two-minute answers from each candidate. The format was appealing to Mr. Lehrer, who has consistently said that his job as moderator is to get out of the way and get the candidates talking. He succeeded in getting out of the candidates’ way in Wednesday night’s debate, and when he did speak, it was often in phrases like “excuse me,” “wait” and “please.” Throughout the evening, he strained to interrupt when the candidates went over their allotted time. And at one point he faced a testy Mr. Obama, who complained that the moderator had cut him off by saying that time was up. “I had five seconds before you interrupted me,” Mr. Obama said. At other times, both candidates seemed to completely ignore Mr. Lehrer. When Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Romney as failing to provide more specifics about his economic plans, Mr. Romney insisted on responding. “No, but,” Mr. Lehrer said as Mr. Romney kept on going. He spoke for a minute, completing his entire thought without interruption from the moderator. Because the first five topic areas took up more than 15 minutes each, the candidates only had three minutes to talk about the sixth topic, cures for partisan gridlock in Washington. In an e-mailed statement Thursday afternoon, Mr. Lehrer said he thought the new format accomplished its purpose, “which was to facilitate direct, extended exchanges between the candidates about issues of substance.” He continued, “Part of my moderator mission was to stay out of the way of the flow, and I had no problems with doing so. My only real personal frustration was discovering that 90 minutes was not enough time in that more open format to cover every issue that deserved attention.” The critiques came from several sides of the media spectrum. “Boy, Jim Lehrer got rolled over,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said on “Morning Joe” on Thursday morning. “You could see an exasperated look on Jim’s face when they would just keep plowing right over him,” said Gretchen Carlson on “Fox & Friends” on Fox News. Speaking on CNBC Thursday morning, Steve Liesman offered up what he called a “private-sector solution” to the moderator dilemma: “Why can’t the two guys take care of themselves?” The complaints about Mr. Lehrer seemed loudest from the left. Bill Press, whose liberal radio program is simulcast on Current TV, started on Thursday by saying Mr. Lehrer “lost control of the debate, and Mitt Romney ran all over him like a truck crushing a bug.” The liberal media monitoring group Media Matters said Mr. Lehrer had “lost the debate” by missing “repeated opportunities to press Mitt Romney into offering specifics on his policy proposals.” Richard Kim, a writer for The Nation, concluded that Mr. Lehrer’s version of moderation “is fundamentally unequipped to deal with the era of post-truth, asymmetric polarization politics — and it should be retired.” The six-topic format for a debate primarily about domestic policy also drew complaints that many issues — gun control, abortion, reproductive rights, gay rights, the environment — were not addressed. Alan Schroeder, a Northeastern University professor who has written books about debates, said that “in Jim Lehrer’s defense, this was an untested format.” Mr. Schroeder said Wednesday’s session reminded him of televised debates he has studied in France and Spain, where “the role of the moderator is to set up the topics, then hang back and let the candidates go at it.” The next debate between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney will be moderated by Candy Crowley of CNN, who notably did not join the chorus of complainers about Mr. Lehrer’s performance on Wednesday night. She credited Mr. Lehrer for trying throughout his moderating career to get candidates to engage with each other. “In the end, this debate is, you know, brought to you by these candidates,” she said on CNN after the debate, “and to me, it’s better to hear from the candidates than to hear from the moderator.”
