Flag Pins? ABC Debate Moderators Catch Flak for Debate

By Anastacia Mott Austin

Just hours after ABC aired its Democratic candidate debate on Wednesday of this week, over 14,000 comments had been posted on the ABC website, the overwhelming majority of them critical over the station’s handling of the debate.

Viewers took issue over the moderators’ questions and complained that the majority of the debate focused on "trivia," campaign gaffes, and irrelevant details such as why Obama had chosen not to wear an American flag lapel pin, instead of the real issues facing the candidates.

The debate was likely the last matchup between candidates Clinton and Obama, and both candidates hoped to clear up gaffes they had made on the campaign trail leading up to next Tuesday’s important Pennsylvania primary, with its 188 delegates.

Obama was asked, of course, about his comments in San Francisco about Pennsylvania voters being "bitter" about their lot. Clinton said she found the comments offensive.

Obama responded, "You take one person's statement, if it's not properly phrased, and you just beat it to death, and that's what Senator Clinton's been doing." Obama added that the full context of his statements included that it’s understandable why those voters would have become bitter, after jobs lost 25 years ago were never recreated and the government had let people down, time and again.

Clinton was also asked about her Bosnia sniper fire comments, after being told that six out of ten voters polled found her "dishonest." She responded that she was embarrassed by the comments, and that "…unfortunately on a few occasions I was not as accurate as I have been in the past." (As close as we may ever get to "I’m sorry I lied.")

Obama repeatedly tried to shift the focus onto real issues, even refusing to take advantage of several opportunities to snipe at Clinton.

When asked whether he thought Clinton was dishonest, Obama replied, "It's important to make sure we don't get so obsessed with gaffes we lose sight of the fact that this is a defining moment in our history. In those circumstances, for us to be obsessed with these kinds of errors I think is a mistake."

Moderator George Stephanopolis, former political advisor for Bill Clinton’s administration, drew particular ire for bringing up a possible association between Obama and former Weather Underground member William Ayers. Obama’s response was to dismiss the connection, but when Clinton pressed the issue by saying that Obama had served on a committee with Ayers, Obama was more to the point.
"The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense," said Obama.

Plus, added Obama, it was Clinton’s husband Bill Clinton who pardoned two members of the Weather Underground.

Touché.

It was only later in the debate that questions were finally asked about policy plans, the candidates’ opinions of taxes, the war in Iraq, and how each planned to handle a national campaign against Republican candidate John McCain.

Reactions from political pundits, editorials, and blogs were swift and strong.

One irate blogger wrote that the handling of the debate was "so deeply embarrassing to the nation that it will be pointed to, in future books and documentary works, as a prime example of the collapse of the American media into utter and complete substanceless, into self-celebrated vapidity, and into a now-complete inability or unwillingness to cover the most important affairs of the nation to any but the most shallow of depths."

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher Magazine wrote in his blog that the debate was "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years," adding that moderators Stephanopolis and Charles Gibson, as well as ABC, should "hang their collective heads in shame."

That’s not all, folks. The Washington Post critic Tom Shales had this to say about the debate: "For the first 52 minutes, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with."

There are more, but the sentiments are quite similar.

The audience in attendance appeared to agree with our critics, booing Charles Gibson near the end of the debate when he said "We’ll be right back, stay with us."

Upon hearing the boos and indecipherable shouts, Gibson quipped, "Uh-oh, the crowd is turning on me."