Time to put him out to pasture

Sandy Levinson

No, not John McCain. Rather, Jim Lehrer, who, we're informed has moderated eleven presidential debates since 1988. That's enough. If there were any reason to believe he were particularly good at it, that would be one thing. But he isn't. He asks "thoughtful questions," as defined by the Washington establishment, and has no instinct for any kind of jugular. He asked a couple of followup questions when the candidates clearly didn't want to answer his question, such as what programs would be sacrificed to pay for the bailout, but that really was it so far as probing was concerned.

I'm still furious at him for failing to ask a single question about Abu Ghraib in 2004, which helped to take the issue of torture off the table until George W. Bush was kind enough to nominate Alberto Gonzales for AG after his election. He muffed it again on torture this year: Both Obama and McCain declared their opposition to torture, but, of course, McCain has refused to support banning torture by the CIA and other non-military agencies. And Obama, who already has most of the anti-torture vote, has no incentive to call McCain on this because I suspect that many undecided voters may actually support torture by the CIA. So it was up to Lehrer to press the issue when it emerged, and, of course, he didn't. And, while McCain was telling us the benefits of world travel and meeting foreign leaders, Lehrer left entirely unasked why in the world he picked the tragi-comically unprepared Gov. Palin to be one heartbeat away. Does he really think she's equipped to take over should anything happen to him? Enquiring minds would have been interested in McCain's answer, but Jim Lehrer was apparently too incurious to ask it (or perhaps he thought it would be too impolite).

And, of course, the debate feeds my own obsession about our treating the President as our "constitutional dictator." Even I recognize that, along with the "Great Decider," there's also an administrative apparatus. So why not ask them if they're prepared to name, say, five or six people they are considering for Secretary of State or Defense? Why do we absurdly continue to elect presidents without any real knowledge of what their administrations will be like. Or Lehrer might have asked them the best book on foreign policy they've read in, say, the past year. McCain would undoubtedly have picked Terror and Consent, by my friend Philip Bobbitt, which could certainly serve as the basis for further questions by an informed moderator.

I never want to see Jim Lehrer moderating a debate again. I have no reason to think he's a bad person, and, who knows, perhaps the News Hour is pretty good. (As should be obvious, I rarely watch it.) But it's way past time to find someone new to moderate the debates. Far, far better if the moderators over the three sessions included people like Andrew Sullivan, Peggy Noonan, Paul Krugman, EJ Dionne, or Charles Krauthammer (and maybe even Bill Kristol), which might produce some real intellectual sparks instead of the Lehrer, Bob Schieffer and Tom Brokaw, with their insufferable tones of high-minded and polite blandness.



Posted 8:11 AM by Sandy Levinson [link]