Why televised debates suck

Bashing Political Punditry Week continues with this astounding op-ed piece by the New York Times' Frank Rich, decrying the performance of ABC debate moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos in the latest Clinton-Obama jawfest last week in Philadelphia.

By all accounts, the questions asked by ABC's tag-team tandem fell woefully shy of probing the issues that actually matter to most Americans. Or should matter to most Americans. Instead of addressing bottom-line issues like the economy, the war in Iraq, or health care, we got more of the usual schtick, with breathless questions about "Bittergate," Serbian snipers and tenuous connections to long-forgotten controversial figures.

Here's the money shot:

"In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Mr. Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead. In 2008, they are supplanted in part by an energized African-American electorate and the young voters of all economic strata who fueled the Obama movement that many pundits didn’t take seriously before Iowa. And that some still don’t. Cokie Roberts of ABC predicted in February that young voters probably won’t show up in November because 'they never have before' and 'they’ll be tired.'"

Read on ...