As I read this New York Times editorial, demanding that Donald Trump be held more accountable by future debate moderators:
There was not much of a contest in Wednesday night’s forum with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Mrs. Clinton answered the questions of the moderator, Matt Lauer, in coherent sentences, often with specific details. Mr. Trump alternated between rambling statements and grandiose boasts when he wasn’t lying.
Mr. Lauer largely neglected to ask penetrating questions, call out falsehoods or insist on answers when it was obvious that Mr. Trump’s responses had drifted off.
If the moderators of the coming debates do not figure out a better way to get the candidates to speak accurately about their records and policies — especially Mr. Trump, who seems to feel he can skate by unchallenged with his own version of reality while Mrs. Clinton is grilled and entangled in the fine points of domestic and foreign policy — then they will have done the country a grave disservice.
as usual I was filled with questions. What does “accountability” mean? For what should politicians be held accountable? Is it the role of journalists to determine what the truth is or to report what their researches uncover? Are television news readers journalists? Editor of major newspapers?
However hard I tried to avoid it I caught the last few minutes of NBC’s “Commander-in-Chief Forum”. What I heard was mostly inoffensive and uninteresting.
So, for example, whether Putin is a better leader than Obama is purely a matter of opinion. It is not verifiable. Should Mr. Lauer have been the arbiter of whether that were true or not and held Mr. Trump accountable for Mr. Lauer’s assessment?
Which is more important? Whether Gary Johnson doesn’t know where Aleppo is (or, possibly, its significance) or whether Hillary Clinton doesn’t know what classified means? Is either important?
I’ve read a lot of criticisms of Matt Lauer’s conduct as “moderator” of the forum, most of which seems to me can be summed up as he wasn’t doing the work of the Clinton campaign effectively enough. Is that the job of the news media?
It’s more important for those who wants to overthrow the Syrian government to know details about Syria than those who want to reduce U.S. involvement.
The media’s job is to extract answers. I didn’t watch any of the forum, but the only legitimate criticism I’ve heard is that Trump’s answers were too simple and short. That could be a problem with the questioning. It could also be that Trump didn’t have a bunch of memorized speeches for when a topic is broached, regardless of whether they are directly responsive to the question.
To follow-up on the last comment; the idea that the interview needs to be combined with an evaluation of the answers is part of the problem with today’s media environment where news and opinion-making are combined.
That’s precisely my point but it’s even more than that. Hillary Clinton’s answers are detailed and well-worked out; they’re just wrong in many cases.
Take her position on Syria. She has repeatedly said that defeating DAESH should be the #1 foreign policy priority (already wrong) and that she wants to do so with air power alone. That’s egregiously wrong. It can’t be done. Who’s going to provide the land forces? The Kurds will only defend their own homelands. Most of the anti-DAESH ground forces in Syria are being provided by the Syrian Army, Iran, and Hezbollah.
Hillary Clinton provides detailed, informed, wrong answers. Who’s going to hold her accountable for those? Certainly not the news media.
There was an odd follow-up on the Morning Joe show yesterday while they were congratulating themselves on their gotcha moment with Gary Johnson. Scarborough turned to the panel’s foreign policy expert (I believe Spencer Ackerman) and told him that it was even worse that Johnson’s solution to the Syrian crisis was working with Russia to bring a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Isn’t that crazy? Everybody laughed, and the expert gingerly pointed out that was what Obama and Kerry are currently trying to do. It was great TV; I’m surprised MSNBC doesn’t have clips available so I can check the name of the expert, who I recall as probably a former New Republic employee.
In any event, maybe Obama will demonstrate she’s wrong.
The Kurds will only defend their own homelands.
Making the Kurds imminently more sensible than the American foreign policy establishment.
…
And “accountability” means making any non-Democrat look bad. That’s all, nothing else. If Trump were the Democratic nominee and a resurrected Lincoln were the Republican nominee, they’d be talking about how crazy Lincoln is and that he wants to put women in binders and put black people back ion chains, and how reasonable and sensible and well-informed Trump is. (As long as Trump embraced open borders, of course.) That’s just how it’s done.
“Hillary Clinton provides detailed, informed, wrong answers.”
She gives you enough detail to know she is wrong. (Some people think she is right BTW.) Trump doesn’t give you enough detail (any detail?) to tell if he is wrong, or sometimes if he even understands the issue. It would be helpful if the interviewer could elicit enough detail to help us figure that out.
Steve