Thursday, October 02, 2008

That Whole Gwen Ifills Thing

Honestly, of campaign issues, this is a pretty lame one, that Gwen Ifills might be partial to Obama. Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air notes that Ifills didn't tell the Commission on Presidential Debates about her book, which seems like a ludicrous omission. If you omit a 500 or 1000 word column, one could be forgiven, but omitting a book one needed to spend months working on is a bit over the line.

But really, why are Republican so out of joint over this? If Ifills is patently biased in favor of Obama, it will become obvious during the debate. The American public is pretty smart and they will see it. If Ifills is that bad, even Democrats will have a hard time claiming she was impartial.

On a similar note, is impartiality a requisite for being a moderator? Doesn't a moderator serve to moderate the debate? If all the questions are softballs for Obama and bean balls for McCain, isn't there going to be an obvious display here.

Softballs for Obama will make it look like Obama can't answer the hard questions, whereas if McCain has solid, thoughtful answers to the hard questions, the easy ones would, by default, be easier for McCain.

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