"It's the economy, stupid."
CBS' Bob Schieffer was the first debate moderator not to drive conservative viewers to yell at their televisions in frustration. Of course, the bar was set very low. Two of the previous moderators were so overtly biased in favor of the Democrats that Mr. Schieffer's refusal to insert himself into the debate was refreshing.
In the eyes of many of his strongest supporters, Mitt Romney actually won Monday night in Boca Raton by losing his foreign-policy debate with President Obama.
Bob Schieffer took a light hand Monday as moderator of the final presidential debate, ending with advice from his mother: "Go vote. It makes you feel big and strong."
President Obama says on the campaign trail that global warming "isn't a hoax," and it was one of his big three legislative priorities coming into office in 2009 along with passing a stimulus and his health care law — and the only one of those three he didn't get done.
Beneath Bob Schieffer's Southern charm is the tough spine of someone used to dealing with politicians. The moderator of Monday's final presidential debate will need it, because it has been open season on the other journalists who have done that job this campaign.
At the second presidential debate, President Obama claimed he had said in his Rose Garden talk the day after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that the killing of the ambassador and three other Americans constituted a terrorist attack ("Candy Crowley gets it wrong: Obama never called Benghazi a 'terror attack' in Rose Garden speech," Web, Oct. 16).
Beneath Bob Schieffer's Southern charm is the tough spine of someone used to dealing with politicians. The moderator of Monday's final presidential debate will need it, because it has been open season on the other journalists who have done that job this campaign.
The biggest loser of Tuesday's presidential debate wasn't Barack Obama or Mitt Romney; it was Candy Crowley. When the CNN correspondent decided her job as moderator was to declare one of the contenders right and the other wrong, she undermined what should be an impartial process of deciding who gets the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the next four years.
