Jim Lehrer’s boring-ass job interview

2004.10.01 — Government | Politics | Campaign 2004 | by Derek Jensen

There were good, hard questions to be asked in the first presidential debate between John Kerry and George W Bush. Jim Lehrer didn't ask them. Instead, Lehrer asked the lamest, boringest, most conventional job-interview questions a moderator could ask.

The topic of this debate was foreign policy and homeland security.

On Oct 5, the vice-presidential candidates debate all topics, on Oct 8, the presidential candidates debate all topics, and on Oct 13, the presidential candidates debate economic and domestic policy.

Lehrer didn't start off by asking George W Bush why in the hell we went to war with Iraq when we hadn't caught Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He didn't ask John Kerry why he tries to have it both ways with regard to support for that war and for gay marriage. He didn't follow the candidates' canned answers with show-your-math demands. He looked at his notes and moved on to the next canned question like a teacher flipping the next flashcard.

George W Bush made repeated claims that al-Qaeda was hiding in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the American people. Lehrer sat mute. Kerry made repeated invocations of Vietnam apropos of nothing. Lehrer didn't even roll his eyes.

I don't think the moderator of a presidential debate should be a grandstanding glory-hog, demanding mathematical answers to niggling policy questions crafted in darkest regions of the newsroom. But I do expect him to call the candidates on their use of stump speech rhetoric and repetition.

Worse, again and again, Lehrer's questions challenged the wrong guy. He asked Kerry for a plan to exit Iraq. That's a tough question, but Kerry didn't get us into this mess. Bush needs to answer that question. Kerry's answer can only be an empty promise; Bush's answer has to be consistent with what he's said all along... and still be in the realm of possibility.

Bush made bizarre claims about what unnamed "other people" say, like "if you're Muslim, you don't deserve to be free." Who says that? Not John Kerry. But Jim Lehrer made no attempt to challenge him.

Lehrer also did not challenge Kerry on how he could hope to get other nations to send more troops to Iraq or how he could succeed in Iraq without increasing American troop strength, which would surely require some sort of draft.

Bush invoked Libya as an example of his get-tough policies working peacefully. But Iraq was under much tougher sanctions, with thoro inspections that had actually disarmed it, yet Bush attacked it anyway because he didn't trust Saddam Hussein. But why does he trust Muammar Qaddafi? Saddam was attacked largely because he was a suspected terrorist supporter. Qaddafi is an admitted terrorist supporter.

Lehrer spent the entire first hour on Iraq, virtually ignoring Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. He never asked Bush about the lack of international support or criticisms from within his own party, or even the back-door draft.

In the last half hour, they covered larger issues of foreign policy, such as nuclear proliferation and Russia's backsliding into authoritarianism. They barely mentioned Sudan, Rwanda, Iran, or even how to keep America safe without restricting its freedoms. Instead, it was all Iraq, all night.

That's the same kind of tunnel vision that got us into this mess in the first place.

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