The Perspective of a White Male on the Democratic Debate

I know the Democratic debate that took place in Philadelphia tonight on MSNBC may not have swept the television ratings, especially since it seems like the presidential candidates have a debate once every two hours in this never ending primary season. However, I wanted to use my soap box to give my two cents:

[I'll save the spin on the individual candidates for the professionals, but in brief: Hillary didn't shine, which would have been hard anyway because she was the other candidates' punching bag all night, but on first blush she also didn't make any glaring mistakes; Edwards came out fighting and did a good job of it; Obama seemed to stutter a lot and took a distant second to Edwards' assertiveness; Biden had some great lines; Dodd was pretty much irrelevant; Richardson should get rid of his hair piece because it's distracting; and Kucinich won the vote of the 14% of Americans who claim to have spotted a UFO when he admitted that he's seen one too.]

What I found most outrageous about the whole debate was the moderators: Tim Russert and Brian Williams. Besides asking convoluded questions that failed to engage the candidates until the waning minutes of the debate, it was absurd that the two moderators were both white male news anchors. Since the debate moderators are essentially acting as the questioning voice of the voters, it's important that they bring a range of perspectives and vocalize the different concerns that voters are struggling with. On stage and on camera, however, Russert and Williams exposed the news media as lacking both diversity and creativity, especially in the media's upper echelons, where white males rank supreme. And, it's not like MSNBC didn't have other moderator options. Tim Russert is generally a good choice since politics is his speciality on his Sunday morning show Meet the Press. The superior questions he asked reflected on this experience. But instead of nightly news anchor Brian Williams, the Today Show's Meredith Vieira, Ann Curry or even weatherman Al Roker would have been good choices. It's not like moderating a debate is rocket science: ask a few questions, keep the candidates on their toes and make sure none of them hog the spotlight for too long while also getting the time to say their piece. Alternatively, MSNBC could have made more of an effort to find a moderator that doesn't actually work on one of their regular newscasts.

Judging by the long winded questions that Russert, and especially Williams asked, they clearly enjoyed hearing the sounds of their own voices too much. They also totally dropped the ball when they tried having a few "lightning rounds" where candidates only had 30 seconds to answer a question. For this to work the questions have to be straight and to the point and the candidates have to be cut off when time runs out or else everyone will feel entitled to transition into their stump speeches. Russert & Williams failed on both counts, especially since most of their questions took more than 30 seconds just to ask.

The best part of the debate came in the last few minutes when the moderators asked direct questions, allowed the candidates to spar with one another and even injected some humor into the show by asking Kucinich to confirm that he had in fact spotted a UFO (yes, but it didn't necessarily involve aliens) and Obama what he was planning on dressing up as for Halloween (probably as Mitt Romney). By then, however, most viewers were already tuning out and gearing up for the next Democratic debate in two short weeks from now on CNN, featuring, of course, CNN's white male news anchor, Wolf Blitzer.