Stung by the not-so-tough questions ABC debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos asked its favored candidate in last week's debate, moveon.org and its fellow travelers are pleading with ABC to show more bias.

That's what I draw from an online petition generated by moveon.org, complaining about the questions asked by Gibson and Stephanopoulos, as well as various and sundry calls for protest against ABC by similarly inclined parties. The complaints about questions directed toward Obama (that's the point of the protest, not similar questions directed to Clinton about a certain incident in Bosnia and pardons given to Puerto Rican terrorists) would be easier to accept if one could be sure that the same parties would raise similar protest in the event John McCain were asked a debate question about his violent temper, his courting of vicious anti-Catholic John Hagee, or the Keating 5 scandal, but the complaints would still be wrong.

For one thing, the questions actually served a valuable purpose even if one is a rank partisan for Obama. Obama was asked about his association with weathermen bombers Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, his relationship with his tinfoil hat pastor Jeremiah Wright, and his refusal to wear a flag lapel pin (a question I also believe was silly). These questions "vet" the candidate. Perhaps, just maybe, had Michael Dukakis been asked the question that Bernard Shaw asked (what if Kitty Dukakis was raped and murdered? how would you feel about the death penalty then, tank driver) in his debate with George H. W. Bush in a forum that mattered during the Democratic primaries in 1988, this nation's history would be entirely different from what it is today. Al Gore, Dukakis's leading opponent and a liberal hawk at the time, might have been President from 1988 to 1996, and we'd be wondering what President Kemp planned to do about our entanglement in Zimbabwe. Or perhaps Dukakis wouldn't have handled a ridiculously easy question so oafishly, and would have won in 1988.

It isn't as though John McCain won't ask these questions far more forcefully than did Stephanopoulos. Even if he doesn't, we can be sure that proxies acting on his behalf will ask them. John Kerry, idiot that he is, was utterly bigfooted by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, because no one had raised any questions about his service record (some of which were meritorious and all of which he'd have seen coming had he not been surrounded by a cocoon) before the ad campaign started.

But more importantly, the questions were legitimate, and they were timely. Giving a soaring speech about race without really addressing the Wright issue is one thing. Answering questions about it from a neutral interlocutor (which is what the ABC crew amounted to) is something else. Obama hadn't answered questions about his associations with terrorists and moonbats before this debate, and he still hasn't. It is a fair question to ask, particularly of someone arrogant enough to think that he's qualified to run the country, why he consorts with ex-bombers and a man whose conspiracy theories would have him compared to Texas child-molesters if he were a Mormon. I daresay that most Americans would feel like spitting on Ayers and Dohrn if they were in the same room and knew what they stood for (though most Americans would be too polite to do so), and most Americans would run for the exit during some of Wright's sermons. It's fair to ask Obama why he didn't, fair because he says he's the best qualified man in America to run the government, and it's our government. Not his.

Our history, fortunately, isn't replete with examples of why government leaders should be asked tough questions before assuming office, but it's a short history. The history of other nations is replete with those examples. Even so, tough questions asked of past presidents might have yielded better results. Questions to Ulysses Grant or Warren Harding about certain business associations. Questions asked of Jimmy Carter, a good man but one miserably unsuited to the office by reason of beliefs, habits, and temperament, as most Americans old enough to remember will remember.

I'd welcome a future debate in which John McCain is asked questions about his temper and his associations in addition to the fact he'd probably flunk Economics 101. I'd welcome a similar debate in which Obama is forced to answer tougher questions about his associations, questions I could have put far more pointedly than did Gibson or Stephanopoulos. I have a right to know before I vote, even if sheep, or the hacks at moveon, don't want to know.

I commend ABC's moderators for asking questions no one dared to ask (through twenty debates) up until the twenty-first. This is an election, not a coronation.

Last 5 posts by Patrick

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