THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 26, 2008
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A 90-plus minute debate about American foreign policy and not a single question about human rights. To be clear: Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, and grand strategy are the major international issues facing the next president and they were rightly the focus of the debate. But surely in a 90-minute conversation about the future of U.S. foreign policy, questions of human rights and genocide prevention should merit five or ten minutes. The subjects came up in passing once or twice, but it would have been nice to hear Jim Lehrer devote at least a short segment to them.
3 comments
I was not impressed by Jim Lehrer's questioning tonight. You are right, Richard. He should have asked the candidates what they would do about Darfur. Incidentally, thanks for the superb review encompassing a plethora of books in a recent isssue of TNR.
- liberal reformer
September 26, 2008 at 11:18pm
I suspect if Lehrer asked the candidates what they would do about Darfur a fair chunk of the audience would have wondered what he was talking about.
- ndmackenzie
September 27, 2008 at 2:37am
Well... it's clear Lehrer had to abandon a lot of his questions due to the blessedly long and substantive answers to the ones he did get to ask. We could give him the excessive benefit of the doubt, and say that maybe a human rights question was on the last index card.
The cynical part of me wants to say, "Yeah, that's because Lehrer stuck to questions that Americans give a damn about."
That might be a slight knock against him, but regardless, this is by far the best I've seen Lehrer moderate a debate, and frankly, the best debate moderation I've seen in recent history, full stop. Compared to the painful structural absurdities (and tiny, tiny amounts of time allotted to complex topics) in the Bush/Kerry debates, this was just great.
- bdgreen
September 27, 2008 at 5:44am