The Second Debate:
Town Hall
Like all Catholics, I have my opinions
on issues such as taxes, spending, jobs, etc.
But those are prudential issues that I don’t usually write about in my
coverage of the election. I focus primarily
on issues of morality, or things that directly relate to Catholic
teaching. As a Catholic, watching the
second Presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, I found Obama
disgusting, Romney disappointing; and the moderator was the worst I’ve ever
seen.
First, the President.
Pundits had claimed before the debate that its main purpose was going to
be courting women, whom the President had lost in droves since his first debate
against Mr. Romney. Apparently Mr. Obama
thinks America’s women are idiots. He
brought up funding for Planned Parenthood a half-dozen times. This is an issue the President should lose
on, yet Romney let it go unchallenged every time. (Perhaps he doesn’t think so highly of
America’s women either.) The President
accused Mr. Romney of being “extreme on social policy” (though polls say the
governor’s positions are actually mainstream in America), and went as far as to
tout his evil HHS mandate, which robs religious freedom from Catholics and
others, by forcing the Church to provide contraception, sterilization, and
abortifacient drugs to employees through its health insurance plans.
The most disappointing part of Mr. Romney’s disappointing
performance was that he let that issue go.
He could have buried Obama on the HHS mandate, but again he let the
President off the hook.
In the entire hour and a half, there was only brief mention
of Libya, and Mr. Obama did surprisingly well on an issue for which he has no
legitimate answer. He, of course, gave
no substantive answer, but appeared empathetic and even violently offended at
the suggestion that anyone in his administration would “play politics or
mislead” over the incident, even though Congressional hearings seem to suggest
that may be exactly what happened.
Both men were confrontational, but like his vice president,
only Obama actually interrupted his opponent.
Romney would have done better, perhaps, with more interruptions,
considering how poorly the debate was moderated.
The moderator, Candy Crowley, is from the liberal network CNN,
and has made statements that would probably lead people to believe she is an
Obama partisan. She certainly removed
any doubt tonight. I will not accuse her
of any willful lack of integrity, but her bias (intended or not) was plain to
see. It really leads to serious questions
about how these debates are moderated, and how better moderators can be
guaranteed in the future.
She chose the questions and allowed such softballs for the
President as one that essentially asked him to list his accomplishments. Worse than that, she consistently let the
President get the last word, and when Romney tried to get equal time, she told
him, “That’s not the way it works.” She
promised Mr. Romney he could return to a topic if he wanted, but when he tried
to, she interrupted him and told him to stay on another topic. The President did not suffer the same mistreatment. At one point she actually argued with a point
Mr. Romney was making, drawing cheers from the crowd, calling into question
whether it was really non-partisan.
One might argue that if I’m complaining about the moderator,
it must mean “my guy” lost. Well, in the
first place, her terrible job needs to be critiqued to get a fair assessment of
what happened tonight, and secondly, a strong argument can be made that my guy
did lose.
What were the objectives of each side? Romney had the chance to put the President
away, which he clearly did not do.
Obama, by contrast, had to stop the bleeding, and maybe gain some
momentum himself. Obama’s energy and
preparedness probably earned a draw on substance (though I disagree with the
President’s policies – I’m trying to think like an undecided). And, of course, the fawning media will hype
his performance and downplay Romney’s so that the resulting narrative will
separate itself a bit from what really happened. This may provide the momentum.
Most likely this debate will settle things where they are in
the race at large – a dead heat. There
remains one more debate, and of course, events at home and abroad will continue
to unfold over the next few weeks. We
can only hope that the final debate will allow the American people an unbiased
presentation and that Mr. Romney will not miss the opportunities he missed
tonight.
