Last night's Democratic presidential debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia drew record ratings (10.7 million people) and an incredible number of criticisms, according to an AP/MSNBC news article.
"The questions were tough and fair and appropriate and relevant," [George] Stephanopoulos told The Associated Press. "We wanted to focus at first on the issues that were not focused on during the last debates."
The criticism comes with the territory, he said. "It's one more sign of how engaged people are over this election," he said.
Will Bunch, a Philadelphia Daily News writer, posted an open letter to [Charles] Gibson and Stephanopoulos on his blog. He wrote that he was so angry that "it's hard to even type accurately because my hands are shaking." He said the ABC newsmen spent too much time on trivial matters that didn't concern most voters.
"By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself," Bunch wrote.
EDITORIAL NOTE: We believe that it was only fair for these two seasoned journalists to bring up the questions they did, since the public, regardless of party, wants some straight answers on questions such as Obama's association with Rev. Wright and Hillary Clinton's whopper about her adventure in Bosnia. Reaction of conservative talk show hosts was generally favorable, since they had become weary of the softball questions previous moderators had directed to Democratic presidential candidates.
Dick Polman makes some incisive observations in his RealClearPolitics roundup of the debate.
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