Welcome to the debate, kids, whoo! Hosted by our bro Bob Schieffer. WHOO! Follow our coverage here.
When President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas in 1963, Schieffer was the Star-Telegram’s night police reporter. As he wrote in a guest column for the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, phone calls that night were pouring into the newsroom.
“Every phone was ringing,” he wrote. “I grabbed one, only to hear a woman caller ask, ‘Is there anyone there who can give me a ride to Dallas?’
“‘Lady,’ I shouted, ‘We’re not running a taxi service, and besides, the president has been shot.’
“‘Yes,’ the voice responded, ‘I just heard it on the radio and they said my son is the one they’ve arrested.’
“It was Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother.”
As a result of this conversation, Schieffer played a minor role in the Kennedy shooting, helping drive Marguerite Oswald to the police station after the shooting. He didn’t get what he was looking for — a scoop — but he has a great story nonetheless.
In which SNL’s cold open captures the dynamics of the second presidential debate perfectly.
I think it’s fair to say I was just too polite, because, you know, it’s hard to sometimes just keep on saying, ‘And what you’re saying isn’t true.’ It gets repetitive. But, you know, the good news is, is that’s just the first onePresident Obama • During an interview with Tom Joyner on Tuesday, discussing his widely-panned performance in the first 2012 Presidential Debate last week. The President compared the campaign to a best of seven playoff series, saying that he went into the debate 2-0, and assured Joyner that he didn’t think one loss was as bad some people believe. “We’ve got four weeks left in the election,” said the President, adding, “And we’re going to take it to him.” source
The first few times I said `let’s move on’ and they wanted to keep talking, the inclination of course is to stop them so I could cover all the subjects I wanted to cover. But I’m sitting there thinking, `Wait a minute, they’re talking to each other, leave `em alone.’ So I backed off.Jim Lehrer - Responding to criticism of his performance moderating the first 2012 Presidential Debate at the University of Denver last week. Many have said that Lehrer should have been more aggressive with both President Obama and Mitt Romney, and that he didn’t appear to have much control over the debate at all. Lehrer doesn’t see anything wrong with the runover answers though, because the candidates were at least staying on topic. ”It would have been different if they were talking about tiddlywinks or baseball,” he said. “They were talking about the things that really matter.” source
Romney did something last night that I didn’t expect him to do, and obviously Obama didn’t expect him to do. He suddenly became the moderate Massachusetts governor again.Michael Tomasky, chalking Romney’s success last night up to the adoption (or re-adoption) of a moderate political ideology. In returning to his circa-2002 policy positions, Romney “disavowed or contradicted virtually everything he’s been saying for the past 18 months,” Tomasky says, citing Romney’s stated positions on preexisting conditions, taxes, Medicaid and school funding. source
8 point uptick in Obama’s favorability amongst independents since the debate source
Meanwhile, Romney’s favorability didn’t change. Most of the numbers in the poll, however, are rather positive for Romney; this is somewhat of an outlier. Obama’s lead in a head-to-head got cut in half, from 8 to 4 points, though he does still lead. Also, just for kicks:
10% of respondents would rather literally watch paint dry than watch Romney and Obama debate each other.
That was actually polled, yes.
In a memo about the debates distributed to campaign surrogates and provided to CNN on Thursday, longtime Romney adviser Beth Myers outlines a series of reasons why the president is likely to emerge as the winner of the first debate.
Among them:
– President Obama is “widely regarded as one of the most talented political communicators in modern history.”
– “This will be the eighth one-on-one presidential debate of his political career. For Mitt Romney, it will be his first.”
– “Four years ago, Barack Obama faced John McCain on the debate stage. According to Gallup, voters judged him the winner of each debate by double-digit margins, and their polling showed he won one debate by an astounding 33-point margin.”
Myers argues that Obama will “use his ample rhetorical gifts and debating experience to one end: attacking Mitt Romney.”
“We fully expect a 90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent,” she writes in the memo.
Pushing back against emerging conventional wisdom, Myers concludes that the debates will not, in fact, decide the election: “It will be decided by the American people,” she says.
That’s optimism for ya.
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
Congrats Tumblr!
Don’t screw this up Yahoo.
In 2007, I was...
I started tumblr when I was at one of the lowest points of...
Governor Romney is a very skilled debater, so clearly the governor has the advantage.Obama campaign manager Jim Messina • Heaping a modest bit of dirt on the debate abilities of his boss. If this seems on its face like a gaffe, it isn’t — the name of the game in presidential debates over the last several cycles has been lowering expectations. It’s a strategy that worked well for President Bush in both 2000 and 2004, for a simple reason — diminished expectations allow a candidate to seem to shine (or to rise to the occasion) just by doing a competent job. Conversely, the Romney campaign’s strategy at this late date hinges so heavily on scoring knockout blows on the debate stage (it’s no secret that Romney’s been forgoing much campaigning post-convention, ostensibly to focus on debate prep) that they’ve done much the opposite — they want you to think Romney’s going to win. That could end up being true, to be sure, but on sheer poltiical calculus, it’s not a situation any campaign thirsts to be in. source
If this is something young women look at and say, ‘I can do this,’ I think, ‘Absolutely, you can do this,’ I am all for that. But I think, first, I am a journalist, and this is just an amazing opportunity as a journalist…. And I am a girl.CNN host Candy Crowley • Regarding her chance to host the second of three presidential debates later this fall — a big deal because she’s the first woman to do so since the 1992 elections. ABC’s Martha Raddatz will also moderate the lone vice-presidential debate.
The stage is set! Pretty soon we’ll be knee-deep in Republican primary politics! We hope you’re as excited as we are. Fox News has been fielding questions for the candidates online, and they reported a few minutes ago that Rick Perry is the candidate people most want to ask so far. Dana Perino will be turning it over to the debate within minutes.
Check out DC Decoder for more coverage of the Google/Fox News GOP presidential debate!
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