For a neutral debate moderator, Charles Gibson is amazingly good at spewing the Republican Party line.
He spends 15 minutes of the debate on the worst problem that America faces which he claims is that of a nuclear bomb exploding in this country. Then in the next 15 minutes he chides all the candidates for not agreeing that the surge is working and that we should spend more effort in Iraq. He makes no connection to the fact that this would undermine our efforts to concentrate on what he just said was the biggest problem America faced.
Of course no one on the panel connected our concentration on Iraq instead of Afghanistan to the troubles in Pakistan. What about the fact that Turkey is now attacking the Kurds in northern Iraq. Perhaps our surge has just shifted the theater of battle to someplace else. So if the surge was so good, why is the overall situation on the verge of collapse. Those nuclear bombs exploding in our cities might very well come from Pakistan because the situation there went out of control.
It’s like George Bush put a big thumb in the middle of a bowl of Jello. Everyone notices that there is now a big depression where he put his thumb. Pay no attention to the mountain of Jello rising behind you.
Later the questioners state that two-thirds of the economy has been driven by consumer spending. They want to know what the candidates are going to do to help the consumer. When the candidates say they will give tax breaks to the middle class and pay for those breaks by taking away some of the breaks for the wealthy, Gibson starts spewing out a defense of rich people’s tax breaks. Did he not remember that the conversation started when he and his cohort brought up the need for consumer spending? It is very well known that the rich are more able to set aside some of their wealth in savings and investment instead of spending it than are the people who are struggling to pay the mortgage and the credit card bill. If you need to stimulate consumption, then you need to give the tax breaks to the people most likely to spend it.
Of course there was the old saw about when Clinton was President nothing was different. For a news anchor, Charles Gibson is mighty ignorant of the news going on around him. I guess huge deficits to huge surpluses and back again is no difference. I suppose recession to boom and back to recession is no difference. I guess going from being respected in the world as upholder of human rights to being a world supporter of torture is no difference. I suppose even Ralph Nader couldn’t tell the difference between Al Gore’s support of the environment and George Bush’s. So Gibson is in good company there.
The candidates certainly failed to get their message through to Charles Gibson if he still thinks nothing has gone wrong since George Bush took office.
