Will Bob Schieffer actually moderate a real debate?

by Joel Keller

CBS

Bob Schieffer is used to wrangling politicians as the moderator of CBS’s Face the Nation. So maybe he thinks that he has a better handle on what people who watch the presidential debates want to hear. It sure seems that way, as he’s determined to moderate a debate that’s actually informative and interesting; something that, mostly for format reasons, neither Jim Lehrer nor Tom Brokaw could provide.

He wants a “freewheeling” debate, he tells David Bianculli of Broadcasting & Cable. “They’ll each have two minutes to answer, then I’ll try to encourage them to question one another. I’m going to do my very best to keep them on track. And if they try and get off track, I’m not going to be bashful about saying, ‘Gentlemen, that was not the question,'” he says. The intimacy of the format, in which Schieffer will sit at a desk with Senators McCain and Obama, should lend itself to more conversation and less bloviation, and he will use that to his advantage. Heck, he cited that intimacy, among other things, to his CBS colleague Jeff Greenfield, who wrote about Schieffer’s methods at Slate.com.

But, let’s get real here; if Lehrer and Brokaw couldn’t get real answers out of the candidates, how is Schieffer going to do it?

These guys are prepped to death, trained to start spewing talking points if they get stuck for an answer. And the campaigns have negotiated the rules down to the minutest detail, pretty much taking the whims of the moderator out of the equation. Think back to last week’s “Town Hall that wasn’t really a Town Hall” debate: Brokaw, hamstrung by the two-minute response and one-minute discussion format, and the idea of using questions from the crowd and from e-mail, still managed to throw in some of his own questions. And the debate was a boring disaster, mainly because the senators wanted to spew (remember, Brokaw had a hell of a time trying to corral their speechifying, constantly citing that they were breaking the rules that were agreed to).

Was Brokaw too deferential? Perhaps. Schieffer said he “felt sorry” for Brokaw because of the format, but by saying he’d follow up and reign the candidates in, he’s implying that the other two moderators didn’t. But if McCain, for instance, decides to not look at Obama, even though he’s only sitting two feet away from him, is Schieffer really going to demand eye contact? I doubt it.

If it were up to Schieffer, the debate would be closer to the fictional Vinick-Santos debate on the final year of The West Wing, when the candidates threw out the format and just debated the issues. I remember watching that episode, and I thought it was one of the best debates I’ve ever seen. But, then again, it was a debate where the candidates had their words written for them by the show’s writers. And, oh by the way, the candidates happened to be played by talented actors (Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits); Obama and McCain are both smart guys, but they’d never throw the rules out and wing it without a net.

I really hope tomorrow night’s debate is substantive; there’s too much going on, especially with the economy being such an all-encompassing topic these days, for yet another talking-point-filled conversation (oh, and as Brian Williams said tonight, congrats to all US taxpayers; we’re all now the proud part-owners of most of the major banks in this country). I just don’t think that the format is going to allow Schieffer to do what he wants to do.