You didn't ask me, but I have one more thought about last night's VP Debate.I thought Gwen Ifill was Awful. I don't know why this supremely qualified journalist appeared so ill-at-ease asking tough follow-up questions and calling out both candidates for failing to actually answer questions.
Ifill's moderation actually facilitated Sarah Palin's rote repetition of talking points. It turned what was supposed to be a serious debate of issues into a long drawn-out series of campaign jargon and non sequiturs.
As Cenk Uygur argues in his Huffington Post article,
"That's not a debate; that's a boring, fairly useless, series of mini-speeches. If you don't probe beyond the initial non-answer, you are simply not doing your job. That's a disservice to the American people who came to find out if these people know what they're talking about and what their real plans for the country are."
It's a shame. I expected much more journalistic inquiry on Ifill's part.
Turns out that Katie Couric is still the reigning champ of asking tough questions of VP candidates.
