Politico

Fallows wallows in debates

August 19th, 2008 · No Comments

The Atlantic’s James Fallows was in China for the primaries, and missed all the action in real-time. So to catch up, he just watched all 47 Democratic and Republican primaries (and Obama’s 2004 debates with Alan Keyes) straight through, in order to get a sense of how the three upcoming presidential debates might play out.

Fallows writes quite a bit about the debating styles of Obama and McCain, while also paying attention to the 40-plus moderators, too.

Fallows found local reporters and those from NPR and PBS to be the "most respectful." Wolf Blitzer was "the most intrusive and self-aggrandizing," yet his CNN colleague Anderson Cooper showed a "nice combination of assertiveness and good-humored restraint." Brian Williams kept control while asking a lots of "meaty" questions. As for the late Tim Russert, Fallows described his "questioning mode" as "mostly unfortunate."

And what about the most controversial debate of the cycle?

Continue reading post…