Following Wednesday’s GOP primary debate in which mean CNBC moderators asked him questions that required him to do math or lie about that decade he shilled for quack cancer cures, Dr. Ben Carson decided he’s had enough of biased reporters who want him to answer their questions instead of asking the questions he’d prefer to answer. And by golly, he seems to have sparked a revolt of several other GOP campaigns against the Republican National Committee and TV networks. At a Thursday press conference in Lakewood, Colorado, Carson called on all the other Republican presidential campaigns to join him in demanding that all debate questions be slow-pitch softballs, right over the plate, for the sake of fairness: “Debates are supposed to be established to help the people get to know the candidate,” Carson said at a news conference before a speech at Colorado Christian University. “What it’s turned into is — gotcha! That’s silly. That’s not helpful to anybody.”
When a politician gets upset with a debate moderator for asking tough- or, Hell, even minimally challenging- questions, a reasonable person might find themselves wondering what such a greedy, sensitive power-seeker might be afraid of. No one expects a Republican Presidential candidate (or a Democratic one, for that matter) to be able to recite from memory the name of the President of Uzbekibekibekistan. That said, it’s most certainly NOT unreasonable to expect a candidate to be able to handle tough policy questions…or even probing challenges regarding the past- behavior, business dealings, or anything else that might be deemed relevant to their qualifications to be President. Granted, some questions might not be appreciated, but if you’re on the stage at a Presidential debate you’re not interviewing to manage a Dairy Queen. You’re trying to demonstrate why you’re the most qualified to be sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office. You’re interviewing for the most powerful job in the world; put you big boy (or girl) panties on.
Political debates are normally only useful if you have a predilection for political theater or self-abuse. Little if any useful information emerges from a rhetorical dog-and-pony show, not that anyone with a working knowledge of the political process expects anything but bromides and broad, abstract, largely meaningless pronouncements, few of which will survive being fact-checked. For Ben Carson to complain about in effect not being served up softball questions designed to make him look good runs counter to the idea that debates must at least look the part of an actual meaningful political exercise. Failing that, all that’s left is just so much verbal projectile vomit and mental masturbation.
The idea that Republican candidates are thinking they can get away with demanding control of questions asked at a debate is patently offensive…at least to the handful of deluded observers who for whatever reason take these things seriously. Carson’s worried about “gotcha” questions? His entitled attitude might have some basis in reality…if the journalist who moderate debates actually had the intiative and cojones to act like journalists.
That the GOP suspended NBC from orchestrating a GOP debate in February shows just how much the inmates believe they ought to be able to rule the asylum. If Republicans don’t like the questions asked of them, they’ll just find someone (read: Faux Noise Channel) willing to lob softballs at their candidates.
Carson seems to expect that the media will give him a free pass because…well, because he’s Ben Carson. Anyone with the temerity to ask tough questions of Dr. Carson is simply engaging in “gotcha” journalism. And if Carson can’t pick and choose the questions he’s willing to answer, that’s just because the Liberal Media is persecuting him for being a Conservative African-American.
Or it could just be that the media wants to find out how it is that a brain surgeon can be so unbelievably intellectually and morally vacant. It’s not as if he actually has anything of value to offer America, except perhaps a devotion to comparing things he disapproves of to Nazi Germany. How very Presidential….
