The Young Turks

Cenk asked during yesterday's show whether ABC's Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were part of the [vast right-wing] conspiracy or just simply stupid.

My vote? They're unwitting conspirators. In other words, they're guilty on both charges.

George Stephanopoulos unapologetically sought to justify the prevalence of trivial gotcha questions in the debate by arguing that he and his colleague had done the eventual Democratic nominee (i.e. Sen. Obama) a favour by (once more) bringing up a littany of swiftboat-style trivia the Republicans were bound to use as crude ammo in the general election.  

Stephanopoulos thus considered the "enhanced interrogation technique" he used in the PA debate an outflanking maneuvre or preemptive strike against such ingenious distractions.

Stephanopoulos and Gibson thus grossly overestimated their role and saw themselves as players shaping the game rather than unwitting pawns to dispicable and cynical political hackery. Yet they were too clever by half and clearly outwitted by Hannity & Co.

Their "Preemptive Swiftboating Doctrine" simply doesn't work as by dragging such trivial attacks onto centre-stage of the national discourse only gives these further impetus and gives such whacky charges an illusion of legitimacy.

Swiftboating amounts to the 21st century's renaissance of the Spanish Inquisition. The assailed party is put into an impossible position and has already lost by being made subject of such charges.

This is because Republican operatives of the Lee Attwater School of Partisan Hackery follow the maxim of "Anything Goes".

In a normal political culture such unrestrained partisanship is kept within bounds by a common recognition of rules, an unwritten ethical code and the media serving as a watchdog.

Yet that media has turned itself into a lapdog. Stephanopoulos doing Hannity's bidding in the mistaken belief doing so defuses a particular swiftboat attack betrays the vanity of celebrity journalists and the utter abdication of journalistic ethics.

Stephanopoulos believed that besides scoring higher ratings and the odd headline, he could usurp the "vast right-wing conspiracy's" agenda with his own.

I believe this points to a wider systemic failure of America's commercial cable/network news industry. Profit interests supersede journalistic standards and integrity.

Considering how important these debates are for the wider political discourse, I believe non-partisan civic organisations like the League of Women Voters (as  they used to) or the Citizens' Debate Commission ought to run these debates.

It's deplorable that TV broadcasters have in recent decades become the primary debate sponsors. This has made such a travesty of a debate like we saw this week possible.

It's time to take back the country. And a better debate sponsorship system would be one important step in doing so.