Before it recedes entirely into the rearview mirror, it’s worth one last look at CNBC’s debate debacle (debatacle?) which was, as my buddy Michael Graham put it, a trainwreck into a dumpster fire.
If you watched the debate then you know how bad the CNBC moderators were: They exhibited the rare triple-dip of partisanship and nastiness, smothered with incompetence. In the hours immediately following the debate, this fact was (almost) universally acknowledged, even on the left. Even by mainstream journalists. (But I repeat myself.)
But then the revisionism set in and two days later some people on the left started trying to excuse John Harwood & Co. by arguing that the CNBC crew’s only sin was not going after the Republican candidates hard enough.
Which is ridiculous. Because there’s a difference between asking smart, tough, probing questions and being biased, nasty, and incompetent.
How can you tell the difference? Turns out it’s pretty easy. Because Fox did it the first way and CNBC did it the latter.
I went through every question asked by Fox and CNBC’s moderators and the contrast is really striking. For your amusement, here are five of the questions posed by the moderators at the Fox debate on August 6 mixed with five of the questions from the CNBC debate on October 29. Try to figure out which debate each question is from:
(2) Moderator: I gotta ask you, you talked about your tax plan. You say that it would not increase the deficit because you’d cut taxes $10 trillion, and the economy . . . would take off like—hold on. Hold on. The economy would take off like a rocket ship. . . . I talked to economic advisors who have served presidents of both parties. They said that you have as much chance of cutting taxes that much without increasing the deficit as you would of flying away from that podium by flapping your arms around.
(3) Moderator: Governor Bush, you have insisted that you’re your own man. You say you have a life experience uniquely your own. Not your father’s, not your brother’s. But there are several opponents on this stage who get big-applause lines in early voting states with this line: quote, “the last thing the country needs is another Bush in the Oval Office.” So do you understand the real concern in this country about dynastic politics?
(4) Moderator: Senator Cruz, your colleague, Senator Paul, right there next to you, said a few months ago he agrees with you on a number of issues, but he says you do nothing to grow the party. He says you feed red meat to the base, but you don’t reach out to minorities. You have a toxic relationship with GOP leaders in Congress. You even called the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell a liar recently. How can you win in 2016 when you’re such a divisive figure?
(5) Moderator: Senator Cruz, Congressional Republicans, Democrats, and the White House are about to strike a compromise that would raise the debt limit, prevent a government shutdown, and calm financial markets that fear another Washington-created crisis is on the way. Does your opposition to it show that you’re not the kind of problem-solver American voters want?
(6) Moderator: Mr. Trump, you’ve done very well on this campaign so far by promising to build a wall and make another country pay for it. . . . Send 11 million people out of the country, cut taxes $10 trillion without increasing the deficit. . . . And make Americans better off because your greatness would replace the stupidity and incompetence of others. . . . Let’s be honest. Is this a comic book version of a Presidential campaign?
(7) Moderator: Senator Cruz, working women in this country still earn just 77 percent of what men earn. And I know that you’ve said you’ve been very sympathetic to our cause. But you’ve also said that the Democrats moved to try and change this political show of votes. I just wonder what you would do as President to try and help in this cause.
(8) Moderator: Dr. Carson, we know you as a physician. But we wanted to ask you about your involvement on some corporate boards, including Costco’s. Last year, a marketing study called the warehouse retailer the number one gay-friendly brand in America, partly because of its domestic partner benefits. Why would you serve on a company whose policies seem to run counter to your views on homosexuality?
(9) Moderator: Governor Huckabee, like Governor Walker, you have staked out strong positions on social issues. You favor a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. You favor a constitutional amendment banning abortions, except for the life of the mother. Millions of people in this country agree with you, but according to the polls, and again this an electability question, according to the polls, more people don’t, so how do you persuade enough Independents and Democrats to get elected in 2016?
(10) Moderator: Governor Kasich, You chose to expand Medicaid in your state, unlike several other governors on this stage tonight, and it is already over budget by some estimates costing taxpayers an additional $1.4 billion in just the first 18 months. You defended your Medicaid expansion by invoking God, saying to skeptics that when they arrive in heaven, Saint Peter isn’t going to ask them how small they’ve kept government, but what they have done for the poor. Why should Republican voters, who generally want to shrink government, believe that you won’t use your Saint Peter rationale to expand every government program?
Here are your answers:
(1) Fox
(2) CNBC
(3) Fox
(4) Fox
(5) CNBC
(6) CNBC
(7) CNBC
(8) CNBC
(9) Fox
(10) Fox
Honestly, if you didn’t score 100 percent on this, you should feel a twinge of shame, because these questions are radically dissimilar from one another. Not in how adversarial they are—every one of these questions is tough. The difference is in how they were presented and what biases and assumptions were baked into them.
So #1 was Megyn Kelly asking Ben Carson a hard question about whether he’s ready to be president based on his own statements. That’s pretty tough. Then look at #8, where Carl Quintanilla wanted to ask Carson about homosexuality, but couldn’t figure out how to do it except by making his involvement with Costco about homosexuality because some “marketing study” said that Costco is “the number one gay-friendly brand in America.”
What does that phrase even mean? That gay people like to buy things from Costco? That gay people like to work for Costco? That Costco courts gay consumers and/or employees? The answer, of course, is that this word salad doesn’t mean anything. It’s a meaningless pretext for a blunt, open-ended question that assumes, as a baseline, that Ben Carson hates gay people.
Or take #2 where the moderator in question is John Harwood and he references unnamed “economic advisors” who said that Trump’s economic plan has “as much chance of cutting taxes that much without increasing the deficit as you would of flying away from that podium by flapping your arms around.” Like Quick, Harwood doesn’t have a specific, pointed question. He has anonymous straw men standing in the middle of a non-question holding a sign that says “Repblican Is Stoopid.”
Look at #4 and #5, both questions to Cruz about basically the same thing. The Fox question takes something specific Cruz said about Mitch McConnell—calling him a “liar”—and says “how can you win in 2016 when you’re such a divisive figure?” The Fox moderator used evidence of Cruz’s divisiveness within the Republican party to ask a pointed, germane question about his ability to unite the party.
The CNBC version of, however, was predicated on a totally un-grounded assumption about what voters want: “does your opposition to [raising the debt limit] show that you’re not the kind of problem-solver American voters want?”
Do American voters want a “problem solver” right now? I’ve seen zero evidence of that. If anything, the polling in both parties suggests otherwise—both Democrat and Republican primary voters seem to be looking for someone to champion them in important ideological fights. That’s why decidedly non-pragmatists Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson are combining to capture more than 50 percent of all primary voters in polls. Who wants a “problem solver” are president? Becky Quick does, apparently.
Lots of the CNBC questions have these sorts of house assumptions built into them. Like #7, to Cruz, where Quick predicates her question on the entirely discredited notion that women are paid 77 cents on the dollar and says that he’s been “sympathetic to our cause.” Every one of those CNBC questions has a tell.
The Fox questions, on the other hand, are straightforward and specific. They’re adversarial and uncomfortable. But they’re also grounded in actual facts and not nebulous straw men or partisan assumptions. There’s a phrase to describe that sort of journalism . . . what is it again?
Oh, that’s right: Fair and balanced.
So don’t let the liberal revisionists fool you. CNBC ran a clinic on bad debate moderation. It had nothing to do with them “not being tough enough” and everything to do with their bias and incompetence.
Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
