WASHINGTON: Before Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump even take to the debate stage Monday evening, there’s a debate over the debate.
Should the moderators serve as a truth squad — a version of the “Crowley effect” — for moderator Candy Crowley’s 2012 debate performance in which she corrected Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney? Or should they stick to asking questions and not intervene?
Debate veterans say it’s best for the questioners to stay on the sidelines — and let the two candidates do the sparring themselves.
“Fact checking is best handled outside the context of the moderator,” said Alan Schroeder, whose book, Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV, studied the history of the national events.
But he said, moderators should provide the candidates “every opportunity to call out each other’s inconsistencies and dubious statements.”
Chris Wallace of Fox News, who will moderate the third and final presidential debate on Oct. 19, said he wants the candidates — not the moderators — to call each other on falsehoods.
“That’s not my job. I do not believe it is my job to be a truth squad,” he told his own network. “It’s up to the other person to catch them on that.”
He wouldn’t rule out fact checking, but said moderators who inserted themselves risked turning a debate between two candidates into a news conference.
Trump doesn’t want a repeat of what Republican strategist Karl Rove calls the “Crowley effect.” That’s when Crowley, during a 2012 debate, corrected Romney’s claim that President Barack Obama had not immediately used the words “act of terror” to describe the consulate attack in Benghazi.
Clinton wants to avoid a situation like Matt Lauer’s decision not to challenge Trump during the Commander-in-Chief Forum earlier this month. Lauer remained silent when Trump said falsely that he had opposed the war in Iraq.
Clinton ally David Brock unsuccessfully called on the Commission on Presidential Debates to reconsider the choice of Wallace, citing his uninterest in fact checking and the fact that former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes is said to be advising Trump.
Trump has also questioned the impartiality of the moderators.
He inaccurately told Fox News this week that Lester Holt, who will moderate the first debate, is a Democrat. New York state voter registration documents show Holt has been a registered Republican in the state since 2003.
Veteran moderators say it’s the candidates’ role to pounce when their opponents twist the facts.
“The role of the moderator is to be a referee; it’s not to be a judge,” Bob Schieffer, who moderated debates in 2004, 2008 and 2012, said at a recent forum on presidential debates at the University of Notre Dame.
Still, Schieffer said moderators occasionally do need to step in, particularly because there is “so much distorted and totally false information out there.”