International Public Radio
There was something refreshing about NPR’s Democratic Candidates’ Debate today. Without live images of the candidates, and without an audience, there was nothing to distract from what was actually said. I may have been imagining this, but it seemed that there was a less aggressive tone to the proceedings, with fewer verbal fisticuffs among the candidates. No bouquets were yet being passed from candidate to candidate, but overall there was a more civil atmosphere.
Credit either the moderate, tolerant sensibilities of NPR, or the possibility that the candidates were distracted by not having a camera to look Presidential in front of. Likewise they needed not worry that a “gotcha” moment would be captured on film and replayed ad nauseam on the cable networks.
Beyond this, NPR restricted discussion to only three topics during the two-hour debate: Iran/Iraq, China, and immigration. A sound bite, delivered in attack mode, was not well suited to this format.
The international emphasis throughout the debate was remarkable, and the Iran comments deserve separate discussion. The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which concluded that Iran stopped working on nuclear weapons in 2003, was an easy target. For Biden, it showed that the President was not “trustworthy,” since the NIE contradicted Bush’s earlier warnings that Iran was indeed working to develop nuclear weapons. For Hillary’s opponents, it was a chance to attack her Senate vote last September condemning Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, while Hillary defended her vote by asserting that Obama and Edwards had shared in a “very broadly based belief that [Iran] was pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
On the larger issue of what one should do about Iran, the group offered various versions of a “no” to “saber-rattling” and a “yes” to “aggressive diplomacy.”
Oddly, however, the more the candidates described the complexity of Iranian politics, and their “respectful” disagreements with each other over what mix of rhetoric, sanctions and diplomacy to pursue, the easier it was to have some sympathy for an Administration for which even this good news is now somehow a liability. After the intelligence mistakes concerning Iraq, and on-the-ground errors in the conduct of the war, it may hard for anyone to accept that good news intelligence might be fully reliable, or that the reduced violence on the ground might actually be the result of better tactics and policies on our part.