There is an old saying among lawyers that when your client is not guilty, fight the facts. When he or she is guilty, fight the law. Politicians have adopted that tactic in political debates. When they can’t cleanly answer a question, they attack the questioner.
CNBC moderators asked some legitimate questions that deserve forthright answers. But those questions were overshadowed by the cable news free-for-all tone that began with the opening question:
“What is your biggest weakness and what are you doing to address it?”
It is a silly question that won’t produce any insight. It is the kind of question employers ask college students. The typical answer is “I am too nice, I work too hard, I trust people too much, I don’t like to waste time.” The candidates gave similar answers. Instead ask something that focuses on the economy, on business, on trade policy. This is CNBC for goodness sake. How about:
“What is your single biggest and best idea to get the economy moving?”
Questions like this one CNBC asked of Rubio also give ammo to critics:
“Do you have the maturity and the wisdom to lead a $17 trillion economy?”
Closed-ended questions like that go nowhere. The answer from any candidate will be “yes” and the premise of the question sounds snarky. Here was another closed-ended question, this one from CNBC’s John Harwood that was more of a statement than a question:
John: “Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?”
Trump: “No, not a comic book, and it’s not a very nicely asked question the way you say that.”
Then Harwood kept up his interrogation, as if it was a cable talk show rather than a debate:
Harwood: “We’re at 60 seconds, but I gotta ask you, you talked about your tax plan. You say that it would not increase the deficit because you cut taxes $10 trillion in the economy would take off like…”
(CROSSTALK)
Harwood: “Hold on, hold on. The economy would take off like a rocket ship.”
Trump: “Right. Dynamically.”
Harwood: “I talked to economic advisers who have served presidents of both parties. They said that you have as chance of cutting taxes that much without increasing the deficit as you would of flying away from that podium by flapping your arms.”
Harwood might as well have said, “Mr. Trump, your ideas are a joke.” It was out of line. Moderators should ask questions, not focus the spotlight on their own clever lines.
Becky Quick also argued, most conspicuously during a back-and-forth with Ben Carson about his plan for a flat income tax. I highlighted parts of her questions that seem to me to say that she wanted everyone to know she had done some homework and that she didn’t agree with what Carson was proposing.
Quick: “Dr. Carson, let’s talk about taxes. You have a flat tax plan of 10 percent flat taxes, and — I’ve looked at it — and this is something that is very appealing to a lot of voters, but I’ve had a really tough time trying to make the math work on this.”
Carson: “Well, first of all, I didn’t say that the rate would be 10 percent. I used the tithing analogy.”
Quick: “I — I understand that, but if you — if you look at the numbers you probably have to get to 28.”
Carson: “The rate — the rate — the rate is gonna be much closer to 15 percent.”
Quick: “Fifteen percent still leaves you with a $1.1 trillion hole.”
Carson: “You also have to get rid of all the deductions and all the loopholes. You also have to some strategically cutting in several places. Remember, we have 645 federal agencies and sub-agencies. Anybody who tells me that we need every penny from every one of those is in a fantasy world. So, also, we can stimulate the economy. That’s gonna be the real growth engine. Stimulating the economy — because it’s tethered down right now with so many regulations…”
Quick: “You’d have to cut — you’d have to cut government about 40 percent to make it work with a $1.1 trillion hole.”
Carson: “That’s not true.”
Quick: “That is true, I looked at the numbers.”
Carson: “When — when we put all the facts down, you’ll be able to see that it’s not true, it works out very well.”
Quick:Â “Dr. Carson, thank you.”
Again, the exchange was much more like what we would expect to see in an argument with a CEO on CNBC than what viewers expect in a presidential debate. Quick was saying the leading Republican candidate for president is wrong and his tax plan won’t work.
Debates are also not the place for moderators to try to be funny. Carly Fiorina was trying to make her case for a dramatic simplification of the tax code:
Quintanilla: “You want to bring 70,000 pages to three?”
Fiorina: “That’s right, three pages.”
Quintanilla: “Is that using really small type?”
Fiorina: “You know why three?”
Quintanilla: “Is that using really small type?”
The two questions that the moderators asked that sparked off the candidate feeding frenzy are worthy of examination:
Quintanilla: “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 of — 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?”
Cruz:Â “You know, let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media…
(Applause)
“This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ ‘How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?'”
Of course Cruz was not quoting actual questions the moderators asked. But by then, the partisan crowd was ready to jump on the journalists and the journalists had given plenty of reasons to do so.
Donald Trump also played the “attack the questioner” game with moderator Quick:
Quick: “You have talked a little bit about Marco Rubio. I think you called him [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator, because he was in favor of the H-1B visa.”
Trump: “I never said that. I never said that.”
Quick: “So this is an erroneous article the whole way around? … My apologies, I’m sorry.”
Trump: “Somebody’s really doing some bad fact-checking.”
But Quick was too quick to apologize, and it was Trump who needed to do some fact-checking. Trump did say exactly what Quick thought he said, right on his own website’s policy page.
Some of the moderators’ questions drew the candidates into some useful exchanges. Fiorina got a chance to explain why she was fired from her Hewlett-Packard CEO job, and how she saw her track record there. It was a good topic for a CNBC debate.
The moderators raised the question of whether the federal government should regulate drug prices but backed away from this critical seldom explored topic too fast. It would have illuminated candidate notions about free-market pricing and the role of government regulation.
The candidates laughed off the question about whether the government should regulate fantasy football betting. But the question was not really about football — it was about what role the government should have in the lives of Americans. But there was a feeding frenzy underway, and CNBC was the meal. So candidates just ignored debate rules and the questions being asked of them.
When Quintanilla asked Carson about his decade-long involvement giving speeches for nutritional supplement maker Mannatech, which has been in legal trouble for claims it has made about its products, Carson allowed the audience to come to his rescue and shout down the questioning. Mannatech has paid $7 million in settlements over claims that its products could cure cancer and autism. Carson is a physician, but he didn’t have to answer the questions that have been the subject of serious media reports because CNBC’s lack of credibility and fairness were now the prominent debate narrative.
And that’s the key lesson journalists can learn from CNBC’s bruising experience. Presidential debates should not be a venue for news organizations to show off their anchors’ wit. In fact, if the anchors make news at all, it’s probably because the debate became more about them than the candidates.
PBS anchor Jim Lehrer, who anchored 12 national presidential and vice presidential debates, explained his philosophy on The Brian Lehrer Show in 2012. “I was not there to question people,” he said. “I was there to allow the candidates to question each other.” Isn’t that what debates should be about? To allow candidates to debate? Not for journalists to debate with candidates?
Debates are not interviews. In fact, I don’t know why we don’t just tell the candidates the questions we want them to answer before the debate. Tell them to come prepared with detailed answers that will be tested. Why should a debate question be a surprise? Isn’t the main function of a debate supposed to be to get to know the candidates?
The biggest problem with the CNBC debate is that the biggest disputes weren’t between the candidates — they were between the moderators and the candidates.
