At the risk of having my membership card in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy revoked, I have to dissent from the widespread condemnation in the conservative blogosphere—including by John Podhoretz—of CNN over its handling of last week’s Republican presidential debate.
CNN no doubt erred, as it now admits, by not disclosing the Clinton campaign affiliation of retired general Keith Herr, who posed a videotaped question about gays in the military and followed up with a live harangue on the subject. But it’s not as if all the questions were from liberals. The questioners included conservative gadfly Grover Norquist and at least two gun-rights advocates. There is no doubt that some of the other questioners, for instance those who asked about abortion, came from a liberal perspective, but so what? Any Republican nominee worth his salt has to be ready to deal with snarky questions from liberals—that’s about all he’ll get from the press corps. So it’s good for the contenders to show a national TV audience how well they perform.
What I liked most were some of the off-beat questions—precisely those that pundits sneer at the most but that have the greatest potential to move candidates off scripted answers. For instance, I liked the guy who asked Ron Paul about his views on conspiracy theories linking my employer, the Council on Foreign Relations, to a supposed plot to build a superhighway across North America that will destroy American sovereignty. (Paul’s answer was to dissent from the charge of “conspiracy” while backing the essence of the conspiracy theory.) I liked the guy who asked the candidates to tell us how many guns they own and what their favorite is; John McCain answered that effectively by referring to the time when he used to carry a .45 as a Navy pilot. And I liked the guy who asked Rudy Giuliani whether he was taking advantage of 9/11 to win the presidency; that gave Giuliani an opportunity for a cogent and impressive comeback. I even liked the oddball who sang a song about the candidates at the beginning. While not exactly great art, it was goofy and somewhat endearing.
I had initially planned to watch only the first 30 minutes of the debate while riding an exercise bicycle in a hotel gym. But the show had me hooked so I kept peddling and watched over an hour’s worth at the gym, and then caught much of the rest of it back in my hotel room. It was no Lincoln-Douglas debate, but it was certainly an entertaining window onto the presidential race. I don’t think CNN deserves all the vilification it’s getting.
A Response to Andrew Sullivan
In my article “The Case for Bombing Iran” (COMMENTARY, June 2007), in my book World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, and in various public appearances (including a televised debate with Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek), I quoted the Ayatollah Khomeini as having said the following:
My source for this statement was Amir Taheri, the prolific Iranian-born journalist now living in London, who has also contributed a number of articles to COMMENTARY. Now, however, the Economist, relying on another Iranian-born writer, Shaul Bakhash of George Mason University, has alleged on its blog “Democracy in America” that Khomeini never said any such thing. “Someone,” says Mr. Bakhash, “should inform Mr. Podhoretz he is citing a non-existent statement.”
That “someone” has turned out to be Andrew Sullivan in his widely read blog, “The Daily Dish.” Linking to the Economist post, Sullivan accuses me of intellectual dishonesty for failing to admit that I have made an “error” in relying on a “bogus quotation” to bolster my argument that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, it would not be deterred from using them by the fear of retaliation.
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