Ifill Book Public Weeks Before McCain Agreed To Have Her Moderate VP Debate

The McCain camp is claiming it didn't know about Gwen Ifill's book prior to agreeing to her as moderator for the VP debate:

I confirmed for us here on GretaWire: the McCain campaign did NOT know about Gwen Ifill's book (I think I told them when I made my efforts - emails about midnight -  to find out!) I am stunned....the campaign (actually both) should have been told before the campaign agreed to have her moderate. It simply is not fair - in law, this would create a mistrial.

If that's true, it just shows the McCain campaign's incompetence. The debate moderators were agreed to on August 6. Ifill's book was reported in the Associated Press two weeks earlier:

"We have an awkward history about how to talk about race in the nation and in newsrooms," says Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for PBS' "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and author of "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," slated for publication early next year.

Of course, when you have Drudge on your side the facts don't matter much.

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Comments

[janart7]

Tell me I am not alone in the feeling that the McCain camp has caught the "War Hero" virus from John and now they are passing paranoia flu on to the rest of us through media ratings madness...
..........sometimes a debate is just a debate...except when you are dealing with Rovian psychobabble!

[certainot]

how could we expect any patriotic american to be an unbiased moderator considering the prospect of a president palin. republicans naturally put the motive at dollars, and the GOP talk radi machine has made that job 2, right after blaming obama and the liberals for the economic disaster.

[DrDemon]

WHATEVER with the McCain campaign!

They are totally incompetent...and their incompetence did not just begin recently.

Of course they will attempt to deflect that very said incompetence by trying to blame the dumb-ass answers, that will come out of Palin's mouth, on Ifill's questions. That's a given!

They are not only empty suits; but empty dresses too! (Oh, so now that's sexist?)

[Ofactor]

I am sorry I do not think that this should be an issue especially since she told them about this from the start. I also read that the book is not about Obama but about race and the way that it has effected and changed this election. In a way I wish that they would just let someone else do it because I do not want the Mccain campaigne to have any reason to cry foul.

They will try to make that apart of the headline if Palin F's up and she will. I do not want them trying to say that it was Gwen.

[azeb]

Gwen Ifill might end up helping the McCain campaign by refraining herself from asking hard questions to look fair in the eyes of the loosing republicans,let some body step in and ask the right questions.

[DrDemon]

I doubt it!

Ifill is, by no means, a phony and therefore I believe she will doctor-up NOTHING for ANYONE!

[dkerrice2861]

Due to our incompetence, we will have to cancel the debate!! LOL

[DrDemon]

Signed:

The McCain/Palin Campaign! Grrr...

[Whinger]

Ah! So, if the result's not to our liking we can blame the moderator and call foul.

You have to give Karl credit, he really thinks things thru, clever guy like that should be President.

[woodchips]

Maybe they'd like Karl to be the moderator. I suspect that even if he was, she might still end up tanking.

[shacon]

What is hell is wrong with these people's thinking, that she would favor Obama because both are black. With that thinking why would not Gwen favor Palin. They are both women?

It is another chance to covertly induce racism into mix of things. Sickening !!!

[DrDemon]

E*X*A*C*T*L*Y !!

[CaliTLC]

Has John McCain and his soon to be seeking other employment staff ever heard of a little well known internet search engine called something that sounds like boogle - {{{{GOOGLE}}}}? It is really simple Johnnie and staff - just type in someone's name like Gwen Ifill, just to grab a name out of a hat, and voila - you get lots of information about her. The same search engine works real well for another by the name of Sarah Palin. Too bad you guys never bothered to figure out how to use it. Now, shut the eff up and let's debate. Stop crying. There's no crying in presidential campaigns.

[jerseymaiden]

Here we go with the Rove tactics -- AP has a story up on Yahoo! News already, "Debate Monderator's Neutrality Questioned" -- not good.

[cyclewerker]

I am copying the following directly from fivethirtyeight.com...I think this is a brilliant argument...

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Like Andrew Sullivan, I think that the Obama campaign has little to lose and everything to gain by encouraging the CPD to have Gwen Ifill to pull out of moderating the VP debate.

It's not that the right's critique isn't utterly transparent, but media backlash was one of the principal dynamics in motivating the Palin bounce in the first place.

But there's another factor here too. In preparing for a debate, you are often preparing nearly as much for the "judge" or moderator as for the opponent. Both campaigns probably have a pretty good idea of what types of questions she is likely to ask, how he is likely to ask them. Palin and Biden have undoubtedly watched videotapes of Ifill moderating the 2004 debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney.

By changing the moderator, you're throwing everyone a curveball, and catering to the candidate who is better able to adapt on the fly. Which, most likely, is not going to be Sarah Palin.

[zg1968]

So they assume Gwen is in the tank for Obama???? Maybe she's in the tank for Palin because she's a woman. This whole discussion is ridiculous. Gwen Ifill is a respected journalist. McCain could have picked any person he wanted as VP and he chose Palin. Now he has to live with the consequences of his decision. Palin is going to get smoked like a moose burger tomorrow night and McCain has no one to blame but himself.

[demjustice]

If anyone out there did not think that the McCain campaign would not have found a concern regarding the vp debate, they were kidding themselves. The McCain campaign is all about distract and attack and this was to be expected. But it will be the answers and not the questions that will determine what the voters take away from the debate. Gov. Palin will do an adequate job - the bar is set so low that she cannot not exceed expections. The question on my mind is what she has to say - will she just go off saying certain catchphrases or will she demonstrate that she can have an educated discussion about serious issues. Time will tell.

[ladyv]

Well, they failed in their attempt to get the VP debate canceled entirely, so this is all they have left.

[DASChicago]

Did they know choose Gwen as moderator before picking Palin? Does anyone know?

BTW, Mccain & camp are the loud and frequent (Nation) of whiners, Gramm told everyone about.

[2876]

Yes, I heard it on Countdown with Keith Olberman

[JulieSA]

ifill didn't inform the Commission on Presidential Debates about her book. She should have recused herself. Her reputation is damaged, and she's shown that she can't be trusted.

McCain's campaign made the mistake of trusting the CPD. Now the CPD's rep is damaged as well..