King in no-win situation at GOP debate

King in no-win situation at GOP debate

Did CNN moderator John King cross the line Thursday night when he opened the Republican presidential debate with a question to Newt Gingrich about allegations his second wife has made claiming he wanted an "open marriage?"

The crowd in South Carolina seemed to think so. Especially after Gingrich deftly turned the question into an attack on the "liberal media." Of course, getting a conservative crowd to lustily cheer the dressing down of a member of the "media elite" is no more difficult than shooting fish in a barrel.

My sense is that King was in a no-win situation. The allegations by Marianne Gingrich were the top political story of the day, even after Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the race earlier that morning and endorsed Gingrich. It's a sad fact of life that a sex scandal, even the whiff of a sex scandal, will overshadow all other news of the day. I wish that weren't so, but it is.

If King had not asked the question, I suspect he would have been accused by the other candidates, or their campaigns, of ducking the issue.

Some, including Gingrich, complained that it was the first question of the debate. I'm nor buying it. I've taken too many calls complaining about a story somebody didn't like that ran on the front page.

"Would it have been OK if we had run the exact same story on Page 5?" I'd ask. Almost always, the answer was no.

If the question was inappropriate, what difference does It make when it was asked? Would it have been less inappropriate if asked in the middle of the debate or at the end?

There is a legitimate argument to be made that at least some of the moderators in what has been a long string of fascinating debates have been more interested in exposing weaknesses and creating divisions among the GOP candidates that can later be exploited by President Barack Obama in the general election than in helping Republican voters decide which candidate best represents their values. George Stephanopoulos probably fits into that category.

I'm not sure that King does.

Debate questions should be tough. I've had the opportunity to participate in a couple of debates, including the Las Cruces mayoral debate last October. My goal was always to ask challenging questions that could not be answered by falling back on worn-out talking points.

I was also keenly aware that the questions for Candidate A needed to be just as tough as the ones for Candidate B. It didn't matter how I felt personally about either one.

Hunter S. Thompson once observed that the only truly objective journalism to be found in any newspaper is the sports box scores and the stock market tabulations. There's probably some truth to that.

All of us have biases. That does not mean we're incapable of suppressing those biases and being fair to both sides. Would King have asked the same question had the allegations been made by the ex-wife of a Democratic candidate? And, is the topic of someone's past sex life fair game in a presidential debate? I don't know.

I'm not what is commonly referred to as a "values voter." Sure, I've got a line as to what conduct would disqualify a candidate from ever getting my vote. An example would be anyone with a proven history of child abuse or domestic violence. For dog lover Bill Varuola, Mitt Romney's Clark Griswold-like stunt of strapping the family dog in a carrying case on top of the car for the family vacation was a disqualifying act.

But, what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom does not factor into who gets my vote.

I suspect that some of the people jeering the loudest Thursday night are the same people who care the most about that kind of stuff.

Walter Rubel has been a newsman for more than 25 years and is managing editor of the Sun-News. He can be reached at wrubel@lcsun-news.com.