The VP Debate: The Bold And The Beautiful

St. Louis, MO - I was so tempted yesterday, watching the cable news networks from my parents' house here in St. Louis, to go all the way down Clayton road to Washington University and join in on the traveling circus that has become the 2008 Presidential Debate Coverage.

I was tempted to do this not because I wanted to get a glimpse of high-profile political figures or celebrity journalists — no, not to get a glimpse of them — but to walk onto their make-shift sets and smack them in the face.

I, for one, was sick after hearing this incessantly repeated notion that all Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin had to do last night was meet a certain level of expectations; cross a bar that, thanks to those hard-hitting network media figures, was practically rolling across the Wash U Quad and up onto the stage of the Graham Chapel, Palin kicking it along with a wink and a smile.

The biggest beef I had yesterday with the cable networks was their insistence that this lowered bar existed. Don’t they get it? They are the ones who are lowering the bar; the bar is theirs to lower, they are allowing it to be lowered. How else can I say it?

Sure, I understand that they think they were merely addressing Palin’s public perception following those atrocious, and now infamous, interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric that preceded Thursday night’s debate, but the news media forgot one thing: their job is to inform the public, not let the public inform them.

Let the public think what they want to think; do your jobs as journalists, or risk doing one of the greatest disservices to your country possible by generating a characterized and overwhelmingly false image of a vice presidential candidate.