After hatchet job on Reagan, will Schieffer pull a Crowley during final presidential debate?
Monday, October 22, 2012 at 4:31PM 
Photo of Schieffer: U.S. Air Force /Master Sgt. Scott WagersBlogs are abuzz over the final presidential debate in Boca Raton (Fla.) on Monday, and the question on everyone’s mine is predictable.
Will moderator Bob Schieffer pull a Crowley?
In the second presidential debate, a skewed townhall affair with more than one banal question, the moderator Candy Crowley threw President Barack Obama a lifeline so strong he could’ve climbed a mountain with it.
Crowley’s intrusion was obvious to anyone who knew the facts about misstatements the Obama administration has made about attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, but she got off relatively lightly because most big media skew Democrat.
That’s not new, by the way. In President Ronald Reagan’s diaries, he mentions various reporters and networks. Reagan knew he was getting a sour deal and he wrote about it.
In April, 1982, CBS aired a documentary by Bill Moyers who featured 4 cases of poverty and illness they blamed Reagan’s economic policies for. Reagan said the commentary “was a thoroughly dishonest demagogic, cheap shot.”
In December, 1986, Reagan wrote about presenting service medals to the Voyager crew. The aircraft had completed the first flight around the world without a stop two days before Christmas. Reagan wrote:
CBS ran the medal presentation & declared I did it to divert attention from Iran.
Can a media personality from Alphabet Networks be fair to a Republican? We’ll know tonight whether history will change its course.
Topics for the debate are posted at the Commission on Presidential Debates. They may cover U.S. sovereignty during a discussion of “America’s role in the world,” but it’s not likely.
Most media are clueless about the war on U.S. sovereignty, although assaults are well documented at United Nations and other political organizations’ websites as well as in numerous records posted at U.S. government agencies.
None of the moderators have been very well-informed about foreign or domestic policy. Most media take talking points from candidates, fact check with think tank opinions and go with the story. Sadly, most Americans are uninformed about what our federal government actually does—one reason we are in the mess we’re in right now.
Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin and others have already criticized Schieffer for good reason. He did a hatchet job on Reagan in one of his books and later admitted the book was “not entirely true”—a commonality Schieffer shares with President Barack Obama whose memoir contained some fictional “composite” characters.
Tonight, we’ll be listening to the governor many of us hope will be the next president.
You can bet we’ll be watching Schieffer closely.
Maybe the CBS staffer can ask Obama which hurts less. Waterboarding or droning?
TUSR will be on Twitter during the debate; follow @TheUSReport.
(Commentary by Kay B. Day/Oct. 22, 2012)