The Debate That Wasn't

This morning the Today Show opened with a story about last night's debate of Republican presidential candidates. The election is still over a year away and these debates have been going on for over six months now. I cannot believe anybody is actually watching them with the idea of deciding who to vote for. Any blogger who writes about these snore fests has long ago made his choice. He is watching it the same way you watch a football game, cheering his favorite on to victory and eagerly pointing out the other guy's stumbles.

So why cover this one so pointedly? Well it was being held at historically black Morgan State University and the BIG story according to NBC was not who was there but who wasn't. The four front runners (Romney, Guliani, McCain and Fred Thompson) claimed scheduling conflicts and were no shows. I have to admit, I don't really understand why. It does seem highly unlikely that they all had engagements that they couldn't break, especially when it offered an opportunity to hog the spotlight as the only front runner to show up. Of course the angle NBC took was that it was a clear sign of racism within the GOP.

But what was funny was that they kept pointing out that the other candidates would reap tremendous advantage because those guys weren't there and now the also-rans would get all the ink. They then failed to even mention by name the guys who were going to get all that good ink. They showed them criticizing the no-shows but they didn't even identify the speakers, and trust me there aren't that many people who could pick Mike Huckabee out of a line up. Meanwhile the front runners were named again and again as being the guys who would pay the price. As for the actual content of the debate, your guess is as good as mine because there was not one clip shown. Not a word was spoken about an issue. There wasn't even the concept of an issue.

They also gave stern warnings that this was going to be seen as a slight to the black community and would cost them big time in the general election. Aside from the fact that Democrats already get over 90% of the black vote, it's always annoying to hear your opponents express deep concern over your welfare. So it's really hard to watch the likes of Meredith Viera, Matt Lauer and Tim Russert wringing their hands and shaking their heads over the problems the GOP is facing in 2008 when you know as soon as the camera is off, they will more likely be punching their fists in the air ala Tiger Woods.

And it's understandable that the press would react that way, because after all this is the very first time that candidates chose to snub a presidential debate being snonsored by a respected black institution, as long as you don't count the one sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus that Hillary, Obamba, Edwards and Richardson ditched.