Moderator Under Scrutiny Before Debate

“In a rare example of political unity, both the Romney and Obama campaigns have expressed concern to the Commission on Presidential Debates about how the moderator of the Tuesday town hall has publicly described her role,” Mark Halperin reports.

“While an early October memorandum of understanding between the Obama and Romney campaigns and the bipartisan commission sponsoring the debates suggests CNN’s Candy Crowley would play a limited role in the Tuesday-night session, Crowley, who is not a party to that agreement, has done a series of interviews on her network in which she has suggested she will assume a broader set of responsibilities. As Crowley put it last week, ‘Once the table is kind of set by the town-hall questioner, there is then time for me to say, ‘Hey, wait a second, what about X, Y, Z?””

“In the view of both campaigns and the commission, those and other recent
comments by Crowley conflict with the language the two campaigns agreed
to, which delineates a more limited role for the moderator of the
town-hall debate. The questioning of the two candidates is supposed to
be driven by the audience members themselves — likely voters selected by
the Gallup Organization.”

National Journal: “Obama’s biggest problem tomorrow night isn’t Romney. It’s the debate’s format, which couldn’t be more difficult for an incumbent mounting a comeback.”