Despite criticism, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos defended his performance in last night’s Democratic debate, which he co-moderated with Charles Gibson. “We asked tough but appropriate questions,” Stephanopoulos told me by phone this afternoon. When I asked whether questions about flag pins or Bosnia are actually relevant to voters, he replied: “Absolutely.”
“The vote for the president,” Stephanopoulos said, “is one of the most personal” decisions that someone makes. “When people make that choice, they take into account how candidates stand on the issues,” he said, but also are concerned with “experience, character [and] credibility.”
“You can’t find a presidential election where those issues didn’t come into play,” he said.
Stephanopoulos explained that since the candidates are not far apart policy-wise, the “core of the nomination fight” has been about these issues. “They’ve been fighting it out on this turf,” he said, adding that these are things that “came up between this debate and the last one.”
This morning, websites like The Huffington Post provided multiple attacks on the debate moderators (The Gotcha Debate), and I asked Stephanopoulos for his reaction to one specific piece of criticism — that of Washington Post critic Tom Shales calling the moderator’s performances “shoddy” and “despicable.”
“I think it just comes with the territory,” Stephanopoulos replied, adding, “I think you’re going to find a wide range of opinions.”
“This is an election people are really engaged with,” he said. “They’ve participated. They’ve been watching it. They’re speaking their minds.”