Martha Raddatz boosted President Obama on ABC after the final presidential debate on Monday evening, just as she did during the earlier vice presidential debate [1] that she moderated. Raddatz asserted that Obama "humanized what he was talking about. He talked a lot about the troops; he talked about the survivors from 9/11; he talked about the people in Israel. So if, in fact, he was going towards the female vote, he probably got their attention with that sort of approach." [audio available here [2]; video below ]
ABC's post-debate coverage also spotlighted a Tweet from Nightline's Bill Weir [3], who channeled something that Al Gore had whined about [4] just minutes earlier on Twitter: "Four #debates come and go without a single question on climate change."
Diane Sawyer turned to the correspondent for her take on the debate, which had finished just minutes earlier: "Martha, you were sitting at that very table, the same table – moderated the vice president's debate. So, what did you see?"
Raddatz first replied that "I think what I didn't see was a foreign policy debate, really...we turned so quickly to the economy. We turned so quickly to domestic issues." She continued by stating that "the
other thing that really surprised me is I didn't hear the term, from
Mitt Romney, 'peace through strength' a single time there...he was a different candidate, in terms of the way he would approach foreign policy." The ABC journalist soon added her claim about the "humanized" remarks from the incumbent Democrat.
Less
than ten minutes later, the post-debate broadcast flashed Weir's Tweet.
The ABC host might have been having a flashback to four years earlier,
as he hyped on the August 9, 2008 edition [5] of World News Saturday how "after years of debate over the reality of global warming, 80 percent of those polled now say they accept it as fact."
The transcript of Martha Raddatz's commentary from ABC's Monday night coverage of the presidential debate:
DIANE SAWYER: And turning next to our senior foreign affairs
correspondent, Martha Raddatz. Martha, you were sitting at that very
table, the same table – moderated the vice president's debate. So, what
did you see?
MARTHA RADDATZ: Well, I – I think what I didn't see was a foreign
policy debate, really. (Sawyer laughs) You – we turned so quickly to the
economy. We turned so quickly to domestic issues. And the other thing
that really surprised me is I didn't hear the term, from Mitt Romney,
'peace through strength' a single time there. He was – he was a
different candidate, in terms of the way he would approach foreign
policy.
One thing I did notice with President Obama – look, not everybody looks
at it like Christiane [Amanpour] and I do, and they're going to all
these little policy wonk things - President Obama humanized what he was
talking about. He talked a lot about the troops; he talked about the
survivors from 9/11; he talked about the people in Israel. So if, in
fact, he was going towards the female vote, he probably got their
attention with that sort of approach.