Gwen Ifill was a true journalist: fair
Critics had feared she would favor Biden because she's written a book that spotlights Obama. Those fears were unjustified.
At least one figure on the stage for Thursday night's vice presidential debate reached a high standard for reason, fairness and class.
Gwen Ifill of PBS demonstrated abundant dignity as referee of the much-anticipated debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.
The veteran newswoman lived up, in every sense, to her title: moderator. She directed the candidates to important topics, pushed to keep them on subject and betrayed no favoritism.
Some partisan critics had suggested in recent days that Ifill was unfit for the role because she is writing a book about American politics in the "age of Obama." As in Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee.
That information sent conservative commentators like Richard Viguerie into convulsions of dismay and anger. Surely, Ifill was a liberal plant who would try to tilt the debate toward Biden, the Democratic senator from Delaware.
Viguerie said Wednesday that Democrats would agree to debates only where they got "the home-field advantage, only when the questioners are people who see liberalism as objective reality and who consider the opinions of conservative, mainstream Americans to be backward and ill-informed."
If those were Ifill's feelings, she sure kept them concealed. One measure of how well the former newspaper reporter performed was that, once the talking started, she faded into the background as Biden and Palin shared their strikingly different world views.
I'd defy the critics to show how Ifill's questions even came close to favoring one nominee over the other.
When she asked about taxes, for example, both nominees faced a pointed inquiry. To Biden: Isn't the Democrats' call to tax the wealthy an invitation to class warfare? To Palin: Couldn't McCain's proposal to tax health insurance benefits cost many Americans their current coverage?
When the GOP governor of Alaska's answer focused mostly on dubbing Obama a big-time tax-and-spender, Ifill helpfully reminded Palin that she needed to respond to the query about McCain's health insurance proposal.
Both nominees segued far afield on a question about just what they would do in the vice president's office, and Ifill gave both a gentle scolding.
"Governor, senator, neither of you really answered that last question about what you would do as vice president," Ifill said, to laughter from the audience. "I'm going to come back to that throughout the evening to try to see if we can look forward as well."
