GOP Official Wants 'Partisan' CBS Off the Premises During Presidential Debates
by Chad Groening and Jody Brown
September 20, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Virginia Republican leader has written a letter to the executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, demanding that CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer not be used as a moderator for any of the upcoming presidential debates.News sources report that the Bush and Kerry campaigns are near agreement on the final plans for a series of three debates between the two presidential candidates. According to the Commission, the debates would occur on September 30 at the University of Miami; October 8 at Washington University in St. Louis; and October 13 at Arizona State University. In addition, a debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, would take place on October 5 at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Long-time CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer is scheduled to moderate the third debate between Bush and Kerry. But Ralph C McGehee, chairman of the Falls Church, Virginia, Republican Committee has sent a letter to Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, calling for Schieffer to be replaced by someone from another network.
Why? McGehee says he is not happy with CBS's used of widely discredited documents to smear President Bush's period of service in the Texas Air National Guard -- documents that CBS news anchor Dan Rather now says were a "mistake in judgment" to use. The network, according to a statement from Rather, was "misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession" of the documents.
Despite Rather's revised stance, McGehee accuses the network of favoritism and of being more interested in the defeat of George W. Bush than in being fair. "I think the moderators and the questioners should be absolutely as non-partisan as possible," the Virginia Republican says. "With what CBS is doing, I just don't think that they're even trying to be non-partisan -- they're trying to be very partisan. I don't think [CBS] should be part of the debates in any way."
And McGehee believes Schieffer could be biased as a debate moderator. "I worry more about CBS News as a whole than I do about Bob Schieffer," he admits, "but Bob could certainly slant the questions the way CBS would like to see them slanted."
McGehee says he thinks the presidential debates are important -- and for that reason, he does not think anyone from CBS should be allowed in the same building where a presidential debate is taking place.
Schieffer is chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, having covered that beat for 31 years, and moderator of the Sunday program Face the Nation. The Texas native joined CBS News in 1969.
