Ifill’s Obama-tanking’s no surprise

World Net Daily reports - - -

The moderator of Thursday's vice-presidential debate is writing a book to come out about the time the next president takes the oath of office that aims to "shed new light" on Democratic candidate Barack Obama and other "emerging young African American politicians" who are "forging a bold new path to political power."

Gwen Ifill of the Public Broadcasting Service program "Washington Week" is promoting "The Breakthrough," in which she argues the "black political structure" of the civil rights movement is giving way to men and women who have benefited from the struggles over racial equality.

Ifill declined to return a WND telephone message asking for a comment about her book project and whether its success would be expected should Obama lose. But she has faced criticism previously for not treating candidates of both major parties the same. …

Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, who’s attorney, reports - -

I confirmed for us here on GretaWire: the McCain campaign did NOT know about Gwen Ifill’s book (I think I told them when I made my efforts - emails about midnight - to find out!) I am stunned….the campaign (actually both) should have been told before the campaign agreed to have her moderate. It simply is not fair - in law, this would create a mistrial. (second bold added by JinC)

In law it would be a disqualifying conflict. But the way most of our news organizations now operate, Gwen Ifill’s just another partisan doing tank work for Obama. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time.

Team McCain was taken by surprise?

They shouldn’t have been. Ifill’s liberal/left leanings have been known for years; and its been an open secret in Washington for months that she’s as admiring and in the tank for Sen. Obama as Oprah, the NY Times, NPR and Chris Matthews.

This transcript excerpt from a Mar. 17, 2008 PBS interview she conducted with Obama makes that clear. Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-white, anti-American sermons were then front page news. Obama was preparing to deliver the next day a major speech in Philadelphia designed to limit the political damage Wright’s blatant racism and anti-Americanism was causing Obama because of his close friendship with Wright, his pastor for almost 20 years.

The transcript excerpt covers that portion of the interview in which Ifill asks her candidate about Wright and the political fallout concerning him. By Mar. 17 Obama had already dissembled that he’d “never heard” any of Wright’s anti-white, anti-American preaching.

You’ll see Ifill never asks Obama how he could not have known what Wright was saying. (“Even if you didn’t hear it, Senator, didn’t Ms. Obama or someone else in the congregation tell you?”) She also doesn’t ask why he and his wife brought their children to Wright’s church for religious instruction. Ifill doesn’t ask any of the tough, pertinent questions Obama had ducked until then and has ducked since.

Instead, Ifill tosses out softball questions about how Obama’s campaign’s being impacted and the like.

The excerpt follows with the full transcript here.

MS. IFILL: Anybody watching this campaign for the last week to 10 days would think it was all about gender and race between what Geraldine Ferraro said and what your former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. Do you look at this and think that maybe with a woman and a black man running against each other that this was going to be an inevitable conversation?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, I’m not sure if it was inevitable. I think that there’s no doubt that race and gender are powerful forces in our society. They always have been. And I think it would have been naïve for me to think that I could run and end up with quasi-frontrunner status in a presidential election as potentially the first African-American president that issues, race wouldn’t come up any more than Senator Clinton could expect that gender issues might not come up.

But, ultimately, I don’t think it’s useful. I think we’ve got to talk about it. I think we’ve got to process it. But we’ve got to remind ourselves that what we have in common is far more important than what’s different and that if we’re going to solve any of these problems, we’ve got to come together and bridge our differences in ways that we just have not bridged them before.

MS. IFILL: Is that the speech you’ll be giving tomorrow in Philadelphia?

SEN. OBAMA: That will be a major focus of it.

MS. IFILL: You have also cast this as a generational distinction of the sort of things that Reverend Wright said being the baggage of a fiercely intelligent African-American man of his generation and Geraldine Ferraro’s as well. When does one person’s baggage become another person’s memory/history?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, you know, look, there’s a continuum. But I think that, you know, when you look at somebody like a Reverend Wright who grew up in the ’50s or ’60s, his experience of race in this country is very different than mine in the same way that Geraldine’s experience being an intelligent, ambitious woman, you know, is very different than a young woman who’s coming up today and potentially has a different set of opportunities.

Now, we benefit from that past. We benefit from the difficult battles that were taken place. But I’m not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together. And that’s part of what this campaign has been about, is to say, let’s acknowledge a difficult history, but let’s move forward in a practical way to get things done.

MS. IFILL: Has this been damaging to your campaign?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, the – I would say that it has been a distraction from the core message of our campaign. I think part of what has always been the essence of my politics, not just this campaign, but my life is the idea that we’ve got to bring people together. Now, part of that is biographical as somebody who comes from a diverse background with a white mother and an African-American father growing up in Hawaii and Asia. You know, it’s in my DNA to believe that all of us have something fundamental in common.

And that’s part of what makes America so special. And so, to the extent that, you know, the conversation over the last couple of days has been dominated by some stupid statements that were made by Reverend Wright, but also caricatures of Reverend Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ – which, by the way, is part of a denomination that is overwhelmingly white – you know, I think that that has distracted us from the possibilities of moving beyond some of these arguments.

MS. IFILL: When Senator Clinton sat down with my colleague Judy Woodruff for a conversation like this, she said that her election would be shattering the highest and hardest glass ceiling. Would yours be doing the same?

SEN. OBAMA: Oh, you know, I would say, you know, it would be pretty significant – (chuckles) – if we had an African-American president. You know, I don’t want to get into a contest in terms of which would be more significant. I think that either one would be significant. So, ultimately, the question for the American people is, who do they think is best equipped to actually solve the problems that we face right now? And if you as a voter, regardless of your race or gender, decide that it’s Senator Clinton, then you should vote for Senator Clinton. If it’s me, you should vote for me. And if it’s John McCain, you should vote for John McCain. ….

Hat tip: Drudge and BN