Charles Kaiser reports from Pittsburgh on reactions to the latest presidential debate

Pittsburgh, Thursday, April 16

Forget almost everything you've read about last night's idiotic presidential debate. It's true that George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson engaged in an unseemly competition to see who could humiliate himself the most on national television—but the people like NBC's Chuck Todd who thought Barack Obama's performance was "near disastrous" are just flat wrong.

Here in Pittsburgh, the viewers assembled to watch the debate by the local ABC affiliate were nearly unanimous in their instant analysis: All of the questions asked in the first 45 minutes were a waste of time, and the "journalists" asking them were ridiculous. When Obama said, "This is the kind of manufactured issue our politics have become obsessed with"—flag lapel pins, passing friendships with former Weathermen, or perfectly accurate ruminations about how 25 years of unemployment have embittered some of its victims—most people agreed with Obama.

What's worse? The fact that George Stephanopoulos would go on Sean Hannity's radio show to solicit questions for last night's debate, or the fact that he actually used one of Hannity's questions, asking Obama about his passing friendship with William Ayers, a former Weatherman who once said he wished he had set off more bombs in the 1970s.

"The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George," Obama shot back. Then he pointed out that he was equally close to conservative senator Tom Coburn, who favors the death penalty for anyone who carries out an abortion. "Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements?" Obama asked. Chuck Todd thought that was a mistake; I thought it was very effective.

Naturally, Hillary tried to distort the issue further by saying, "What [the Weathermen] did was set bombs, and in some instances people died." That's true—but the only people who died were the three Weathermen who blew themselves up by mistake in a Greenwich Village town house in 1970. (Bonus points if you can remember who initiated the magnificent American flag pin tradition. Answer: that Great American, Richard Milhous Nixon.)

But more important than anything you saw last night was the ringing endorsement Obama received yesterday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Hillary had visited with the editorial board there Monday—entering the newspaper building through a side door, dashing into her meeting with the board, and leaving just as quickly. Barack arrived Tuesday through the front door. After wowing the board, he wandered into the newsroom and worked the reporters there for 10 minutes; then he dived into the crowd that had gathered outside the paper to make some more converts. Guess who made the better impression?

"Like two opposing armies marching to a new Gettysburg, the forces of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton come to this latest battlefield symbolizing two views of America—one of the past, one of the future," the Post-Gazette editorialized. The paper praised Clinton and Obama as both being vastly superior to the present occupant of the White House, and noted the many similarities in their positions on issues both foreign and domestic. Then it gave the reason for its strong preference:

"This editorial began by observing that one candidate is of the past and one of the future. The litany of criticisms heaped on Sen. Obama by the Clinton camp, simultaneously doing the work of the Republicans, is as illustrative as anything of which one is which. These are the cynical responses of the old politics to the new. Sen. Obama has captured much of the nation's imagination for a reason. He offers real change, a vision of an America that can move past not only racial tensions but also the political partisanship that has so bedeviled it."

Here on the ground, the Pennsylvania primary is still up for grabs. Yesterday, I canvassed 30 Democratic voters in their homes in Emsworth, a white working-class suburb of Pittsburgh where the well-kept two-story houses have small front porches and tiny backyards. According to the conventional wisdom, this should be bedrock Hillary territory, but it isn't. I found 14 committed to or leaning toward Obama, seven for Clinton, and eight still undecided. So, Obama's vote is nearly equal to Hillary's and the undecided combined.

Yesterday's edition of the Post-Gazette also contained a great piece by columnist Reg Henry, who wrote that "this alleged controversy over Barack Obama's comments about guns and religion—the so-called 'bitter comment'—is the biggest load of bull fertilizer ever to fall off the back of the political truck. ... What is important to remember is that Mr. Obama was speaking sympathetically about these people. And, yes, not that it seems to matter to the nattering classes, there is truth in what he said."

Then the Pittsburgh columnist noted George Will's accusation that Obama's "implication was that their primitivism, superstition and bigotry are balm for resentments they feel because of America's grinding injustice."

"Really?" asked the Pittsburgh journalist. "What a mind reader. Still, I defer to superior breeding because here's a guy so snooty that he could go to the Elitist Persons' Ball and guests would say, 'Who's that elitist over there?' Here's a guy that when he goes to the ballpark, he may eat a hotdog but he probably has his pinkie extended. You can just imagine him denouncing Sen. Obama as an elitist over a good glass of sherry, looking down his superior nose, perhaps through a monocle. The whole thing is beyond satire."

So was the spectacle of two ABC men with multimillion salaries pursuing the same line of idiotic questioning on national television last night.

Update: The national Newsweek poll released Friday which gave Obama a whopping 19 point lead over Clinton suggests the possibility of a collapse in Hillary's support, largely because of her prevarications about her trip to Bosnia. Only 41 percent of those polled now view Clinton as honest and trustworthy. What is even more interesting is the fact that 517 voters were interviewed after Wednesday's debate and 692 before it—and the pollsters found no significant difference in the before and after results. That means that the debate that reporters inside the beltway viewed as a major blow to Obama was actually a non-event—except for its impact on the reputations of Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.

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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. To learn more, visit charleskaiser.com .