Debatable

Maybe people care vaguely about politics after all: An impressive 10.7 million watched last night’s 735th Presidential candidate debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on ABC, the most of any debate this campaign season, and most didn’t even switch over when the “American Idol” results show came on. The debate kicked “Big Bother’s” – er, “Brother’s” – hindquarters, but that’s no doubt because the squabbling during the debate was at least comprehensible.

On the other hand, ABC’s “Men in Trees” tanked afterwards, again. If your frothy romantic comedy can’t engage as many people as a political policy discussion, don’t expect a third season.

Except, of course, policy didn’t seem to be much of a concern for Charlie Gibson and former Clinton advisor George Stephanopolous. Pretty much everybody, and I do mean everybody, not to mention everybody’s parochial uncle and snarky aunt, found the debate a pile of offal, as ABC News took up Fox News’ proud mantle last night, turning the debate into all Reverend Wright/Tuzla/“bitter” all the time, with just a soupcon of Iraq and the economy and other actual issues.

Clearly, Obama can try to issue as many reasoned, nuanced observations as he pleases but the media will just trample over them and insist on more red meat – probably he should just get back to chanting “Yes We Can,” because that’s all the pundits seem to be able to understand.

The New York Times’ David Brooks liked it, though, declaring, “The journalist's job is to make politicians uncomfortable.” Unless, of course, the politician is a conservative.

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