Softball Questions About Bush, Hardball About Kerry
Reported by Ellen - November 1, 2004 -
The guests in the first two segments of yesterday's FOX News Sunday were Karen Hughes, senior advisor to the Bush campaign and Bob Shrum, senior advisor to the Kerry campaign. I was quite struck by the difference in the questions to each one.
Questions from Wallace to Karen Hughes (Note: except for what's in quotation marks, the questions are not verbatim but edited for length):
1. Why hasn't the US caught Usama bin Laden?
2. After Senator Kerry heard (the Usama bin Laden) tape existed, he said we are paying the price for the president's mistake of letting bin Laden get away. "The president reacted VERY sharply to that and let's listen... (clip of Bush criticizing Kerry)" Kerry has been saying for months that the president took his eye off the ball with regard to UBL... why is it shameful for Kerry to say so now? (Of course that gave Hughes an opening to say why)
3. What does your polling over the last two nights tell you about the effect that the tape has had on the presidential campaign? Hughes says no real effect, that the polls show the "momentum is with the president." Oddly, Wallace didn't mention that the FOX polls show the opposite. He reported on at the beginning of the program the latest poll shows Bush and Kerry dead even but the same poll gave Bush a five point lead over Kerry just two weeks ago.
4. Why weren't troops told to secure (the missing explosives in Iraq)? Hughes responded that an army major said a substantial number of tons were removed by the US.
5. That was before the tape that showed the weapons were there and he said he didn't know whether the specific weapons that the IAEA had warned about were or weren't there.
Questions to Bob Shrum:
1. "Let's start with the (bin Laden) tape." Wallace conveniently has a full-screen graphic showing Kerry's comments on Friday about "outsourcing" the hunt for bin Laden: "I would never have done that. I think it was an enormous mistake and we are paying the price for it today." Wallace continues, "The Republicans... say that John Kerry is a political opportunist whose first instinct was to use (the tape) to gain some political advantage."
2. Has Kerry been consistent about the way in which the bin Laden issue in Tora Bora was handled? Back when it was happening in December of 2001, he was asked about letting Afghan warlords try to capture bin Laden. Here's what he had to say (another convenient graphic) 'It's the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you willÂ… I think we have been doing this pretty effectively, and we should continue to do it that way.' This is the question that Republicans have been talking about since the beginning of the campaign: Doesn't John Kerry jump and have it whichever way suits him at the time?"
3. The question of these ALLEGED 377 tons of explosives that went missing in Iraq. What we're talking about, even if it is 300, 400 tons is one one-thousandth of all the weapons that US forces have destroyed in Iraq. Is that really the best you've got?" Note: Shrum was duly taken aback by that ridiculously biased question and explained why he thought the missing explosives were an important breach and not politics.
4. How about the fact that the US destroyed 400,000 tons? (Comment: Didn't we invade Iraq to prevent them from attacking us with their weapons, not to get "most" of them?)
5. I want to ask you about the broader question here of whether or not Senator Kerry has convinced voters that he is ready to be Commander-in-Chief. In the latest FOX News poll, the president still leads Kerry on who would do a better job handling terrorism by 11 points. (Note: This information was NOT provided in the latest Fox News poll. See my previous post, Is FOX News Hiding Some of Its Poll Results?)
Real Journalism, fair and balanced? I report, you decide.
