Newt Gingrich bashes Politico's John Harris, media in debate ploy

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

The role of stalwart chief executive already had two suitors in Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. Casting the rest of Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate, Ron Paul nailed the libertarian puritan and John Huntsman cornered reasonable moderate. So what job remained for onetime House Speaker Newt Gingrich, struggling to make a mark on a stage stacked with eight candidates?

How about Chief Media Basher and All-Around GOP Team Guy?

It may have amounted to a bit part, but one offering scene-stealing opportunity, especially given that the event at the Ronald Reagan Library & Museum in Simi Valley was being broadcast by MSNBC. The liberal-tilting cable network gave the also-ran Gingrich the perfect foil, the chance to play Republican Party uniter and -- who knows? -- maybe begin positioning himself for some future Cabinet appointment.

Gingrich's turn will be most remembered (and already celebrated by multiple conservative commentators) for attacking Politico's John Harris, when the debate moderator tried to get him to take sides between fellow GOP candidates on the issue of healthcare.

The Georgian got in a few other not-so-subtle digs at the media and advanced a much broader thesis: Attempts to tease out differences between the Republican hopefuls were thinly veiled maneuvers "to protect Barack Obama, who deserves to be defeated."

That proposition is enjoyable raw meat for the GOP base. And it would make a lot of sense, except for the fact that the entire cumbersome, protracted and heavily covered primary-election process is designed to expose and explain differences among a political party's various candidates. Is there any other way to help voters decide which product to finally pull off the shelf? (Well, probably, but this is the system we are stuck with, for now.)

Yet Gingrich and a sizable pack of post-debate commentators expressed dismay, even outrage, that NBC anchor Brian Williams and Harris would try to get the candidates to talk about their differences. Obviously, given MSNBC's well-deserved reputation for liberal political commentary, this had to be a partisan plot.

This raises many questions: Did all these people sleep through the last several presidential campaigns? Don't any of them recall how the media, to take just the most recent instance, spent months reporting and glorying in every possible distinction between dueling Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton? Have political debates, three years later, been redesignated as "friending" circles?

You would think so to listen to the undeniably bright (and, in this case, cunning) Gingrich. From his first answer, he made clear he would be school-marming and parrying the debate moderators, while playing shamelessly to the partisan gallery.

Asked about writing the forward for Perry's book "Fed Up" -- which outlines the Texas governor's serious doubts about all sorts of federal programs, including Medicare -- Gingrich would have none of it.

"Look, he's said himself that was an interesting book of ideas by somebody who's not proposing a manifesto for president," Gingrich said. "And I think to go back and try to take that apart is silly."

Even though the book was published just last year, Gingrich suggested to Williams that questions about "Fed Up" made no sense. So Check One, on Gingrich's new debating rules: Would-be presidents should not have to talk about their previous scribblings, even ones they wrote as visions of the Oval Office danced in their heads.

Near the end of the debate, the former Speaker would have to straighten Williams out again. In response to a question about Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke (whom he would fire "tomorrow"), Gingrich pivoted to an earlier question. A much earlier question; actually from a previous GOP debate.

"We were asked the wrong question at the last debate," Gingrich said. "The question isn't, would we favor a tax increase? The question is, how would we generate revenue?"

Gingrich said the conversation should be about cutting government and opening vast tracts of Alaska to gas and oil extraction. Never mind that many economists and public-opinion surveys would seem to put some tax increases (for higher-income earners) on the table for most Americans. We nonetheless have Gingrich's Check Two: No more questions about higher taxes. For anyone.

He saved his third rule, and sharpest barb, for Harris, the longtime political writer and co-founder of Politico.com.

Harris suggested that the two GOP front-runners -- Romney and Perry -- had "a genuine philosophical disagreement" over healthcare. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney passed a reform that required residents to buy health insurance. Perry and other Republicans have designated such a "mandate," a key to President Obama's national healthcare law, as just the sort of big-government solution that is anathema to economic recovery and American values.

Harris asked Gingrich to weigh in on the side of Romney's Massachusetts plan or the small-government approach in Texas, where one-quarter of residents are uninsured.

"Well, I'm frankly not interested in your effort to get Republicans fighting each other," Gingrich snapped. Harris interjected that there is a real choice to be made -- requiring citizens to buy health insurance, or not.

Gingrich remained unmoved. He huffed that he would "repudiate every effort of the news media to get Republicans to fight each other to protect Barack Obama, who deserves to be defeated." Check Three: the media should never expect one Republican to speak ill of another.

It seems abundantly clear, as Gingrich pointed out, that Republicans are unified in opposing Obama's healthcare changes. But not so clear, or true, is Gingrich's contention that only slippery, scheming journalists want to talk about Romney's healthcare record. The record of the last few months will show any number of occasions in which Republicans on the stump, with little aid from villainous reporters, used "Romneycare" to bludgeon the former Massachusetts governor.

Could the news media in clear conscience cover the current campaign and not raise one of the front-running candidate's major policy initiatives, one that was also a substantial public policy watershed? Wouldn't a moderator who failed to question what other candidates felt about that initiative be guilty of sloppiness, if not malpractice?

That Gingrich has begun flailing to draw himself attention is not just a conclusion of crazy liberals. Speaking on Fox Business Network on Thursday morning, anchor Chris Wallace said of Gingrich: "He is doing this stunt, which he did with me and he did with John Harris yesterday, which is attack the messenger. If he thinks that works, fine. I find it kind of sad."

[For the Record: 2:08 p.m. Sept. 9: A previous version of this post said anchor Chris Wallace spoke on Fox Business News.]

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-- James Rainey
Twitter.com/latimesrainey

Photo: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, right, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich greet after a debate among GOP presidential candidates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Musuem in Simi Valley on Wednesday. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

CNN's Matthew Chance rides highs, lows in Tripoli war zone

The giddy lows and highs of working as a foreign correspondent in a war zone have been on vivid display over the last 24 hours, courtesy of CNN's Matthew Chance.

As one of a couple of dozen Western journalists working out of the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, Chance has been in the midst of the Libyan revolution but strangely removed from it.

On Sunday night, loyalist troops kept Chance and fellow journalists penned up in the hotel, until the minders suddenly left, as much of the capital city appeared to fall to rebels. A few agitated soldiers remained behind,  shouting at the journalists and issuing dictates.

As Chance's furtive glances and pacing made clear, the journalists had no idea what to expect--fearing both Moammar Kadafi's troops and rebels who they worried might overrun them. The news crews hurriedly posted banners, at the hotel proclaiming "TV," in hopes of warding off an attack.

 The Rixos may be a five-star establishment, but journalists have reported for months feeling harassed and menaced by government minders, who sometimes forced them to leave on a moment's notice.

Chance reported that electricity had gone out during the day Monday and that food and water at the hotel were in short supply.  In the early evening he wrote via Twitter: "Mood in Rixos much darker than before. Everyone really worried about what's going to happen to us." After nightfall, he tried to sound a positive note: "On bright side, am with excellent group of journalists at Rixos. We are feeling our way around corridors with candles. No power."

The digital communiques give a sense of Chance's roller-coaster ride, including frustration at not being able to get out of the  hotel compound. Then, a breakthrough: Just before midnight in Tripoli, Monday, the journalist tweeted news that Kadafi's son Saif al-Islam would arrive at the hotel for a news conference. Two exclamation points accompanied the missive. But then another setback--a report that Saif had aborted the visit because of the power outage at the Rixos. Finally, an hour later, the news whipped back in the other direction, as Chance confirmed that he had visited with Saif, who had arrived at the hotel, in a caravan of armored SUVs.

The dictator's son claimed through a translator that he would complete a "walkabout" in Tripoli to prove that neighborhoods allegedly in rebel hands really were still in the government's control. He accused the enemy of lying and said  "to hell" with the International Criminal Court, which said it would bring the Kadafi family to justice.

About 2:30 a.m. Tripoli time, Chance concluded in another Twitter message (via his handle @mchancecnn) that Saif's appearance was a "major PR coup for Gadhafi – if the rebels lied about this – what can we believe?"

Chance is a senior international correspondent, based in Moscow. He has been near the front lines before--in Afghanistan in 2001, in Iraq and in 2008 on the Georgian-Russian war. He is a native of Britain and attended the University of London, earning a bachelor's degree in archaeology and art.

Chance remained locked in the hotel, but back in the reporting game. He transmitted a shadowy Twitter photo of Kadafi's son before the journalist presumably tried to get a few minutes of sleep.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: An image grab taken from the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya satellite television station shows Saif al-Islam Kadafi, son of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, speaking to journalists in Tripoli in the early hours of Tuesday. A CNN correspondent was one of those to bring the world news that Saif was not in the hands of rebels, as the anti-Kadafi forces had previously reported.  Credit: AFP / Getty Images

 

Britain riots, Fox's O'Reilly asks: where are the guns?

Fox News personality and sometime media critic Bill O’Reilly thought he detected yet another case of liberal media bias last week, this time coming from England. The subject was guns.

As my "On the Media" column suggests, the recent riots in Britain have raised a lively discussion about whether social networks and cellphone communications should be limited.

O’Reilly suggested on his Fox News program that the social unrest should spark another debate. But he said “the BBC and the other liberal British press” had been remiss, failing to report how  British cops and shop owners weren't armed well enough to rein in the chaos.

If you “don’t have a gun, you’re in real trouble,” facing rioters, O’Reilly said.

"The difference between America and Great Britain is that here in America many of us are armed because of the Second Amendment," O'Reilly began. "In Great Britain they don't like guns . . . .the cops don't even carry guns."

No doubt a loaded firearm would have caused some hooligans to think twice before, as the Brits say, pinching (shoplifting) a pair of trainers (sneakers), or attempting much worse.

Of course, arming the populace can have other consequences, as O'Reilly should recall, since he was in Los Angeles at the time of the 1992 riots.

Fifty-four people died in L.A., about two-thirds of them from gunshot wounds. (Eleven of the dead were shot by police or the National Guard.) In the riots that swept several British cities this summer, a total of five died. One of them was by a gunshot. (Three others died after being intentionally run over by a car. One  man was beaten to death.)

A Los Angeles Times account a few months after the riots showed the mixed impact of private gun ownership. Widely distributed pictures showed Korean American shop owners defending their stores. But not all the gunfire went toward the right targets. The story described a group of Korean American youths who went to help the shop owners, only to be mistakenly shot themselves. Edward Song Lee, 18, died of his wounds.

Fox News Correspondent Amy Kellogg told O’Reilly last week that, despite the London riots, the debate about arming the police, or allowing more guns in the hands of private citizens, “has not come up.” O’Reilly is not ready to drop the subject, it seems. He ended the discussion predicting that, in the event of continued trouble, “the gun debate will ramp up.”

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Fox News' top-rated host, Bill O'Reilly has helped drive the entire cable network's ratings higher. Last week, he wondered why the media had so little to say about the lack of guns in rioting Britain. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

 

 

Will NBC bosses bring more Latino talent to KNBC-TV?

A couple of organizations representing Latino journalists have complained that KNBC television in Los Angeles has diminished the role of Latinos on the air in a city where the ethnic group represents about half the population.

A letter from the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) this week follows a similar complaint last week from the CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California. The letters to station management noted that several journalists have been demoted in recent weeks and that Channel 4 has no Latino anchors. L.A.'s other top news stations have at least one Latino anchor.

But NAHJ President Michele Salcedo reported on the organization's website Friday that station management has indicated changes are on the way. Salcedo's said the assurances came from  outgoing KNBC General Manager Craig Robinson, who is being named diversity officer for all of NBCUniversal.

Salcedo said that Robinson told her "it is not his goal to be without Hispanic anchors, and he and station executives are continuing to recruit Hispanic anchors and on-air talent.”

The chief of the Latino journalists group added that Robinson assured her “that the anchor lineup six months from now is not going to look as it does today. We also discussed establishing a pipeline to groom Latino broadcast journalists to fill positions throughout the newsroom as well as executive offices.”

Among the moves that alarmed Latino journalists was KNBC's removal of veteran Ana Garcia from her position as anchor of the 6 p.m. news. She was replaced by Lucy Noland, who was born in Vietnam of a Vietnamese mother and American father. Garcia remains at Channel 4 as an investigative reporter.

“I do think there is a huge problem with fact there is no Latino or Latina in a primary position at the station,” said one KNBC insider, who declined to be named for fear of angering management. “I think that is extraordinary, when you look at the population of Los Angeles. I don’t understand it.”

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No hacking at the N.Y. Post, says former N.Y. Post hack

Phone hacking in America? English reporter comes to U.S.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Ana Garcia arrives at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 63rd Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards this month. Garcia was part of teams that won a couple of the trophies but she lost her spot anchoring the 6 p.m. news at KNBC. She continues to work at the station as an investigative reporter. Credit: Valerie Macon / Getty Images

 

No hacking at the N.Y. Post, says former N.Y. Post hack

Jared Paul Stern certainly doesn’t have the warm fuzzies for his old employer, the New York Post. The one-time contributor to the Page Six gossip column was driven out of the tabloid after accusations, never proven, that he tried to extort money to keep one high-profile magnate out of the headlines.

But despite his estrangement from his former employer, Stern said in an interview this week that he doubts Rupert Murdoch’s rambunctious  U.S. publication has employed the phone hacking and police payoffs that were endemic at its British cousin, the now-shuttered News of the World.

“Their whole game is more sort of intimidating people or cozying up to people to get information,” Stern said the other day of gossip reporters at the Post. In more than a decade contributing to Page Six he said he never saw or heard of phones being improperly accessed. The only payments, minimal ones, went to public relations types who acted as virtual stringers for Page Six, Stern said.

Not that Stern attributes the failure to employ the so-called “dark arts” on any particularly high motives on the part of Post gossip writers.

“They couldn’t hack an electric toothbrush there,” Stern said. “There are no techno-whizzes to figure it out and they don’t have anything like the budget of those British papers. The Post hemorrhages money. They don’t have the budget for any extras.”

The Post has been reported to lose tens of millions of dollars a year. News Corp. leader Murdoch is said to keep the paper going because of his love of tabloids and because of the political leverage it gives him in America’s biggest city.

Stern experienced a brief and unwanted celebrity in 2006 when one-time supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, a close friend of former President Clinton, accused the tabloid reporter of trying to pry money out of him in exchange for keeping Burkle out of the Post.

Burkle videotaped a couple of his meetings with Stern and federal prosecutors investigated the case as a possible extortion before deciding not to file charges against Stern. The writer subsequently sued Burkle, Clinton and others, claiming that they had tried to ruin his reputation. A judge tossed the lawsuit out.

Now Stern said he is working on various projects, though he declined to go into much detail. His website on style had new entries as recently as this summer. And he suggests that his proposed memoir on life in the tabloid lane, dropped by one publisher, might have new life given the scandals sweeping the industry.

“The stuff going on now is breathing some new life into it, so I am reworking it,” Stern said of the book. “It definitely has a lot more relevance and appeal.”

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-- James Rainey

Twitter.com/latimesrainey

Photo: One-time New York Post gossip writer Jared Paul Stern, who contributed to the paper's Page Six column, said he never heard of phone hacking or big-money payoffs while he worked for the tabloid. The paper's British cousin, News of the World, was closed after its use of the "dark arts" caused a scandal in Britain. Credit:  Shiho Fukada / Associated Press.

 

Phone hacking in America? English reporter comes to U.S.

As I report in my On the Media column, the reporter who broke the story over phone hacking and corruption in the British tabloid press is coming to L.A. this week to “see whether there is a U.S. end to this story.”

Based on his email conversations with me, it’s hard to tell whether Nick Davies of the Guardian has a specific angle, or is just taking a broad look at how British tabloids and others operate in America.

Most journalists, both over the pond and here, believe that if the “dark arts” are being employed in the U.S., they are not  nearly as endemic as they appear to be in Britain.

Davies' editor, Alan Rusbridger, said he thinks trouble in the press there might be linked to the ascension of editors who began their careers covering celebrities. The editors had an anything-goes attitude, Rusbridger said, a sensibility they carried into hard news coverage when they became the top editors at their outlets.

Among those with showbiz coverage roots who went on to run British newsrooms were Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who later became chief spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, and Piers Morgan, onetime editor of the Daily Mirror and now a host on America’s CNN. Though implicated by a former Mirror reporter as having knowledge of phone hacking, Morgan has vehemently denied it.

Roy Greenslade, the Guardian’s media columnist, said he has been directly told of an agreement among British press executives to not report negatively on each other. That common interest could have been magnified, in recent months, by the realization that many of the papers might have a common problem with phone hacking. Any investigation might cascade from one newspaper to the next.

News International, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., went to some lengths to kill the hacking story. Greenslade said in an interview that he got a small personal taste of the campaign. One of News International's senior executives took him to dinner last year and, after dispensing with some niceties, began to argue that "there was nothing to the allegations and why couldn’t I bring some sense to bear at the Guardian.”

Greenslade didn’t do anything of the sort. The Guardian never slowed its reporting. And the scandal has caught up a good hunk of Britain’s press, police and political class.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger gives evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport select committee in the House of Commons in 2009. Much of the English press ignored the testimony, as the Guardian fought a lonely battle to expose illegal phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. Credit: Press Association / AP Images

Great white sharks off L.A. beaches? Yup. Now they're on TV

White sharks at one of Los Angeles’ most popular surfing beaches? Yes.

They’ve become such a familiar site at Sunset Beach in Pacific Palisades that regulars have become almost, kind of, sort of comfortable with their presence. Sometimes the humans don't even tell lifeguards or researchers about seeing the predators.

That’s one of the revelations of “Great White Invasion,” one of several new programs debuting this week on the Discovery channel’s 24th annual “Shark Week.” The television event has been a hit for Discovery since it debuted in the 1980s, routinely attracting 20 million viewers a year. "Shark Week" topped more than 30 million viewers in 2010.

“Great White Invasion” describes how sightings of great whites have multiplied in recent years at Sunset—the surf break near where Sunset Boulevard empties on to Pacific Coast Highway—and at other beaches around the world.

The shark appearances here gained particular notoriety in 2009, when surf shop owner Randy Wright captured photos and video of the creatures jumping out of the water. The “breaching” photos--sizable sharks soaring out of the water--became a sensation on the Web.

The producers of “Great White Invasion” tried to secure some of Wright’s video, but the videographer had his own ideas for disseminating the information, though where it will be shown is not yet clear. Among the footage: shots of a shark perhaps 10 feet long jumping clear of the ocean's surface, video that a prominent shark researcher called “phenomenal."

Unable to secure Wright’s video, the “Great White Invasion” creators made due with interviews with  Sunset surfers about their shark encounters. They paired the Los Angeles segments with dramatic footage from white shark breaches in other locales, like Australia and South Africa.

Ralph Collier, the veteran researcher who founded and runs the San Fernando Valley-based Shark Research Committee, said he thinks “Great White Invasion” gives a fair account of white shark episodes locally. Collier appears in the documentary and comments on the recent proliferation of white shark sitings.

 “There has not been one surfer who was bitten or bumped or harassed at Sunset,” Collier said in an interview with the Big Picture. “There have been numerous reports of sharks coming up, usually on the starboard side of a surfer and rotating and then looking them over, before leveling out and swimming away. We are not really anything of special interest to sharks.”

The reasons for infrequent shark attacks on humans in Southern California are not entirely understood, Collier said. A teenage body-boarder was killed off Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, last fall. A veterinarian died while on a training swim off Solana Beach in the spring of 2008.

With millions of people entering the water, there have been only a handful of other fatalities in Southern California in the last half-century. Collier said there are some common sense precautions to be taken by those who enter the shark’s domain. Swimmers and surfers should avoid the ocean when marine mammals or a lot of bait fish are nearby. They should not wear flashy jewelry, swim suits or even nail polish that might attract a shark’s attention, Collier said. Though it’s not understood exactly what color range white sharks can see, better to go low-key.

“Great White Invasion" replays frequently this week, along with a host of other shark-umentaries. One other Discovery offering features "Chief Shark Officer" Andy Samberg, celebrity host for the  week's offerings. The "Saturday Night Live" comedian takes a look, and gets really scared, about sharks off the Bahamas.

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--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: White sharks star in the Discovery channel program "Great White Invasion." Surfers in Los Angeles talk about seeing the predators off Sunset Beach. There have been no attacks on humans at the popular surf spot. Credit: C & M Fallows / oceanwideimages.com

Juan Williams: Muzzled, but still talking all the time

Among the striking non sequiturs in Juan Williams' new book "Muzzled," besides the title, is the author's simultaneous embrace of Fox News and despair at what he says is a national discourse that has become overly ideological and coarse.

Those two ideas may coexist in the nearly 300 pages of Williams' book, but they will ring jarringly dissonant to anyone who has spent more than a few minutes watching Fox hosts batter anyone with an opposing (read: liberal) position.

Fox is the leading practitioner of the full-contact partisan commentary that's spreading across cable television (most notably to MSNBC) and, arguably, to the body politic. Williams won a $2-million contract with Fox over three years after being booted from NPR last fall.

He charges it is the public radio network that is a safe haven for liberal political cant.

I have a longer discussion of the Williams book in my On the Media column, but there wasn't room to mention all the disconnects there. One other misnomer from the onetime Washington Post journalist: In a section of "Muzzled" in which he discusses how much the public liked his work at National Public Radio, Williams notes that the "ombudswoman said she got more response to my work than to any other voice on the network." What he fails to write is that much of that public feedback was negative--complaints about Williams' screeds on Fox.

The book and the discussion accompanying it raise many questions. One for NPR: If Williams was as ineffectual and overly opinionated as you suggest, why did you keep him around for a decade? Perhaps it had something to do with the star status he had achieved in part, ahem, by appearing on Fox. For Williams: If NPR was as corrupt and politically correct as you now report, why didn't you quit before they fired you?

I tried to get Williams through a couple of Fox representatives this week. They did not respond to my inquiries.

--James Rainey

Photo: News analyst Juan Williams is now a commentator at Fox News, full time, after being ousted from his job at National Public Radio last fall. His new book, "Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate," discusses the controversy and his thoughts on runaway political correctness. Credit: Richard Drew / AP

 

 

No joke: Jon Stewart voted Republican, at least once

Jon Stewart may have surprised some people when he told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that he voted for Republican George H.W. Bush for president in 1988. “There was an integrity about him that I respected greatly,” Stewart told the Fox host.

Not so greatly that he made Bush 41 immune to his “Daily Show” barbs. As Stewart said repeatedly to the seemingly incredulous Fox host, “I am a comedian first."

Stewart’s Comedy Central program came on about seven years after the elder Bush left office, so he did not give the 41st president a full satiric working over. But over the years, he lobbed a few gentle darts at the retired chief executive.

When Bush went skydiving in 2004 to celebrate his 80th birthday, Stewart showed the clip. “OK,” he said, “we’re sorry we called you a wimp. Let it go!”

More than once, Stewart lumped the elder Bush in with the last half-dozen presidents in segments that castigated the entire group for failing to make the U.S. energy independent.

Around the time of Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Stewart showed the incoming president meeting with predecessors Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Stewart said it looked like a “World’s Greatest Grandpa” competition, declaring Bush 41 the winner because “his pockets are filled with hard rock candy and penny whistles.”

Fox's Wallace invited Stewart on the program Sunday to challenge the comedian's suggestion that the Fox News channel functions as a conservative political organ more than a news outlet. Stewart neatly rebuffed Wallace’s arguments, saying ideology was only a secondary motivation for him.

"My comedy is informed by ideology, there is no question," he said. "But I am not an ideologue."
As I was looking for Stewart’s previous “Daily Show” mentions of Bush the elder, I ran into plenty of clips that would tend to back his comedy-first claim.

To cite just one: a June 25, 2009, segment in which the comedian contrasted Obama’s lofty election talk about transparency with his administration’s record of withholding information and documents, including background about a government eavesdropping program.

Stewart had one other quip for Wallace about why he voted for Bush. The then-vice president's opponent was then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Referencing an infamous Dukakis photo faux pas, Stewart said: “There’s something about tiny people in helmets.”

-- James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Jon Stewart of the Daily Show debated Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." He said comedy drove his show, not ideology. Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3 / "The Daily Show"

CNN Presidential Debate moderator: fast, not furious

CNN's solid political host John King was game to keep Monday night's Republican presidential debate moving, but speed and thoroughness don't  go together, especially in a discussion overflowing with seven candidates.

That meant the would-be GOP nominees got away with a fair amount of bobbing and weaving in one of their first mass debates. Mitt Romney wouldn't directly say whether he would raise the federal debt ceiling. Michele Bachmann punted on whether her anti-abortion stand would apply to victims of rape and incest. Ron Paul wouldn't say whether a 5-year-old illegal immigrant child should receive medical care at an emergency room. And Newt Gingrich backed what sounded like loyalty tests for Muslims who would want to enter his presidential administration, without any serious follow-up.

Whether it was the large size of the field or the desire to speed through many topics, the candidates mostly had it their own way Monday night at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

King can't carry all the responsibility for the lack of accountability in the two-hour debate. Even when the CNN host pushed for a little combativeness, the candidates wouldn't take the bait,  at least against each other.

Most noticeable for a lack of inter-party aggression was former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who declined to repeat his early challenge to Romney's Massachusetts healthcare plan. Pawlenty would only acknowledge that he compared Romney's plan, crafted when he was governor of Massachusetts, with President Obama's plan because Obama had said he modeled his legislation on the Massachusetts health law. On the weekend talk show circuit, Pawlenty had belittled "Obamney Care," since both the Massachusetts plan and the national healthcare reform require individuals to purchase insurance, a "mandate" vehemently opposed by most Republicans.

All the fire on Monday night remained on President Obama.

The next debate hosts might also want to rethink the notion of informal time limits. King tried to keep the discussion moving without a set limit. That meant he spent much of his time burbling "all right, all right, all right," under the GOP hopefuls as they went well past the parsimonious 30-second response time.

Better to bring back the red warning light for the next debate--and a more generous time limit.

CNN tried to lighten the serious subject matter with a "this or that" feature, as the cable outlet cut into, and away from, commercials. King asked the candidates about such lite preferences as Coke vs. Pepsi, thin crust vs. deep dish pizza, Johnny Cash vs. Elvis Presley and Blackberry vs. iPhone.

That produced little spark and less insight. If you're going to insist on bringing a pop culture or lite sensibility to the proceedings, at least challenge these pols. A few more challenging choices: LeBron James or Dirk Nowitzki? Bourbon or scotch? Craps or blackjack? Iowa or New Hampshire?

That last one would really make frontrunner Romney squirm.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, left, talks to CNN's John King, as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), right, joins in during the first New Hampshire Republican presidential debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Credit: Jim Cole / Associated Press