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Politics & Government
In debate hot seat: Obama, Romney and Candy Crowley
When President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney walk out Tuesday evening for their second debate, they won't be the only people in the spotlight.
The other person with a microphone – and with a potentially major voice in how the evening goes – will be the moderator, journalist Candy Crowley.
Moderators have taken on an outsized importance in this presidential campaign, described by partisans as using their unique role to push the results one way or the other. Obama aides blamed first debate moderator Jim Lehrer for somehow letting Romney win. Romney backers worried openly that vice presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz would be biased because Obama attended her wedding.
Now comes the second presidential debate. The race is dead even. The White House hangs in the balance. And it turns to Crowley to decide who in a live audience at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., can ask questions – and whether she needs to ask questions of her own.
Crowley told McClatchy she plans to ask follow-up questions and press the candidates if they don't answer, a hands-on approach neither campaign likes. They'd rather she just hold the microphone for audience members to do the talking in what's being billed as a "town-hall" style event more than a real debate.
If it's normal for politicians to try to limit the questions, it's second nature for a journalist such as Crowley to reserve the right to question.
"She's going to do her own thing and not worry too much about the critics," said Ed Henry, a former colleague of Crowley's at CNN and now chief White House correspondent for Fox News.
"The critics are always going to say that you're either too much in their faces or too passive," he said. "You're not going to please almost anyone. But I think she's grounded and she'll do a fabulous job."
The 63-year-old Crowley, CNN's chief political correspondent and host of "State of the Union," is a veteran field reporter. She's covered presidential politics for decades and is known for being unpretentious, chatty and a quick wit. She's a journalist, not a celebrity TV personality or a provocateur who stirs up fights just for ratings.
"There's something old-school reporter about her," said Alan Schroeder, author of "Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High Risk TV." "She seems like somebody in that vein of tough-talking journalists who have kind of seen it all. I think it's going to be hard to pull one over on her."
Crowley said she expects to guide the conversation and ask follow-ups. She also plans to press the candidates to actually answer the questions asked.
"Either go to the next question or say, 'Wait a second, wait a second, they asked oranges, you responded apples, could you please respond to oranges?'" she said. "Or, 'Hey, while we're on this, could you please explain why this happened or what do you think about this?'"
Statements like that reportedly alarmed the campaigns of Obama and Romney, who complained to the Commission on Presidential Debates that they agreed to a plan that did not envision the moderator asking follow-up questions of the candidates. Crowley did not sign that agreement.
Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki refused Monday to comment on the secret negotiations over the format of the debate. The Romney campaign would not comment.
Crowley is the first woman in 20 years chosen to moderate a presidential debate. Crowley said she thinks of herself as a journalist, not a female journalist. But the reaction she's received changed her perspective.
"Young women and older women would hug me and say, 'I'm so excited for this, I'm so excited,'" Crowley told McClatchy. "When it feels like a barrier breaker and it's new to a generation of women to see a female on TV talking to these candidates, then I accept that it matters. That the optics of it matter."
The last woman to moderate a presidential debate was Carole Simpson, then of ABC News, who moderated a 1992 town hall-style debate between Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot. Simpson has complained that she and Crowley were both marginalized by being assigned a format where audience members ask the questions. Crowley said she'll wait to see how the debate goes before passing judgment on the format.
The choice of Crowley came after three high school girls collected 170,000 signatures on an online petition urging the Commission on Presidential Debates to choose a female moderator.
"I've never seen a woman asking those questions, it's been men all my life," said one of them, 16-year-old Emma Axelrod, whose father is CBS News reporter Jim Axelrod. "So how am I supposed to feel about myself when I'm told that only men can do this?"
Women are still playing catch-up when it comes to television news, said Frank Sesno, an Emmy-award winning television journalist who now directs George Washington University's school of media and public affairs.
"It's only been recently with Katie Couric and now Diane Sawyer that we've had women break the glass ceiling in the anchoring of nightly news; we still don't have enough women in senior executive ranks," Sesno said.
Sesno, who worked with Crowley at both Associated Press Radio and CNN, said she is skilled at cutting through the world of Washington insider politics and sound bites and getting at what matters to people.
"That will be what she brings to the debate and that is really, really important," he said. "Because these candidates have to be steered toward putting their wonkery into the context of real people's lives. If their sound bites can be translated into 'what does it really mean,' then that would be a great thing.'"
Crowley said she's trying to stay calm as she prepares to moderate on Tuesday. "I mean, it's a great gig, what can I say. I am really excited about it and I'm nervous about it, everything that you might expect I would be, I am," she said.
Crowley, who laughs warmly and easily, both at her own jokes and those of others, grew up in St. Louis as the daughter of a furniture salesman. She worked her way up from traffic and crime reports to the AP radio network, NBC and then CNN in 1987.
She said she's been talking to everyone from Syria policy experts to "the guy that cuts my hair" to get ready for the debate.
"I don't think it's something you go in saying, 'I'm going to be this kind of moderator,'" Crowley said. "In the end the moderator wants a debate. I want these two guys to engage, and whatever I have to do to get them to engage, whether it's to stop it, encourage it, let it roll, not let it roll, I think that's what you do."
There's far more to Crowley than being the first female in two decades to moderate a presidential debate, said Fox News correspondent Henry. "To define her as 'the woman moderator' is nonsense. She's a terrific reporter, an amazing wordsmith, a great friend, and oh, by the way, she happens to be a woman. She is the real deal," Henry said.
Crowley is known for meditating in her Washington office, and has done so to help get ready for the debate. She has a "calmness, a coolness about her," Henry said, that will shine through on Tuesday.
"I can guarantee you a few things. She's going to be ready, she's going to be prepared. But she's also going to be rested, have a little fun, and realize this is an important night but it's also just one night in her life, the president's life and Mitt Romney's life," Henry said.


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subset: commoncrawl


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The Lipscomb Lady Bisons basketball team was one of the teams honored. They have earned the recognition two years in a row.
"We appreciate our student-athletes hard work in the classroom," said Lady Bisons coach Frank Bennett. " We have been blessed with good retention rate for several years. All of the student-athletes who complete their fourth year of eligibility graduate."
Belmont, the conference's current All-Academic Champion, led the way with four programs earning APR recognition. The men's basketball program, paced by Andy Wicke, a Lowe's All-Senior All-America, joined 35 other men's programs to earn NCAA acknowledgement. Of that group, only 16, including Belmont, won 20 games. The Bruins' baseball, men's soccer and women's golf teams also received public recognition.
A trio of sports from Mercer earned acclaim - baseball, men's cross country and women's tennis. With Belmont baseball also making the list, the A-Sun joins only six other conferences to have multiple baseball programs earning APR recognition.
"It is a great source of pride for the A-Sun to have these programs receive national recognition," Atlantic Sun Commissioner Ted Gumbart said. "Congratulations to all the student-athletes on these teams, and to the coaches and faculty who work so hard to maintain the highest standards. The A-Sun places great importance in the balance between student and athlete, and these programs achieve at the highest level, showing a great commitment to our work in Building Winners for Life."
The NCAA is honoring 767 Division I sports teams with public recognition awards for their latest multi-year Academic Progress Rate scores, or 11.9 percent of the approximately 6,484 Division I teams. The list includes 448 women's teams and 319 men's or mixed squads. A total of 205 institutions, out of 331 Division I colleges and universities, placed at least one team on the top APR list. The public recognition awards are part of the broad Division I academic reform effort.
The APR provides a real-time look at a team's academic success each semester or quarter by tracking the academic progress of each student-athlete. The APR includes eligibility, retention, and graduation in the calculation and provides a clear picture of the academic culture in each sport. High-performing teams receiving public recognition awards this year posted APR scores ranging from 976 to a perfect 1,000.


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Aug 28, 2005 9:28am
Director at Large
It's 1:50pm, most of the members have checked in to their respective flights (BA 284 & BA 286) to London, and are making their way to their gates.
The trip from DVC was uneventful, and when we arrived all the equipment was lined up and ready to check-in, thanks to Jason "the equipment guy"! Dave and Pete handed out all the tickets, made announcements and things have run very smoothly.
I have 3 computers and will be handing them out to the members to continue their blogging ... so stay tuned!
Pictures at SFO are available here.


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Gas prices falling during holiday
North Carolinians go long distances for family and poultry.
According to AAA Carolinas, an estimated 1.26 million residents will travel more than 50 miles during the Thanksgiving holiday � 13 percent of the estimated 2011 state population. About 1.13 million have or will hit the road. That�s 11.7 percent of the state population and 90 percent of all travelers. The number is up by about 11,000 people from last year.
The N.C. Highway Patrol has stepped up its efforts to handle the congestion and its effects.
�We�ve got every available man working for the Thanksgiving holiday period,� Trooper Doug Coley said. �We�ve also got a click-it-or-ticket program we�re running Wednesday through Sunday. We�re going to be targeting aggressive drivers, speeding, and � as usual � we�ll be looking for impaired drivers.�
You may have been a part of the busy roadways Wednesday, when 45 percent of all travelers were expected to be on the road. Around 36 percent of people will return Sunday. Coley said sometimes drivers let the pressure of the holiday get to them, creating dangerous situations.
�People get impatient when they�re driving,� he said. �They maybe have a time schedule that they�re trying to keep � sometimes being impatient will cause them to drive at speeds they�re not used to traveling at, or at a speed that�s not safe.�
Coley added, �People will take chances passing when maybe it�s unsafe to pass and change lanes when they haven�t checked their blind spots or used turn signals to let other people know. But speed is the prime issue when it comes to people traveling. They don�t give distance to people they�re traveling behind, and some type of abrupt stop causes a collision or a hazard.�
Coley suggests drivers take care to make sure there�s a safe distance between their car and others, and if there are two or more people going on a long trip, switching out drivers so no one gets too fatigued.
If you are traveling by car, it�s one of the best times of the year for gas prices in what the U.S. Energy Information Agency considers the Lower Atlantic region: North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. Regional gas prices are down 2.8 cents from last year � an average $3.29 a gallon for regular unleaded.
�We�ve seen national gas prices come down about 25 cents a gallon in the last 30 days,� said Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst with gasbuddy.com. �Similarly in North Carolina, we�ve seen the average price also drop by about 31 cents a gallon in the last 30 days, so that�s a pretty good consistent pattern that is consistent with the winter-blend gasoline selling during the fourth quarter.�
One of the reasons more people are taking to the road is because of the lower gas prices, according to AAA Carolinas.
�Thanksgiving is the most traditional family holiday with the �turkey day� always coming on a Thursday, creating a guaranteed four-day holiday for many,� David E. Parsons, president and CEO of AAA Carolinas, said in a statement. �The lower price at the pump will encourage more people to drive this Thanksgiving.�
Compared to last year, though, most other regions of the country aren�t doing as well. The Central Atlantic and New England regions have the worst of it, seeing a 24.1 cent and an 18 percent increase over last year, respectively. Laskoski said it comes down to refinery capacity. Nationally, the refinery capacity rate is at 86 percent, but because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy, northeastern refineries are operating at 66 percent capacity.
If 13 percent of North Carolinians are traveling, though, that means 87 percent are staying home or not going far.
�I�m staying in town, but my daughter�s traveling from Winston-Salem,� said Hugo resident Mabelene Moore, refueling at the Marathon gas station on North Queen Street this week.
Teri Rush will be staying at her home, though she said she�ll be cooking for her family, including her daughter who travels from Greenville, and her son from Snow Hill.
�We�ll all be at Emerald Isle, which is paradise anyway,� Rush said.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow him on Twitter at WolfeReports.
Breakout Box
Construction-related travel delays can be expected at the following locations:
n N.C. 12 from the Bonner Bridge to Rodanthe (Dare County) � intermittent closures due to weather.
n U.S. 17 Business in Jacksonville (Onslow County) � reduced to two-lane, two-way traffic on the Buddy Phillips Bridge
n U.S. 74/76 in Wrightsville Beach (New Hanover County) on the Wrightsville Draw Bridge is reduced to one lane in each direction
n U.S. 421 in Carolina Beach (New Hanover County) � reduced to one lane in each direction at Snow Cut�s Bridge
n I-73 in Greensboro (Guilford County) � reduced to three lanes in each direction from two miles south of Wendover Ave. (Exit 101) to one mile north of I-85 (Exit 97)