Iowa Family Forum

Thanksgiving Forum Shatters Myths

- Daren Jonescu
Monday, November 21, 2011

After a month of growing mythology surrounding Newt Gingrich as the one Republican who could debate rings around Obama, the Iowa Family Forum—the first debate of this season that allowed the candidates room to move and time to explain—ought to have changed the game significantly. The Forum had flaws, but it shone a light on something hidden by the formats of the previous debates: For all his ersatz erudition and ready-to-hand citations, Gingrich’s actual positions are vague, his statements of principle confusing, and his bravado derivative—unsurprising discoveries about the most Machiavellian candidate in the race. By contrast, the truth surely did set the other candidates free, as they spoke without fear and without reservation, in some cases for the first time during this debate season.

To begin with, the format of this event was conducive to thoughtful, soul-searching answers, partly due to the Christian conservative tendency of the questions, but mostly due to the relaxed atmosphere of the setting. Sitting close together at a house of worship; talking about God, faith and responsibility around a table decorated as for Thanksgiving; questioned—rather than interrogated—by people who do not instinctively regard their role as that of advance-workers for the Obama campaign, everyone spoke his mind, and expressed himself from the heart, rather than strictly from his notes (a predicament demanded by the severe time limits of the other debates). Rather than stiff, awkward people trying to figure out how to get a word in edgewise, or how to persuade listeners about complicated matters in three sentences or less, everyone had his opportunities to expound, to impress, to offer (of all things) a sense of his soul to the audience.

The moderator of the forum was Frank Luntz. To his credit, he spoke to the candidates without condescension, and asked questions that, for the most part, helped to keep the candidates focused on their own positions, and on their own priorities, rather than allowing them to slide into attack mode, a mode which so frequently devolves into a game of hide-and-seek, as candidates conceal their own shortcomings behind their well-prepared critiques of others’ views.

Having said that, this observer could not help sensing a certain bias towards the hot commodity of the moment—not in time-allotment, thankfully, but in the nature and ordering of questions; in the passive acceptance, and often direct praise, of the former Speaker’s answers; in the moderator’s frequent near-argumentative interruptions of, and challenges to, other candidates; and in his references to Gingrich’s past statements as authoritative on various issues, as though Gingrich were the one person on the stage who had already framed and answered these issues conclusively, while the others were still trying to define themselves (i.e. as though Gingrich were not precisely the one with some explaining to do).

The entire discussion is recommended viewing, and is readily available on the internet. Thus, every detail need not be attended to here. I will, however, draw attention to some particularly representative examples of the diminishing of Newt’s aura, and, by contrast, the growth of the conservative contenders.

In previous debates, Gingrich’s strength lay in his ability to throw in an articulate attack on a common enemy, such as the moderator, or President Obama. In this friendlier context, the moderator was not a possible target, and the focus on matters of the soul left Obama out of the direct line of fire through most of the discussion. At one point, clearly anxious to get this line in, Gingrich took a general discussion of freedom and responsibility and twisted it to allow the introduction of Occupy Wall Street, on which he delivered a prepared statement, concluding with the planned applause bait, “Go get a job, right after you take a bath.â€