Lehrer: ‘Hands-Off’ Debates Are Future

Now that “everybody is pretty well chilled-out” over Jim Lehrer’s lame performance as moderator in last week’s presidential debate, the PBS vet is able to clarify that the way he led (or didn’t lead) the debate is actually a new style of hands-off moderating that will soon be the way of the debating future. “The whole point was...if there was going to be any challenging, the candidates were going to have to do it themselves,” Lehrer explained to Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Monday night. ”I said I was going to facilitate the challenging, but I wasn’t going to do it myself.” He had actually planned to try out this new style of moderating during the 2008 election, but John McCain “didn’t want to play, so it didn’t work.”