During Monday night's debate, the presidential candidates weren't the only people in the room who brought on the wrath of the internet. Moderator Bob Schieffer drew some negative attention for his inability to steer the debate away from the state of Massachusetts and toward the event's theme which, by the way, was foreign policy.
Schieffer entered the debate on the good side of the most truculent figure in politics:
Then Schieffer kicked off the debate by asking a particularly convoluted question on Libya:
The first segment is the challenge of a changing Middle East and the new face of terrorism. I'm going to put this into two segments so you'll have two topic questions within this one segment on the subject. The first question, and it concerns Libya. The controversy over what happened there continues. Four Americans are dead, including an American ambassador. Questions remain. What happened? What caused it? Was it spontaneous? Was it an intelligence failure? Was it a policy failure? Was there an attempt to mislead people about what really happened?
In general, Schieffer's questions were a bit ... meandering:
And in the end, all the internet saw was this:
To be fair, there were moments when Schieffer really did try. When he asked Republican candidate Mitt Romney about possible defense budget cuts, he was told to visit Romney's website. Twitter was not pleased.
And neither was our live blogger Richard Adams:
Can someone check on Bob Schieffer? He might be dead. My own pulse isn't looking too good either.
What did you think of Schieffer's performance? Where would you rank him in the pantheon of 2012 debate moderators?
