[xzins]

Lehrer did a fairly absent job of it. He wasn’t that noticeable, and that’s good. He’s not the story.

On the other hand, when he did interject himself it was largely in interrupting Romney. The few times he interrupted Obama it was almost coaching: “Don’t you want to talk about this?”

Obama seemed to ramble on and on at times, and he didn’t get stopped. Romney would cross his 2 minutes, and the interruptions would begin.

This was fairly infrequent, however, in the total debate. It was just one-sided when it did happen.

[cookcounty]

"On the other hand, when he did interject himself it was largely in interrupting Romney. The few times he interrupted Obama it was almost coaching: “Don’t you want to talk about this?”

Yup...it's hard to be a good ref when one of the teams is just playing horribly (the good part of that is that usually nobody notices that the refs are knocked off their game when the score is 55-7..).

[CMAC51]

Lehrer did a fairly absent job of it. He wasn’t that noticeable, and that’s good. He’s not the story. On the other hand, when he did interject himself it was largely in interrupting Romney. The few times he interrupted Obama it was almost coaching: “Don’t you want to talk about this?” Obama seemed to ramble on and on at times, and he didn’t get stopped. Romney would cross his 2 minutes, and the interruptions would begin. This was fairly infrequent, however, in the total debate. It was just one-sided when it did happen.

Give credit where credit is due. On the first question Romney defanged Lehrer when insisted on having the last reply. "He spoke first, so I get to speak last." The contest was over at that point. Romney had won.