Think Progess collected the numbers. During the week following the debate I believe calls for a recourse to a fair, third party -- specifically the League of Women Voters -- NBC news beat ABC news by some 600,000 viewers. And yes, according to TVNewser, that is an unusually wide margin.

              

Last night, performer/journalists went after audience emotional reaction, passed on questions all of us need answered and the result was an uninformative train wreck.

Whatever the effect on this presidential campaign, the impaneled questioners demonstrated conclusively the overarching need for nonprofit, nonpartisan League of Women Voters oversight of political campaign debates.

That's the only approach proven to restrain the otherwise commercially irresistible drive of full-time performer/journalists to use presidential debates the same way they use other forums -- by doing whatever they feel they can get away with to build their own audience numbers and so better pay the bills.

Only the oversight of an impartial gatekeeper who has the authority to bar them from participation can restrain the impulse to ask eyebrow-raising questions which consume time better-used for questions about the issues which will actually preoccupy the time of whoever is actually elected president.

              

San Antonio Pastor John Hagee, in 'NYT' This Sunday, Says McCain Sought His Endorsement, which he of course gave.

E&P Editor Greg Mitchell wrote:

In an interview that will appear in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, controversial televangelist Rev. John Hagee declares, "It's true that [John] McCain's campaign sought my endorsement."
Senator and soon-to-be Republican presidential candidate McCain has attempted to distance himself from some of Hagee's views, much as Democrat Barack Obama is doing in relation to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But unlike McCain, Obama has not stood on stage with Wright and accepted his accolades this year.

From Bill Moyer's Journal we learn that Hagee has suggested that Hurricane Katrina was punishment to the U.S. for its role in removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip. He has called for war with Iran to facilitate "the rapture," and more.

McCain has a history of caring little about such radicalism, or not at all. He says he doesn't support every Hagee view. Which, as intended, leaves McCain in a position of considerable sympathy for the views of Hagee and others like him.

Of course. How else could McCain sustain his friendship and/or close working relationship with Hagee and others of like mind?