Ok, so that's not really fair, Lehrer is certainly a smart man, but I thought he was, once again, miserable as the moderator. I really like Lehrer as a newsman and I watch the News Hour regularly, but in these debates, he is seriously deficient when it comes to asking questions.

I'm still in shock that we had a 90 minute debate about foreign policy and there wasn't a single question about Israel and Palestine. Not one. Now, I understand that Iraq and the "War on Tara" have dominated the headlines, but if you don't think that resolving the Israel/Palestine issue will go a long way to aliening tensions around the world, you're fooling yourself. The Bush administration has made statements about what it would like to see, a Palestinian state, but it has done nothing substantive in 3 1/2 years, seriously dropping the ball after the efforts made by the Clinton administration came so close to a solution. What is Kerry's position on what our role should be in the peace process? I haven't a clue but he has never said anything about it and Lehrer didn't ask about it once.

Nor did he ask about so many fronts that he could have brought up to increase the breadth of the discussion including, our relationship with China or with Cuba, the problems of Pakistan, anything about NAFTA or other trade issues, anything about WTO, IMF and globalization, anything about the war on drugs, anything about our deteriorating relationship with our European allies, nothing about NATO, nothing about our unilateral decisions to back away from international treaties, nothing about the Geneva Conventions, nothing about human rights, and nothing, not one thing about our friendly pal, Saudi Arabia. It was disappointing to say the least.

Lehrer has moderated the last 4 presidential debates. It's time to put him out to pasture permanently. We need someone who is going to ask tough questions on a wide variety of subjects. Charles Gibson is up next in the town hall debates on domestic policy. Can he do better? I hope so, but I honestly don't know much about him.