10/06/00 2:35 p.m.
He Came, He Shaw
And Bernie lost.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

here was a clear loser in yesterday's vice-presidential debate — moderator Bernard Shaw of CNN.

Occasionally Shaw did the right thing, which was to ask a question and then get out of the way. Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman held a substantive debate about important issues, and Shaw at least made sure the conversation touched on a variety of subjects. It's true that a couple of his questions confronted Cheney more squarely than anything he asked of Lieberman: the one about "taking out" Saddam Hussein, and the one on supporting environmental refuges in Wyoming but not in Alaska. They were hardly improper and Cheney handled them well. But couldn't Shaw have asked Lieberman about, say, school choice or racial preferences — positions where he has, in the past, disagreed with Al Gore?

Shaw's real failing, however, was in asking three of the worst questions ever heard at one of these forums. The first of these read like a press release written by Patricia Ireland: "Gentlemen, this is the 21st century. Yet on average an American working woman in our great nation earns 75 cents for each dollar earned by a working male. What do you males propose to do about it."

It is indeed the 21st century! And Cheney and Lieberman are in fact males! Yet it's about time people like Shaw stopped believing the feminist claptrap on this matter. The truth is, the wage gap between men and women comes close to vanishing when a few factors are considered: job experience, educational background, hours worked, and so on. If a man and a woman have similar work experience, a similar education, work the same number of hours, and hold the same job, they are almost certain to make roughly the same amount of money. This is especially true among younger workers. The primary reason women in the aggregate earn less than men is that they're more likely to take time off work to care for children.

Another silly question: "Washington is a cauldron of political bickering and partisanship. The American people, gentlemen, have had enough. How would you elevate political discourse and purpose?" Did Shaw really expect Cheney and Lieberman to defend "bickering and partisanship"? If only they had. Shaw's namesake, the playwright George Bernard Shaw, once wrote of "the nauseas sham goodfellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use." Apparently Shaw wants more of this fakery. Forums like last night's veep debate would be rendered pointless — as would shows like Shaw's own "Inside Politics" on CNN. And elections, too.

The worst question of all: "Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, you are black for this question. Imagine yourself an African-American. You become the target of racial profiling either while walking or driving. African-American Joseph Lieberman, what would you do about it?" The formulation of this question invited both men to emote; at least Cheney had the good sense to say he couldn't imagine being a black man. It was refreshing to hear a politician utter the equivalent of "I can't feel your pain." Yet there was another problem with the question: It allowed Cheney to avoid saying what the federal government should do, if anything, about racial profiling. Yet Cheney can't be said to have dodged the question, because it was never really put to him.

The Cheney-Lieberman was a very good debate--much better than Tuesday's showdown between Bush and Gore. Yet Bernard Shaw had almost nothing to do with it.

Profile in Courage
Last night, Joe Lieberman maintained that he had "not changed a single position since Al Gore nominated me." This is, of course, correct. He changed his positions right before Gore agreed to nominate him.