With nearly 800 comments by the time I read it, I was too late to the party to comment in Trifecta's VP Debate Rules Changed diary, but wondered if anyone else noticed this juicy tidbit in Healy's article.
In addition to the excerpt posted by Trifecta, Patrick Healy's NYT article Pact on Debates seems to reveal a few other interesting details! Let's see what we have here.
Healy spends eight paragraphs discussing the VP debate negotiations and conflicts, with language like this,
...but the McCain camp fought for and won a much more structured approach...
...At the insistence of the McCain campaign...
...The wrangling was chiefly between the McCain-Palin camp and the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which is sponsoring the forums
Then some 10 paragraphs into the article, most of which discussed the issues in the VP Debate negotiations, Healy finally brings up the Presidential debate negotiations:
The negotiations for the three 90-minute debates between the men at the top of the tickets were largely free of brinksmanship. Neither side threatened to pull out, and concerns about camera angles and stagecraft were minor.
Reading that last sentence I'm picturing John Stewart's double-take! What? Did he just imply that they threatened to pull out during the VP Debate negotiations??!! Oh yes he did!
Though Healy doesn't specifically say, "On the other hand", he sets up the Presidential Debate negotiation paragraph in such a way as to contrast how smoothly those negotiations went compared to the VP debate negotiations.
Isn't he implying that McCain-Palin threatened to pull out of the debates?
Who says the things that DID NOT happen in a negotiation unless there was some expectation or previous history of that happening in a negotiation.
Still talking specifically about the Presidential Debate negotiations, he then informs us:
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic nominee for president, and Mr. McCain did not intercede personally to settle any disputes. They agreed to one substantive change to the format originally proposed by the debate commission, giving them two minutes apiece to make a statement at the beginning of each segment on a new topic.
Are you kidding me here? Why do you even need to mention such a thing unless this is what happened in the other debate negotiation?
Oh and then back to the previous paragraph, I noticed Healy found it important to point out that in the Presidential Debate negotiations, there wasn't any "brinksmanship", which curiously means (I had to look it up, lol)
brinksmanship: the technique or practice of maneuvering a dangerous situation to the limits of tolerance or safety in order to secure the greatest advantage, esp. by creating diplomatic crises.
Hmmm, veddy interestink.
Come on Healy, spill the beans. How far did these babies have to go to get their way?