--- title: Presidential Debate: Moderators Were Expertly Chosen description: This year's slate of presidential debate moderators is diverse both in ways that reflect America as well as the news business. canonical: https://time.com/4477608/presidential-debate-moderators-2016/ author: Daniel D'Addario article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-09-02T16:18:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:48:00.634Z article:section: Politics og:title: The Presidential Debate Moderators Were Expertly Chosen og:description: A diverse slate that reflects America and the news business. og:url: https://time.com/4477608/presidential-debate-moderators-2016/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e99c4a487b267db/6988a4b8fb4eac442c88ef96/debate-moderators.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2087 og:image:height: 1174 og:image:alt: debate-moderators og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Presidential Debate Moderators Were Expertly Chosen twitter:description: A diverse slate that reflects America and the news business. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e99c4a487b267db/6988a4b8fb4eac442c88ef96/debate-moderators.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Presidential Debate Moderators Were Expertly Chosen > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=2cf3eaa0-38f5-4ab4-8eec-e2f5203ab4a5&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: What A Clinton vs Trump Debate Might Look Like [Watch (HLS stream): What A Clinton vs Trump Debate Might Look Like](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jeUYQHqg.m3u8) (2:04)  _Published 2016-03-31_  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Sep 2, 2016 4:18 PM UTC  Lester Holt, Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper, and Chris Wallace. Lester Holt, Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper, and Chris Wallace. Getty Images  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Sep 2, 2016 4:18 PM UTC One more question about the upcoming presidential and vice-presidential debates has been solved: [The identity of the moderators](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/business/presidential-debate-moderators-lester-holt-chris-wallace.html). The [presidential debates](http://time.com/money/4506220/presidential-election-debates-how-to-watch/) are to be moderated by NBC’s Lester Holt, ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper (doubling up for the town hall-style debate), and Fox News’s Chris Wallace. The vice-presidential debate, meanwhile, is to be moderated by CBS’s Elaine Quijano. It’s a slate that’s diverse both in ways that reflect America—including two women, two nonwhite journalists, and an openly gay man—as well as the news business. The slate ranges from a host on an identifiably conservative news outlet to an old-school nightly news anchor to a fresh, less-recognizable face. While the grousing over debate moderation and timing from Republican nominee Donald Trump throughout this election cycle had given rise to much speculation over what moderators his campaign might agree to, this list is about the most auspicious anyone interested in TV fireworks could hope for. (The moderators were, as always, chosen by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which governs the timing and moderation of the quadrennial events.) Part of what makes the group so exciting is a sense of turnover. None of these moderators are exactly [millennials](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/24/who-should-moderate-the-debates-a-millennial/?utm%5Fterm=.0d90251a549e)—and nor should they be, given the level of public trust and sheer broadcasting experience it takes to credibly pull a gig like this off. But they’re all new to the general-election debate game, except for Raddatz, who stood out as a breakout star moderating the Joe Biden-Paul Ryan vice presidential debate with sharp knowledge and attention to detail in 2012. Raddatz stood out all the more against last cycle’s presidential debates, moderated in large part by a prior generation of broadcasters taking their last lap. The first of 2012’s presidential debates was moderated by PBS’s Jim Lehrer, who, in his twelfth go-round, saw his generally too-gentle-by-half, dispassionate style give way to something like indifference as the candidates went after one another more relentlessly than was easy to follow. Fellow veteran debate moderator Bob Schieffer, of CBS, did a little better, and CNN’s Candy Crowley’s [willingness to correct the record](http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/18/politics/fact-check-crowley-critics-debate/) onstage sparked conservatives criticism but was utterly compelling as pure TV and revealing as to how candidate Mitt Romney reacted under unexpected pressure. Crowley’s perceived pro-Obama advocacy in that debate, along with the fact of her, like Lehrer and Schieffer, now having retired, probably made her a non-starter when it came to choosing this cycle’s debates. We’re the better for it. The difference in rhetorical style between candidate Trump in particular from past nominees demands a set of moderators who have not dug in deep grooves on their particular modes of questioning. I can imagine nothing less informative than Lehrer’s hands-off mode of allowing the candidates relatively free rein, honed over cycle after cycle of familiar styles of candidate rhetoric. By contrast, Chris Wallace—one of Fox News’s nonpartisan news anchors rather than an opinion broadcaster, so much so that he’s done great work interviewing Hillary Clinton during the campaign—was refreshingly blunt with his lines of questioning during the Republican debates, as when he [challenged Trump](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/28/how-fox-newss-chris-wallace-set-a-bear-trap-for-donald-trump/) on his deficit calculations. He seemed to appreciate that the challenge in keeping the debates on-topic and actually informative, this time, was different. Wallace was one of the sharpest of the moderators in the lengthy cycle of primary debates, a cycle that had an almost bizarre-seeming level of vigor and excitement (not all of it due to candidate Trump, who seemed to lose interest in the process as the field winnowed). If he and his counterparts can transfer the energy that Americans experienced throughout the primary debate process, meaningful light might actually be shed both on Trump and on Clinton, a candidate who, as has been widely noted by a press that wants her to host a press conference, avoids press conferences. A Raddatz or a Cooper or a Wallace, all of whom have shown willingness to press their points and ask aggressive follow-ups, could go some way towards closing the gap between the willingness to answer tough questions Clinton owes the public and what she’s so far been willing to do. While it’s a truism that televised debates won the election for John F. Kennedy in 1960, it certainly seems in recent cycles as though the candidate who was going to win the election won the election with little thanks to the debates. (If ever a debate was going to change an election outcome, it was in 2012, when Romney took advantage of the slack Lehrer provided to talk circles around the incumbent president. Romney still lost.) None of these moderators are likely to change the outcome given the dug-in nature of the viewership at home, both to the left and to the right. And yet the mere fact of their freshness—that, while they’re certainly part of the journalism establishment, they don’t yet seem like old hands at the moderating-presidential-debates thing—is cause enough for hope, that the broadcast will be entertaining and enlightening both in a way it too rarely has lately been. ## Transcript I beat Hillary Clinton in many polls, the queue poll just came out. America didn't stop being great. We have to make it whole again. I'm the only one that beats Hillary Clinton. I have not started on Hillary yet. Believe me, I will start soon. [ APPLAUSE ] I haven't even started. If you don't get an actual check From the Mexican government for 8 or 10 or $ 12 billion, whatever it will cost. How are you going to make them pay for the wall? I will. He's talking about a very tall wall. And the wall just got ten feet taller. That would run the entire border. Paid for by Mexico. That he would somehow get the Mexican government to pay for. We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out. You know it's just Fantasy. [ NOISE ] I would work quickly to present to the Congress my plans for raising the minimum wage. Taxes too high, wages too high. Well, you know both Bill and I have been very blessed, neither of us came from wealthy families, and we've worked really hard our entire lives. I took one million dollars and I turned it into Okay, one million ten billion dollars. I've come up with a tax plan that many, many people like Now- Very. [ NOISE ] They may not care much about their lives, but they do care, believe it or not, about their family's lives. [ APPLAUSE ] A diplomacy is not about getting to the perfect solution- We need tough people, we need toughness. It's about how you balance the risk. I would bring back water boarding. And I'd bring back a helluva lot worse, than what we're boarding. We will not send American combats groups back to Syria or Iraq, that is off the table. We talk about Iran and that's one of the worst deals ever made I'm asking people to support me because I think I'm the most qualified, most experienced and ready person to be the President. If I'm elected to be President We will win and we will win and we will win. Thank you. 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