When Martha Raddatz got married 21 years ago, a young law student named Barack Obama attended her wedding. She’s set to host the vice presidential debate tomorrow night and her wedding guest also went on to do well for himself.
When I first saw the headlines on Twitter this morning, my inclination was that, while this was no big deal, it’s silly to have a debate moderator with such as obvious conflict of interest. Upon reading the story, though, I’m not sure there’s even that.
The Daily Caller (“ABC News scrambles to downplay Obama’s attendance at VP debate moderator’s wedding“):
President Barack Obama was a guest at the 1991 wedding of ABC senior foreign correspondent and vice presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz, The Daily Caller has learned. Obama and groom Julius Genachowski, whom Obama would later tap to head the Federal Communications Commission, were Harvard Law School classmates at the time and members of the Harvard Law Review.
After TheDC made preliminary inquiries Monday to confirm Obama’s attendance at the wedding, ABC leaked a pre-emptive statement to news outlets including Politico and The Daily Beast Tuesday, revealing what may have been internal network pressure felt just days before Raddatz was scheduled to moderate the one and only vice-presidential debate Thursday night.
Both Politico and The Daily Beast jumped to ABC and Raddatz’s defense. The Huffington Post, a liberal news outlet, joined them shortly thereafter, while calling “unusual” ABC’s attempt to kill the story before it gained wide circulation.
So . . . Obama was a classmate and friend of the guy Raddatz married, not necessarily of Raddatz herself? Oh, and it turns out that she and Genachowski have been divorced since 1997.
Hell, the bigger scandal here is that Obama appointed his old law school buddy to head up the FCC. Except that that sort of thing happens all the time.
