Candy Crowley of CNN to moderate one of three Obama-Romney debates

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/13/candy-crowley-moderate-presidential-debates

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A woman will moderate one of the set-piece US presidential debates for the first time in a generation, it was announced Monday.

In 1992, ABC's Carole Simpson became the first woman – and first black American – to grill White House hopefuls as part of the official head-to-head battles that mark the run-up to a general election.

Twenty years later, the Commission on Presidential Debates has named Candy Crowley, chief political correspondent for CNN, as one of three moderators set to question Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in a series of encounters to take place in October.

The move will be welcomed by those who have complained of a gender bias when it has come to naming hosts in the past. Earlier this year, three teenage girls from New Jersey set up an online petition titled "It's Time for a Female Moderator: Equality in the 2012 Debates".

More than 120,000 people have since added their names to the petition, which was posted on the change.org website.

Crowley – who will host the second encounter between Romney and Obama on October 16 – is joined on the list of moderators by CBS's Bob Schieffer and Jim Lehrer, executive editor of PBS NewsHour.

The two men will preside over debates that will focus separately on domestic and foreign policy. Crowley will act as moderator in a televised "town hall" event in which members of the public will get to question the two candidates.

A one-off vice-presidential debate will also be hosted by a woman, Martha Raddatz, senior foreign affairs correspondent from ABC News.

Televised head-to-head clashes between presidential candidates have become a mainstay of the US political landscape. The first one took place in 1960, when then-senator John F Kennedy took on vice-president Richard Nixon. The sight of a pale Nixon with beads of sweat on his upper lip was credited as a reason why he lost the election. The next one did not take place until 1976, after which they have featured in every campaign.