Stump the Candidate: Politicians Vie To Trip Up Opponents

You think reporters ask politicians obnoxious questions? Members of the press are as earnest as Eagle Scouts compared with the way politicians question each other.

Given the chance to ask one question of their opponents during campaign debates the past few weeks, candidates have tended toward the trivial, the petty and the petulant. Their queries seem to come straight out of the Gotcha Grab Bag.

"Pat, how many school districts are there in Bucks County and what are their names?" House incumbent Michael G. Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) asked his Democratic opponent, Patrick Murphy, in a debate last week. Murphy failed the all-politics-is- really -local quiz.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) played "Jeopardy!" with Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. in one of their encounters last month. Santorum first asked Casey to name Iran's former president, who recently visited the United States. Casey couldn't come up with the correct response: Mohammad Khatami. Nor could Casey come up with an answer to this Santorum stumper: What percentage of the state's public-school employee pension funds are invested in companies that had made a list of the nation's top job exporters? (Santorum said the answer was 25 percent.)

In a Virginia Senate debate, Democratic candidate Jim Webb asked his Republican rival, Sen. George Allen, about the "situation in the Senkaku Islands." Surely, Webb suggested, Allen knew about the situation, which Webb asserted "could blow up into an international incident."

Um, well, no. Allen harrumphed, saying he would "have to study the issue more fully," as Webb went on to explain that the oil-rich Senkakus, which are northeast of Taiwan, are claimed by China and Japan.

Point (sort of) scored. Or maybe payback delivered. The Senkaku question had the distinct aroma of a question Allen asked of Webb in an earlier debate: Could Webb give the location of Craney Island? When Webb could not, Allen happily noted that Craney -- a man-made dirt mound that is the proposed site of a cargo terminal -- sits between the James and Elizabeth rivers in Hampton Roads.

Question Time sessions like these rarely elicit a correct response from an opponent -- that's kind of the idea -- but they sometimes draw interesting nonresponses.

There was, for example, this challenge thrown down by Maryland Republican senatorial candidate Michael Steele to his Democratic opponent Ben Cardin in a debate last week: Name the two endpoints of Metro's proposed Purple Line.

For those playing along at home, the correct response is Bethesda and New Carrollton. But Cardin clearly didn't know. He stammered "Chevy Chase." Then he paused and snapped, "I'm not going to answer your question."

But just when Steele was getting ready for his victory lap, he stumbled, too. The next day he held a press conference at the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station in North Bethesda to highlight Cardin's apparent dimness on the issue. Except that the Grosvenor station is no longer part of the Purple Line's proposed route; the site currently under consideration is two Metro stops, and four miles, south. Steele seemed surprised when he learned this from reporters. Pressed on why he held his media event at the wrong station, it was his turn to snap: "This is where they told me to come," he said.

This episode would seem to invoke a basic rule, germane to debating politicians as well as to lawyers questioning trial witnesses: Don't ask the question if you don't already know the answer.