way. women have to do that. you don t say to your husband, maybe we should go out next weekend. no, you say, hey, we re going to dinner friday night with my sister and her husband. be ready by 7 and shave the back of your neck. cnn s candy crowley takes the baton next for a town hall style debate. in a rare moment of unity, both the obama and romney campaigns today expressing concerns over suggestions by crowley that she ll assume a broader set of responsibilities than were agreed to by both camps. let me bring in leslie bein see more s more magazine. why doesn t she and not the audience get to ask the questions. crowley is the second to do that. veteran journalist carol simpson was the first one in 1992. good to have both of you. good morning. good to be here.
the more magazine article suggests that you and candy, you are the vanna whites of debate moderators. why are guys getting the more influential jobs? i think it might have something to do with the fact that the commission on presidential debates is made up mostly of men. i think of the 17 members, only two are women. i would have to think if more women were part of the commission, that more women would have a bigger role than we have now. well, and the commission on presidential debates wasn t always in charge. leslie, the article points out, that for a long time, i this i it was 88, it was the league of voters. if you re not the the table, you re probably on the menu. that s the problem here. women should be able to ask the questions just the way anybody else does and there s a lot of controversy coming up about candy s remarks, that she actually wants to take hold of some of the questions, ask follow ups. there s quite a brouhaha about
campaigns saying, hey, you ve got to stick by the rules. and i feel for her. i think she is going to be intimidated by the political parties that have so much control and by the campaigns who say, hey, you ve got to do what we ve told you to do. so the question is will she break rank? will she go rogue, as i called it. leslie? i m hoping she ll go rogue because the men don t play by the rules. women, you you don t have to play by the rules anymore. more magazine editor and carole simpson, it s great to have you both on the program. come back please. thank you. illinois congressman jesse jackson jr. is reportedly now under a criminal investigation. the wall street journal reports the fbi is investigating if the congressman misused campaign money to decorate his house. the report says the fbi is almost done with the probe. so far no comment from jackson s
no specifics. no specifics. no specifics. is there a broader message we re getting here, leslie, about women in the workplace? well, in general, we want women to be present everywhere. it took those girls, they had to get 100,000 signatures just to get a woman even on the agenda for these debates. i think in general if women are not part of the discussion, that is terrible for all of us because we do have slightly different points of view. and i m hoping that candy s going to go out there and slug a few for the women and do what tom brokaw did. he caught a lot of, you know, debates for the way he steered questions in a town hall format. i think she should follow what he does. see what the guys do. come up swinging. number one i know you ve been talking a lot about this, carole, what s your number one piece of advice for candy? i would like people to know that she is probably under tremendous pressure right now. unbelievable, right? from the commission, from the