User:Buster7/Commander-in-Chief Forum

'''THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT OF AN ARTICLE ABOUT A POLITICAL HOUR IN TIME. IT HAS BEEN STARTED BY A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT WITH AN ADMITTED POINT OF VIEW. ANY COLLABORATION TO ACHEIVE NEUTRALITY IS APPRECIATED....B7.... The first of possibly many future Forums took place during the unique (to say the least) 2016 election cycle. There will be another, the second, in 2020. This is a work in progress. Perhaps it will be best to put some distance of time between the event and the November election. B7 10/26/16'''

'''I have created another article working space at User:Buster7/Commander-in-Chief Forum, 2016. Since it includes the date in the title, it may become the "live" article....B7'''

The Commander-in-Chief Forum was a live televised event presented by NBC News and MSNBC and moderated by TODAY Show co-anchor Matt Lauer from the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan. The participants were 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The objective was to focus exclusively on issues pertaining to defense, foreign policy, and veterans. The first forum took place on September 7, 2016.

IAVA
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is a nonprofit 501c3 veterans organization founded by Paul Rieckhoff, an activist and veteran of the United States Army and the Iraq War. IAVA was founded in 2004 to provide resources to and a community for post-9/11 veterans. The organization is headquartered in New York City and maintains a policy office in Washington, DC. IAVA’s mission is to unite, empower and connect post-9/11 veterans through education, advocacy and community. Its programs include non-partisan advocacy on Capitol Hill, data-driven research on post-9/11 veteran issues, veterans transition assistance through its Rapid Response Referral Program (RRRP), and community building through its VetTogether and online community events. The organization currently has 187,808 veteran members and 238,540 supporters.

Advocacy
IAVA has been involved in, and at times led, the passage of a number of pieces of legislation since its establishment. The organization publishes an annual policy agenda that focuses on recommendations for Congress, the Executive Branch, Private Sector, State Nonprofits and other stakeholders. The IAVA Policy Agenda has four priorities: combatting suicide among troops and veterans, recognizing and improving services for women veterans, reform governmental issues for veterans and defending veteran and military education benefits

The First Forum
On September 7, 2016, IAVA hosted the first televised Commander-in-Chief Forum with presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump appearing on the same stage in back-to-back 1/2 hour sections. A coin flip determined the order of appearance, Trump won and decided to go second.. The Forum was presented by NBC News and MSNBC and was moderated by TODAY Show co-anchor Matt Lauer and took place from the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan, New York. The audience was made up of mostly veterans and active duty service members. It was the first time the two candidates were on the same stage. Hillary Clinton went first. She stood for most of her replies to specific questions from the attendees. The candidates were requested by the moderator to keep attacks toward their counterparts to a minimum.

Moderator
Matt Lauer drew some criticism on social media for the perceived imbalance of his questions to the nominees. There were charges of unfairness, sloppiness and sexism (NYT). The initial questions to Mrs. Clinton were off-topic and focussed on "the emails problem" rather than on Veteran issues. Clinton spoke to the different potential classifications a document might have and that none of the emails were "Top Secret", "Classified" or "Confidential". Half of her allotted half hour was spent on the email issue and other weightier topics (NYT) were rushed along. Lauer said "As briefly as you can" as Clinton prepared to answer a question from the audience. Lauer was perceived to not allow her to complete an answer before asking another. He was not so forceful with Mr. Trump. He did not stop or interrupt Trump one time.

Factchecking

 * Wasington Post

Clinton segment
The moderators first questions dealt with the emails. Lauer asked her to use descriptive words to explain the necessities of being Commander-in-Chief. She offered____,_____,_____ and____. Lauer intejected with, "Judgement?". Mrs. Clinton agreed but was then put on the defensive regarding her judgement and the emails, as Sec of State. She admitted, “It was a mistake to have a personal [email] account.” She faced direct and sometimes uncomfortable questions from an audience of military veterans. She rose from her stool, stood, looked them in the eye and nodded with attention. Later, she offered, "My highest counter-terrorism goal was defeating ISIS". Also. "We're not putting troops into IRAQ ever again, and we're not putting them in Syria. We’re going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops." She said she was against privatization of the VA. She wanted to be sure that Trump's support for the war was acknowledged:''“Now, my opponent was for the war in Iraq. He says he wasn’t. You can go back and look at the record. He supported it. He told Howard Stern he supported it.”''

Trump segment
Lauer did not rush or interrupt Trump or push for details...except for Trumps support of Purin. Trump seemed more relaxed than Clinton but gave few policy explanations. Trump negatively commented on Clintons political history but offered vague responses to his own history. He praised Russia's leader Putin's 82% approval rating even though he knew "it's a different system." Trump castigated Obama for setting a due date for withdrawing troops from Iraq. BUT....it was GWBush that signed-on for the withdrawal....not Obama and Lauer said nothing. He criticized Pres Obama for an mid-September incident in China (stairway kerfuffle). "I think it’s very sad, when he [Obama] lands in Saudi Arabia, and he lands in Cuba, and there aren’t high officials to even greet him. This is the first time in the history — the storied history of Air Force One." (Not True) "Do you want me to start naming some of the things Obama does?" He besmirched current military generals saying they had been "reduced to rubble." He promised to replace the active generals: "They’ll probably be different generals, to be honest with you. I mean, I’m looking at the generals, today, you probably saw, I have a piece of paper here, I could show it, 88 generals and admirals endorsed me today."

Trump pointed to a 2004 Esquire story to prove he did not support the Iraq war. "I happened to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq. You can look at Esquire magazine from ’04. You can look at before that."(((Worthy of Note: Esquire has added an editor’s note to its August 2004 story. The note reads: “The following story was published in the August 2004 issue of Esquire. During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed to have been against the Iraq War from the beginning, and he has cited this story as proof. The Iraq War began in March 2003, more than a year before this story ran, thus nullifying Trump’s timeline.))) He promised massive military troop and navy expansion: (((Note:double check these numbers))) up to 540,000 Army troops, increased Marine battalions from 23 to 36 and more battleships for the Navy. He problematically responded to questions about his security briefings claiming he could ascertain from their "body language" that the briefers were not happy with President Obama. (((("...dark insinuations without any evidence..." "...a classic Trump moment..." from NYT)))) Trump advocated the old adage of ancient warfare:"To the victor belong the spoils". "If we’re going to get out, take the oil. If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil.… One of the benefits we would have had if we took the oil is ISIS would not have been able to take oil and use that oil to fuel themselves."

Criticism
And then Lauer rushed her thru the last half....
 * Not vetting questioners before the event led to 3 off-topic questions in a row about emails and ate up half of Clintons time right at the start.

Opportunities missed

 * The Sequestration mess and funding were never mentioned
 * Only one question about The VA

Biggest takeaways from the forum
Wednesday’s nationally televised Commander-in-Chief Forum provided the first chance for the major party candidates to present their cases to voters and may have been the highest profile military- and veterans-themed election event in American political history......Many community advocates walked away wanting more from the quick hour-long event, where Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton each talked about security and Veterans Affairs reform for only about 25 minutes. "Today" show host Matt Lauer received criticism as moderator from some camps for focusing too much on Clinton’s emails and allowing Trump to make assertions about his past Iraq War stance, taking away valuable time from other topics....... But the pair did pack a fair amount of news into the short span, both intentionally and unintentionally........VA gets lip service:The forum was sponsored by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and was billed as a chance for a national conversation on veterans issues. But neither candidate fielded a veterans policy question in their first 10 minutes on stage, upsetting many community members. “I felt like the candidates talked about symptoms and not how to solve problems (in the veterans’ community),” said Mike Haynie, executive director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families. “There are a lot of underlying problems that require thoughtful consideration, and I was hoping to hear more of that.”
 * Military Times


 * Both candidates recounted most of their campaign trail talking points..... on expanding health care access and improving VA services. For the first time before a national audience, both talked about veterans suicide, but neither fielded questions on veterans employment or homelessness.
 * On veterans health care, Trump and Clinton still thin on specifics.....On MSNBC after the forum, IAVA CEO Paul Rieckhoff acknowledged that getting an in-depth look into veterans issues and reforms “needed about three hours” and not 30 minutes. IAVA officials acknowledged that campaign staffers and network officials dictated much of the event format and setup, limiting how much they could keep the focus on community issues. But Rieckhoff hailed the event as an important first step in bringing veterans issues into the national election conversation, with plans for similar follow-up events. Bill Rausch, executive director of Got Your 6, said the event did help bring some of that internal veterans community conversation to an audience unfamiliar with VA problems and military life. “However, our issues continued to be defined within the context of the VA, despite the fact that less than half of our 21.8 million vets are enrolled at VA,” he said. “Suicide, foreign policy, and taking care of those who served are not just veterans issues, they are American issues.”


 * Military families, personnel shut out.....Moderator Lauer and veterans at the event peppered Clinton and Trump on Iraq, terrorism, veterans health care and leadership concerns. But military families got only a passing mention, a fact that several advocates lamented. “This election we’ve heard about Gold Star families more than any other, but no one is actually talking about our challenges and needs,” said Jane Horton, a military family advocate whose soldier husband was killed in Afghanistan in 2011. “I know it’s a hard topic to fit in. But we need to be part of the conversation.”. Personnel issues were also largely left aside in favor of a broader foreign policy conversation. The GI Bill and veterans jobs programs were not mentioned. Rieckhoff said he would have liked to see more enlisted veterans included both in the event and on the campaign trail. Both Clinton and Trump have made those issues a focus in policy papers and smaller-scale speeches in recent weeks. But those mentions don’t carry the same weight as a nationally televised forum or debate, leaving advocates wanting more.


 * Trump’s suicide data mistake.....Trump’s responses drew several laughs and eye-rolls from the largely nonpartisan veterans audience, particularly when he said the military’s generals “have been reduced to rubble” under President Barack Obama. But he drew ire from many in the audience and on social media when he mistakenly corrected a veteran who asked how he’d handle the problem of 20 veteran suicides a day. “Actually, it's 22,” he said. “And it's almost impossible to conceive that this is happening in our country, Twenty to 22 people a day are killing themselves. A lot of it is they're killing themselves over the fact that they can't -- they're under tremendous pain and they can't see a doctor.” New data released by VA in July puts the number at 20 veterans a day, most of whom have had little or no connection with VA services. Clinton cited the correct number in her appearance on stage earlier in the event. Though the difference is minor, many advocates addressed concerns that Trump has not engaged enough on the issue, and questioned whether that lack of attention to detail bodes poorly for him engaging on the problem if he wins the White House.


 * Clinton’s weekly meetings.....Most of Clinton’s responses at the event echoed her existing campaign promises, but her response to the veterans suicide issue did make news for veterans groups and organizers. “I'm going to have a meeting every week in the Oval Office, we're going to bring the VA people, we're going to bring the DoD people, because we've got to have a better fit between getting mustered out and getting into the VA system,” she said. “I've met so many vets who get mustered out, who leave the service, they can't find their records from DoD, and those records never make it to the VA. They feel like they're living in a funhouse. They have to go over the same things over and over.” That has been a major point of focus for Obama, who pledged similar (but less frequent) meetings and a fix to the disconnect between the agencies. His efforts have been met with mixed results. A weekly White House meeting on veterans and military personnel issues would be a dramatic increase in attention and focus on those populations.

Effect on Military personnel voting potential

 * The Military Times-IVMF survey was launched one day after the nationally televised Commander-in-Chief Forum, a military focused town hall held in New York City on Sept. 7. The event featured only Trump and Clinton responding to questions from veterans. Johnson was not invited, eliciting widespread criticism from his backers within the nation's veterans community. About 27 percent of respondents said they watched the event, hosted by NBC and the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, but of those only one in 10 said it changed their opinion of the presidential race. Less than 1 percent said it changed how they plan to vote this fall.

Viewer ratings
The forum drew an average of 14.7 million viewers: 3.43 million viewers on MSNBC and 11 million on NBC. The ratings for the forum exceeded most of the numbers for at least nine of the Republican primary debates and all but one of the Democratic primary debates.