Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney apparently avoided any major gaffes last night in the third and final nationally televised debate, but the same could not be said for moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News.
You might have missed Schieffer’s flub (see video below) if you understandably fell asleep during the debate or had already switched over to baseball or football.
Schieffer prefaced a question about continuing foreign ad to Pakistan as follows: “We know that Pakistan has arrested the doctor who helped us catch Obama bin Laden.”
Schieffer is far from the only one that has gotten the two names mixed up. Yahoo News points out that many other journalists have fallen victim to the this embarrassing slip of the tongue:
“MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Norah O’Donnell, CBS’ Mark Knoller, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera and local Fox affiliates were among those who fell victim to the Osama-Obama curse in the immediate aftermath of bin Laden’s killing.”
Neither candidate last night reacted visibly to Schieffer’s miscue, however.
Prior to the debate, there was some talk that Schieffer, 75, the host of CBS’s Face The Nation , might be better served by giving way to a younger moderator .
Watch Bob Schieffer refer to “Obama” bin Laden in his debate question:
