Debate commission issues statement defending Lehrer

The Commission on Presidential Debates is defending moderator Jim Lehrer after the PBS host came under fire this week for frequently allowing candidates to violate the rules during Wednesday night's contest.

In a statement provided Friday to The New York Times, the commission’s executive director, Janet Brown, said Lehrer "implemented the format exactly as it was designed by the CPD and announced in July.”

"The Commission on Presidential Debates’ goal in selecting this format was to have a serious discussion of the major domestic and foreign policy issues with minimal interference by the moderator or timing signals," Brown said.

Earlier Friday, Lehrer defended his performance as "effective."

“Based on what the goal was, I saw it as successful,” Lehrer said in an interview with Politico. “I’ve always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it: The moderator should be seen little and heard even less. It is up to the candidates to ask the follow-up questions and challenge one another.”

“I don’t consider that being passive, I consider it being effective,” he continued. “It’s not my job to control the conversation. If the candidates gave me resistance, and I let them talk, to me that’s being an active moderator, not a passive moderator.”

While Lehrer's performance has drawn jeers on social media and late-night television, neither candidate has directly criticized the moderator. At the end of the debate, Obama told Lehrer he had "done a great job," while Romney applauded the moderator's "questions of substance" during a campaign stop Thursday in Virginia.

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