The Morning After: Bad Reviews For Jim Lehr

"I hope Jim Lehrer gets the license plate of the truck that drove over him in this debate."

That was the learned assessment of Today show anchor Al Roker on Twitter following the end of the first presidential debate Wednesday, assailing the work of the PBS news legend.

Eric Deggans  at TampaBay.comwrites the online network lit up with criticism of the semi-retired host's performance, as everyone from Bill Maher to Rob Lowe blamed Lehrer for letting the pace of the debate be controlled by GOP challenger Mitt Romney, who insisted he be allowed to respond to points made by President Obama even when the rules dictated the discussion should move on.

Both Obama and Romney regularly talked over the time allotted to them for responses, with the president even chiding Lehrer at one point when the moderator tried to break in. "I believe I had 5 seconds left before you interrupted me," Obama said with a smile, before continuing for much longer than that time.

Lehrer seemed to decide early in the debate that allowing each man to make his case the way he wanted was better than refereeing the agreed-upon rules or interjecting with too many questions. But the practical result was that the debate often got bogged down in select topics -- huge amounts of time spent on discussing taxes and little spent on other domestic issues -- and Romney controlled the flow of the discussion with a more aggressive performance.

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