The first vice presidential debate of the 2012 election season will be moderated by Martha Raddatz from ABC News.
Who is she?
Raddatz joined ABC News in January 1999 as the network's State Department correspondent. She eventually will move as the White House correspondent before obtaining her current position as senior foreign affairs correspondent in November 2008.
Her current role might be the perfect fit for the vice presidential debate as the Commission on President Debates (CPD) confirmed the theme will be foreign and domestic policy.
Focus on Raddatz will increase as the debate approaches, and if she'll receive the same critiques Jim Lehrer had during the first presidential debate on Wednesday.
As Linda Blackford from The Lexington Herald-Leader noted, a consensus has formed that Raddatz "needs to establish firmer control" during next Thursday's 90-minute debate.
According to the CPD, the debate format will have nine segments with a 10 minute time limit, each. As moderator, Raddatz will give an opening question and Biden and Ryan will each have two minutes to respond. Afterwards, Raddatz will give the candidates time to elaborate on the topic.
Topics for the debate have not been released yet.
In Blackford's report, The Speech Improvement Co. CEO Dennis Becker said, "[Raddatz is] a very bright woman, she's very strong at what she does, but I'm not sure how strong she will be as a moderator. It's going to be interesting to see whether she has the strength to control these men."
The vice presidential debate featuring Joe Biden and Paul Ryan will be on Oct. 11, at 9 p.m. ET from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.
To get familiar with Raddatz, below is a C-SPAN episode of Q&A where she discusses foreign and domestic issues and footage from her reporting at ABC News.
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