This undated handout photo provided by ABC News shows Martha Raddatz. For the first time in two decades, a woman has been tapped to moderate a presidential debate. CNN’s Candy Crowley will moderate one... (Associated Press) 
 
 For the first time in two decades, a woman has been tapped to moderate a presidential debate. 
 
 CNN's Candy Crowley will moderate one of three October debates between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Monday. Jim Lehrer of PBS and Bob Schieffer of CBS News will moderate the other two debates. 
 
 Lehrer will question the candidates during the first debate on Oct. 3 at the University of Denver, focused on domestic topics. 
 
 Crowley's Oct. 16 debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., will use a town hall format, allowing undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization to directly question the candidates. Foreign and domestic policy questions will both be fair game. 
 
 Another female journalist, Martha Raddatz of ABC News, will moderate an Oct. 11 debate at Centre College in Danville, Ky., between Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. 
 
 The debate season will draw to a close on Oct. 22 with a foreign policy-focused debate moderated by Schieffer at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., a crucial swing state. 
 
 All the debates are scheduled for 9 p.m. EST. The commission said it will also launch an Internet-based initiative to educate voters before the debates about the issues that are likely to come up. 
 
 "We're pleased with the selection of the moderators by the debate commission, and look forward to vigorous and substantive debates this fall," said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. 
 
 Pointing out that the first debate will take place less than 10 miles from the sites of both the Aurora, Colo., shootings last month and the 1999 Columbine attacks, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence urged Lehrer on Monday to ask Romney and Obama during the debate for their plans to prevent gun deaths. 
 
 When Crowley takes the stage in Hempstead, it will be the first time a woman has moderated a presidential debate since Carole Simpson of ABC News, who refereed a 1992 debate between President George H.W. Bush, Democrat Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. 
 
 Crowley's selection came after three teenage girls from Montclair, N.J., organized an online petition drive to persuade the commission to pick a woman. More than 122,000 signatures were on the petition when the moderators were announced Monday. 
 
 "Women and men will never be truly equal in our country until they're one and the same in positions of power and both visible in politics," the girls wrote, noting that women will not be represented on either presidential ticket this year. 
 
 Backing up the call for a female moderator were Simpson, numerous newspaper editorials and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who took to Twitter on Monday to congratulate Crowley. 
 
 "Very glad that the Presidential Debate Commission chose 1st woman to moderate a prez debate in 20 yrs," Pelosi wrote. 
 
 Host of the Sunday political talk show "State of the Union," Crowley is CNN's chief political correspondent and has covered more than a dozen presidential candidates, according to her CNN bio. 
 
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 Reach Josh Lederman at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP ||||| The Vice Presidential Debate’s winner? Not a candidate, but the debate’s moderator, ABC’s Martha Raddatz. 
 
 Raddatz asked questions on a wide span of issues, ranging from foreign policy to abortion, and pressed the candidates to be exacting in their answers. “Be specific,” she pushed Biden when she didn’t find his answer to a question on Libya to be sufficient. 
 
 She also had a pretty easy act to follow. Last week’s presidential debate moderator, Jim Lehrer, was called “unconscious” and “a disaster.” His pushover performance even inspired a “Silent Jim Lehrer” Twitter feed. 
 
 “She did a good job. She kept it focused without interfering too much. I felt like the questions she posed were important questions - very relevant to the concern of most Americans,” Ted Strickland, Ohio’s former Democratic governor, said after the debate. 
 
 Lehrer, as Strickland put it, “allowed [last week’s] debate to become unfocused.” He also took issue with the fact that, “There was no discussion of issues that are related to women — like equal pay for equal work. There was no discussion of the choice issue.” 
 
 Even Michael Steel, a spokesman for Paul Ryan said he “thought she was clearly more assertive,” even if the resulting answers were “no more disciplined.” 
 
 The pro-Raddatz sentiment played out on Twitter — dozens of users posted tweets asking if they could vote for the moderator come November. “Raddatz for prez.” 
 
 Political reporters and commentators largely agreed: ||||| Please consider disabling it for our site, or supporting our work in one of these ways 
 
 A spirited debate between the vice president and his would-be successor puts the top of both tickets to shame. Reuters Joe Biden's debate performance easily cleared the low bar set by his boss: He was aggressive, attentive and in many ways effective pushing President Obama's agenda. But he was also sarcastic and condescending - a stylistic blemish against workmanlike rival Paul Ryan. It is impossible to predict how voters will view Biden's frequent interruptions, his tense smiles, and his derisive laughter. Did they consider the behavior rude or a reflection of Ryan's naiveté? 
 
 MORE FROM NATIONAL JOURNAL MORE FROM NATIONAL JOURNAL Fact-Checking the Debate 
 
 The VP Debate Transcript 
 
 Photos: Behind the Scenes But, clearly, viewers and voters were treated to a free-wheeling and substantial debate over the size of government, the limits of U.S. military power and other issues defining the choice between Obama and Mitt Romney. In style and substance, Biden v. Ryan outshined Obama v. Romney. The debate is unlikely to play a significant role in the outcome of the Nov. 6 election. Partisans walked away from the debate happy with their guys' performance, and undecided voters will focus more intently on the top of the ticket. 
 
 "Biden won the passion card. Ryan the wonk card," said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis. "More or less a draw." But, boy, what a show. Moderator Martha Raddatz opened with a simple question: Did an intelligence failure lead to the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Libya? Biden ducked the question and launched into a long-winded defense of Obama's foreign policies, making sure to mention the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Ryan answered Raddatz directly and methodically. He noted that it took the administration two weeks to acknowledge that terrorists attacked the embassy, after blaming an anti-Muslim video. He said the administration failed to secure the embassy. And he said Libya is indicative of a broader problem. "What we're watching is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy, which is making things more chaotic and us less safe," Ryan said. Unlike Obama, who failed to respond to Romney's best punched a week ago, Biden responded in kind. He said Ryan's party voted against increased security for U.S. embassies and that Romney's first public response to the embassy attack was knee-jerk. "Usually, when there is a crisis, we pull together," Biden said, calling Romney an opportunist. "That's not presidential leadership." Call it a draw. Biden was at his best demonizing Republican policies on the middle-class. Democrats chagrined over Obama's sleepy performance surely were cheered as Biden cited the auto industry rescue and efforts by the Obama administration to help underwater homeowners, calling out Romney's opposition to those policies. ||||| master debaters How Moderator Martha Raddatz Won the Debate 
 
 She was assertive: "I think we've gone over this quite enough," Raddatz said, when she wanted to corral the candidates. When she felt it was time to talk about Iran, she cut the conversation off and simply said said, "Let's move to Iran," pointing out that "there's really no bigger national security [threat]." Who's going to argue with that? 
 
 She asked specific questions: Instead of asking the candidates to simply describe their differences, Raddatz asked them to talk about specific scenarios. Taking the Iran example again, she asked, "Can the two of you be absolutely clear and specific to the American people how effective would a military strike be?" When she asked about the economy, she didn't say "describe your economic policy." She said, "will you level with the American people? Can you get unemployment under 6 percent, and how long will it take?" 
 
 She had details at hand: The question about the economy provides a good illustration. She prefaced her query with a detailed overview of the current economic situation: "The percentage of unemployed just fell below 8 percent for the first time in 43 months. The Obama administration had projected that it would fall below 6 percent now after the addition of close to a trillion dollars in stimulus money." 
 
 She asked tough follow-up questions: When Ryan criticized the president's handling of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Raddatz followed up with a question about Mitt Romney's own mishandling of the situation, politically: "Was that really appropriate right in the middle of the crisis?" When Biden said later that Ryan was talking "a bunch of stuff," Raddatz deadpanned: "What does that mean, a bunch of stuff?"
– As with the Obama-Romney debate, a lot of the post-Biden-Ryan debate talk is focusing on the moderator—but this time they're saying nice things. Martha Raddatz, senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC, "pursued each man with the vigor of a woman more accustomed to needling foreign leaders than reciting prompter text," writes Dan Zak at the Washington Post. Unlike Jim Lehrer, whose moderating was widely panned, Raddatz was assertive and asked tough follow-up questions, writes Adam Martin at New York, declaring her the real winner of the debate. Raddatz was seen as an odd choice, but her performance "should be the gold standard for future moderators," writes Josh Feldman at Mediaite. "She grilled the candidates just enough on their positions to spur them on, but struck a good balance in when she interrupted both men." A Ryan spokesman says "she was clearly more assertive," although the resulting answers were "no more disciplined," reports BuzzFeed. But not everybody was happy with Raddatz's moderating. "I miss Jim Lehrer" tweeted Karl Rove.