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About those three New Jersey girls...

Many media outlets are either directly or indirectly crediting three New Jersey students for the Commission on Presidential Debates' decision to appoint a woman, CNN's Candy Crowley, as moderater for this year's second presidential debate. This makes for heartwarming television, but it has no factual basis whatsoever.

A few months ago, Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel and Elena Tsemberis launched a petition on Change.org calling on the commission to appoint a female moderator to one of the presidential debates — something that had not occurred in 20 years. In July, they took their signatures — which now total 122,000 — to the commission's offices in Washington, D.C., and were turned away. Then, this week, the commission tapped Crowley to host the second presidential debate (though like her predecessor, Carole Simpson, she'll be hosting the town hall, which means unlike veteran debate hosts Jim Lehrer and Bob Schieffer she will not get to ask her own questions).

Yesterday, ABC News released the headline, "After NJ Girls’ Petition, Candy Crowley Chosen to Moderate Debate." Today on MSNBC, host Thomas Roberts had the three girls in studio and credited them as the ones to "affect such major change" (see above). Change.org proudly reports the news and interviews the girls under the headline, "How We Won."

Yesterday, Commission co-chairman Frank Fahrenkopf told POLITICO that the commission did not pick Crowley because she is a woman. "We picked the people we thought were the best, regardless,” he said.

Asked today if the students' petition had any influence on the decision to appoint a female moderator, the commission's executive director, Janet Brown, told POLITICO: "The CPD's decisions regarding format and moderators were the result of two years of work. All the key components, including names of potential moderators, were identified many months ago."

No one wants to pop a bubble in a nicely packaged story. The problem with this one is it does a disservice to both the commission and, more importantly, to Crowley. The commission decides on moderators based on two years of rigorous review, and the decision they make is more important to them and to the nation than the demands of what amounts to, at best, 0.1 percent of the U.S. voting population.

More importantly, Crowley got the job because she's a capable moderator, and tying her selection too closely to the Jersey girls' campaign suggests she was not worthy of the appointment on her own merits.