WHO SHOULD SERVE as moderators during political debates? That question has reared its head on both national and local levels.

Only a few days before last night’s vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, critics on the right began to raise a stink about moderator Gwen Ifill, a veteran journalist and the host of PBS’s “Washington Week” who is working on a book entitled “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.”

In Thursday’s Herald, Mercer County Democratic Committee Chairman Bob Lark questioned the impartiality of Michael Coulter, one of three panelists scheduled to ask questions at a debate between U.S. Rep. Phil English and challenger Kathy Dahlkemper for the seat from the 3rd District, which includes most of Mercer County.

That local debate is scheduled for 7 p.m. Oct. 13 at the Sharon City Building and sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Mercer County.

Is anybody really impartial when it comes to politics? Is being a moderator any different from jury duty, where a judge asks if you can set aside your prejudices to make a fair ruling in a case?

As far as Ifill is concerned, the fact that she’s writing a book about politics and race that features Obama was no secret. It had been written about and advertised since July. If McCain’s camp didn’t know about it when they first learned that Ifill would be the moderator, they are out of touch.

The complaint sounded more like an excuse in case Palin didn’t fare well during the debate.

Locally, Lark complains that Coulter — a Grove City College political science professor and Republican borough councilman — was involved in a Republican campaign mailer that was sent to 4,000 county Democrats during last year’s county commissioner race.

The campaign mailer that Coulter acknowledges doing research for is standard operating procedure in a modern campaign. It was a negative piece concerning the firing of one Democratic candidate by the other Democratic candidate. It was factual and, we think this is what’s really burning Lark, strategically mailed out just days before the election, leaving the Democrats no time to respond in kind. In the end it didn’t do any good. Coulter’s candidates didn’t win and Lark’s candidates did.

Partisan politics come into play almost everywhere. But you put people on panels that you feel will provide intelligent questions despite their political views. The other panelists include Herald news editor Nick Hildebrand and Ron Errett, a talk show host on Radio WPIC. Some might consider both to be members of the dreaded “liberal media.” But they both also bring a depth of knowledge about what matters to local voters.

Sure, Coulter is active in local Republican politics, but he has also shown us over the years in many instances that he is able to offer a detached and informed perspective on local politics and elections that no other area academic has been able to, or shown an interest in, providing. The Herald has used him as a source many times and will continue to do so.

The panelists aren’t part of the debate, they’re simply asking questions. We have complete confidence that they will perform their job fairly and competently.