I finally got a chance to read the debate transcript yesterday, and I took notes on who asked each question and what it was about.

I came up with a total of 22 questions, 10 from George Stephanopoulos, and 12 from Charles Gibson. By my count, the breakdown was:
1 question on whether the candidate should agree to pick the other as their VP if they win (as suggested by Mario Cuomo).

1 question on Obama's "bitter" and "cling" comments, and what he actually meant.

1 question (to Senator Clinton) about whether Obama could win in November.

3 questions about Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his comments, his patriotism, or whether people should accept him as their pastor.

2 questions on Senator Clinton's truthfulness, especially in light of her misrecollection of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire.

1 question on why Senator Obama does not often wear a flag lapel pin (even though, ironically, neither of the moderators nor the candidates were wearing such a pin at the debate).

1 question on Obama's association with William Ayers.

2 questions on Iraq, both asking whether the candidate would still commit to pulling out of Iraq even if the commanders thought it was a bad idea.

1 question on whether we should treat an Iranian attack on Israel as equivalent to an attack on the United States.

2 questions on tax policy - trying to elicit a promise not to raise taxes on people earning under $200k/year, rolling back Bush tax cuts, and whether, given the "fact" that cutting capital gains taxes increases revenue, raising the tax is a good idea.

3 questions on gun registration, the DC gun ban, and whether it is constitutional.

1 question about what the candidates would do about rising gas prices.

1 question on how the candidates would use soon-to-be former president George W. Bush.

and finally, 1 question on how the candidates would make the case to the superdelegates that they would be the better candidate and mroe electable in November.

In defending the questioning, co-moderator George Stephanopoulos said, "We decided to focus at the top on the issues that had been at the center of the debate since the last debate. Everything we brought up in that front section had not come up since the last debate."

Given that this was the first debate since before the Ohio and Texas primaries, and it was the first debate televised in prime-time by a national broadcast network,  I'd argue that it was likely the first debate many, if not most, of the viewers would see. So repeating core issues that had been discussed in earlier debates would not only be reasonable, it should be mandatory.

10 million people saw this debate, which significantly more than the audience for any of the previous debates.

If one wanted a debate that focused on topics that prior debates had not touched on, you still could have plenty of policy or issues related questions. The Federal Reserve's unprecedented guarantees of Bear Stearns's liabilities that J.P. Morgan required before making a takeover offer is one topic. Or the sub-prime crisis and the risk it may pose to the broader economy. Discussion of the rise of China and re-emergence of Russia as global powers, and the geo-strategic implications to the U.S. would be another topic.

Now the ABC debate was far from the first that put far too much emphasis on sideshow issues, but the questioning on the whole was even more superficial and irrelevant than most. The American public deserved better.