Last night our nation's presidential candidates officially kicked-off their series of presidential debates, both fighting for undecided voters and trying to show our country who hands are dirtier with DC corruption.
My first comment on this first debate is this: Obama and McCain went after each other almost violently, slinging corruption allegations at each other. At one point I actually said out loud to the television screen, "You're both politicians, you're both corrupt, now say something of value!" I suppose that pointing out your candidates downfalls is a valuable tactic (or would that be a strategy, McCain?) but the scene of them going back and forth like a couple of school-girls--"You did this", "Oh yeah well do did this!"--often times just repeating allegations they had already made and that had little to nothing to do with the topic at hand, seemed a little ridiculous at times.
Last night was supposed to be all about foreign policy issues, but with the recent economic crisis, about half of the debate was taken up by this topic. I don't know how anyone feels, but I don't feel like I got a direct answer from either one of them about how they plan to solve this problem. They are still both in Congress so that may have something to do with it, but I still don't feel that I know what they're planning to do to solve this crisis. I do, however, prefer Obama's bottom-up approach, as told by my previous post.
As far as the foreign policy part of the debate, McCain harped on Obama's lack of foreign policy experience--Obama harped on McCain's affiliation with the Bush administration and McCain's bad fortune-telling skills as far as Iraq goes. Obama wants to take attention off of Iraq and put it on Afghanistan and possibly even Pakistan--McCain wants to fulfill the wishes of the few soldiers in Iraq he spoke to (as well as those who re-enlisted) and stay in Iraq until "the job is done", and said of Obama's statement about attacking Pakistan, "You just don't say that!"
The essential differences I found during the debate were unfortunately not so much what the candidates were saying but rather how they were saying it. Obama was very straight-forward and concise in his speaking, appearing more as a leader or a salesman (I guess at this point both) than McCain. McCain, on the other hand, appeared to be attempting to use the Bush tactic (or is it strategy??) to win over voters--acting like the every-man. McCain was relatable, taking your attention off of what he was actually saying and making you feel like you just wanted to say, "Yeah, yeah I see what you're saying, buddy", instead of actually paying attention to what was coming out of his mouth. He did make many strong points, all backed up by his laughing and scolding while Obama spoke.
Hopefully this tactic/strategy won't have too many voters fooled, however my hopes as far as voter's attention to detail/policy over presentation/gender have been highly let down during the course of this campaign. We'll see during the VP debates whether Palin goes down the same road--appearing as the Hot Hockey Mom instead of future VP--or if she'll actually join a Toastmaster's group and maybe make a valid point for once.
3 comments:
Good post.
It will take more than Toastmasters to save Palin.
Somebody said to me today that McCain's inability or unwillingness to look at Obama was a way of being dismissive of him.
I agree that neither of them said anything specific when asked the question about what would you cut if you had to?
I really felt that, as far as the economic crisis goes, neither one of them really answered anything. On one hand, I suppose we can't really expect them to have answers, especially since they're still both in Congress and there may be somethings they just can't say. But on the other hand, if you're going to be President, it's kind of your job to have a plan when these situations arise!
You should live blog the next debate.
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