With less than a month until the election, this was the last chance for McCain to gather support from the swing states. In my opinion, McCain didn't do that bad, but the debate didn't really help him either. During the entire debate, McCain was being incredibly rude to Obama and acted way too overconfident, which probably didn't help his campaign. On the other hand, a beneficial aspect of McCain's performance was that he spoke directly to Obama compared to previous debates.
In regards to the content of the debate, nothing new was really said about each candidate's economic plan, which was disappointing considering how important this issue currently is to the average American citizen.
Overall, this debate touched on a lot of various issues ranging from the economy, education,the negative campaign, healthcare and abortion. Also, it was the most interesting debate among the three.
12 comments:
Yeah, I was glad the questions were a bit more direct than in the past debates.
We got a lot more information from the candidates from this debate than the others, in my opinion.
I agree that this debate was the more interesting when compared to the other debates. Well the VP debate was more entertaining but that's beside the point... Overall the questions and responses really did seem much more direct than they were before. Of course McCain was rude but then again he probably was a little desperate. It's an all or nothing situation for him. There just isn't enough time between this debate and the elections to sway the public enough so he had to try and leave some lasting impact during the debate.. although interrupting Schieffer (the moderator) probably isn't the best thing to do.
One other thing I'd noticed but didn't mention in my other comment on the post before this one, was that McCain had said "I will balance the budgets" ... but how is he supposed to pull that off when he had also just said that he wanted to lower taxes? I feel like both candidates contradicted themselves during this debate but I think McCain did it more often or at least in a way that was more noticeable...
One other random interesting detail. (or at least i thought it was interesting). Obama happened to be wearing a red tie and McCain a blue one, both being opposite to the color generally associated with their parties...
For me, this debate was very informational and touched the widest variety of issues. I didn't really learn anything new about their economic or health care plans, but i did learn more about international affairs and education. All the talk about the free trade agreements were actually a bit confusing for me. I didn't really understand what the question was. As for education, I liked how Obama mentioned it quite a few times with regards to economy and trade, and how he mentioned it before the actual education question was asked. I feel that by doing so, Obama captures the attention of the younger generation, like us. This economic crisis affects us and our education the most because we are going to college next year, and most of us will probably have some student loans. If the economy isn't fixed now, it will be difficult for us to find good jobs. And if we can't find good jobs, it will be hard for us to pay off whatever school loans we have. Therefore, talking a lot about education will definitely get many youth votes. Not only that, but it'll get our parents' votes too because they're going to want a bright future for us. I also noticed that McCain only talked about reforming grade school, but said nothing about college education, which I think might hurt McCain.
I also felt that McCain was rather rude and interrupted a lot. And I do agree that it was because he is a bit desperate because this was his last big chance to get more voters.
One more thing, I thought it was interesting how one of the analysts said this debate reminded him of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate. This debate actually does remind me of the 1960 debate because McCain looked fragile and old, like Nixon did, and Obama stayed calm and collected, like Kennedy did.
McCain definately tried to go for the win in this debate, but i think he fell short. He attacked Obama more than any of the other two debates, but i think he was a little to critical and Obama was able to rebutt him. McCain clearly emphasized that he is not George Bush and plans to take the country in a different direction from the past eight years. Obama seemed to ignore this statement, and sort of drowned out McCain's thunder, stating still that McCain was to much like Bush. McCain needed to emphasize more that Obama is a liberal and that he himself is a conservative who is fighting for the people. Based on the post-debate interview with undecided voters, it seemed like Obama was the overall winner with the public.
Yes, this debate had more direct questions and the candidates had clear answers that actually answered the questions. I wish the previous debates had been more like this one.
I also noticed the point that Jeff brought up about the candidates' future plans of the economy. The economy is full of problems and I'm pretty sure that the candidates aren't going to be able to cut many people's taxes, while also improving the economy and continuing funding of many programs. At this point, I think that the candidates just couldn't just be so straightforward about the fact that the economic crisis is going to be really difficult to solve because hearing that, people may become panicked and worried, which = not good for the economy.
It's funny that Jeff mentioned Obama and McCain's ties. While I was watching the debate, I didn't relate the color of their ties to their party colors, but I actually did, later, relate the outfits of the first ladies to their party colors. Michelle Obama was wearing a solid bright blue-colored dress, while Cindy McCain was wearing a solid orange-red colored dress. I know it's not that important, but it stood out to me. But of course...divided we fail!!
At present, Obama sits poised to win all swing states. It sucks that most of us seniors can not vote, when it comes down to the education issue. When we all are soon going off to college and will need money, and yet they each talked very little about how they plan to change our futures in this debate. Not good, but they were not trying to get our votes obviously, which sucks. Watching the debates, it's easy to see why, Obama is confident, intelligent, insightful and knowledgable while McCain is edgy, old and often seems to be grasping for words.
In the end those words came out rude and just kept slandering Obama and would speak before Obama could even finish. McCain tired so hard to get on top in this debate and on issues-which he barely talked about, more about negative words, 'who cares about feelings?' classic. I believe he did get on top but only slighty did he win, by like .0000001%. When it came down to asking if their vp can lead America, it seems as if Palin will and can only help the special needy kids, McCain did not clearly say if she could govern America, oooo crap.
Overall very entertaining, thanks Joe the Plummer! But they should have talked more about what they will do to our economy now and future.
huh... you're right Moeka... their wives were wearing their party colors! I always seem to miss the obvious stuff...
reflecting even further on the debate, I feel like I've heard/seen many many people accusing McCain of being condescending towards Obama... I feel like this may all be a whole ton of extreme party bias... I didn't think McCain was condescending at all. This whole thing seems oddly familiar. not just in relation to the last presidential debate but also to the VP debate. This reminds me of the VP debates where the exact opposite happened and the republicans were all riled that Biden appeared to be condescending towards Palin... Both sides are both making accusations towards the opposing side and this makes it hard to get the facts down straight. This site, for instance, is populous with us democrat Californians... But then again whether someone was condescending or not is all a matter of perspective...
I agree, i Mccain had not been so aggresive in this debate and in the past week or so he probably would be doing better. He claims to be very honerable and 'clean' however, he has been insulting Obama and therefore destroying this image and causing people to lose respect for him
I wish that they hadn't jumped around the questions so much and just answered them, because when the debate was over, I was left kind of wondering what their stances on the issues were. It was a pretty vicious debate too, that was seemed more like an argument than a debate at times. As to who won, McCain got more points in, but his deliverance of them was slightly shaky at times and his attitude during the entire debate was rather snipey. While Obama did not get in as many issue points, he was more cordial to McCain and I believe that his calm demeanor coupled with those points that he did get in really helped him win in my opinion.
Kimiya Bahmanyar
In response to Sterlings comment about the Ayers and Acorn issues being beaten into the ground and McCain's campaign being in "panic mode" i would have to agree. After not mentioning Ayers in the last debate, in what some saw as an attempt to take the highroad, and then talking about the issue now after being attacked by some right wing pundits for not bringing the issue up seemed like a strategical error to me. If it was not important to question Obama's connections and "patriotism" at the last debate, what makes it as important as McCain stressed in this debate? In my opinion that seemed like the point where you could see that in light of the recent polls McCain has seen that his current strategies have not been working and therefore decided to switch it up. Though McCain did use this strategy in order to try to capture the convincing victory that some say he needs in order to make it to the white house, it did not seem like either he made convincing enough points or Obama made big enough mistakes for this to be the game changer that the conservatives were hoping for. In other words i suppose this debate was more of the same.
I was happy to see that all the topics we had hoped would be discussed were addressed, or at least mentioned (especially about the economy and their choices for Vice President).
I thought the debate was pretty close. Both candidates were very professional and serious. However, Obama did seem a little bit more composed and responded cooly to McCain's attacks. Maybe a little too cooly. But polls show that voters clearly thought Obama won and that support for Obama has increased after this debate.
Something else I found interesting was the gender gap. I watched the debate on CNN, and during the entire debate there was a graph on the bottom of the screen which continuously tracked the support of uncommitted men and women voters in Ohio. Our textbook tells us that women are more likely to be Democrats. This is definately proving to be true in this election. When McCain was speaking, his support came from men. When Obama was speaking, most of his support came from women.
I did think that this debate was one of the more interesting ones of this year. Coming into this debate, McCain knew that he was behind in the polls. He knew that his momentum was slowing down and he realized that we were coming closer to election day. I think that these realizations had to be responsible for his actions in the debate. Although McCain was a little more aggressive than normal, I realize that he had nothing to lose. He needed to take a strong stance and go on the offensive in order to make his points clear and get some of the swing votes. To me, this was a little offensive and rude. But after rewatching parts of the debate on recorded video, I realize that Obama was also guilty of rude behavior, including chuckling and eye-rolling. I think McCain's was just more evident because of his interruption and flustered appearance. However, I think that both Obama and McCain made some very smart moves. When the Roe v. Wade decision was mentioned, McCain did point out Obama's extreme pro-choice views. Considering that a majority of Americans believe in abortion only in certain circumstances and until a certain time, McCain pointing out his opponent's extreme views may help him with the moderate voters. And though I personally don't believe in complete the complete pro-life viewpoint, I was beginning to think that McCain was making a good point. I also mentioned in a previous post that Obama was very careful when he responded to the question about Sarah Palin. Obama probably does not think that Palin would be ready for the presidency. But I thought he chose his words very wisely and spoke of her in a respectful way. If he were to go on a rant about Palin's poor qualifications, he could have turned off many potential swing votes.
Post a Comment