President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney faced off against each other in the last Presidential debate, which focused greatly on the United States foreign policy. This debate was moderated by Bob Schieffer, who is CBS News' Chief Washington Correspondent. After starting with a remark about how today was the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's announcement that the Soviets had installed missiles on Cuba, Mr. Schieffer opened the foreign policy debate, which encompassed six major foreign policy topics, half of which were focused on the Middle East. Here's a link to the official transcript of the debate, and another link to the video of the debate, for anyone that missed parts of the debate or god forbid, the entire debate due to the Giants game today.The first topic that Mr. Schieffer asked Obama and Romney was about the changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism; some questions that were asked were if the attack in Libya signifies the unraveling of the US Middle East policy, if there were any other ways to influence events in Syria, and if Romney or Obama regretted having President Mubarak leave his presidency. For the most part, Romney and Obama had pretty similar opinions about Syria and the end of the reign of Mubarak, though Romney disagreed with Obama's statement that Romney said the greatest threat to the United States was Russia, not al-Qaeda.
Some other major topics that were focused on were America's role in the world, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the tense situation regarding Israel and Iran, and China's rise and tomorrow's world. Both Romney and Obama agreed on positions regarding Israel; that if Israel is attacked by Iran, the United States should stand beside it and do things to help the country, such as continuing with sanctions on Iran and using military action as a last resort. The two candidates also agreed that China, although intimidating with its large economy and formidable competition with the United States, was not the main threat; China could even be a potential partner in the future. However, Obama felt that terrorism was the biggest threat to the United States, while Romney gave a more blunt answer of a nuclear Iran. Obama also remarked in order to keep up with China, there should be more investments in basic research and education, things the private sector refuses to do.
2 comments:
I feel that this debate was just too Middle East oriented. I believe North Korea and Latin America should be important aspects to debate. North Korea just had Kim Jong Un appointed as the new leader. If we want to start creating relationships with North Korea, now is the perfect time to start. Latin America has many things going on. There are drug cartels, new markets and immigrants pouring from the area. I believe that the debate should have been more open rather than emphasizing the Middle East. The worse part is when they were supposed to talk about China, they ended up talking about Detroit.
Adding on to what Bruce mentioned, it was also annoying when the candidates switched over to talk about domestic policy and repeated ideas they had stated during the first debate. By wasting time reiterating what they had already discussed in the first debate, the candidates were not able to focus on other countries of importance to foreign policy. These frequent digressions prevented Americans from getting a better glimpse of the candidates' foreign policy plans and goals, and I felt that Schieffer should have worked harder to get the candidates back on track.
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