The First Debate - A Boring Affair
The first debate between the two Presidential contenders this year has come and gone. The only true excitement was the build-up to this event when John McCain suspended his campaign two days earlier and asked for a possible postponement of the debate. The suspense continued until some time earlier on the day of the scheduled event. Needless to say, John McCain came and the two candidates put on a show for ninety minutes. All in all, it was not much of a show and the back and forth between the two Senators was sometimes pitiful. When McCain talked about and showed a bracelet he was wearing that he had been given by the mother of a fallen soldier, Barack Obama said: “I have a bracelet too”! Really, this was a Presidential debate and they talked about such unimportant things. What’s next? Will they compare during the next couple of debates how much they paid for their suits and ties and where they got them? Or how comfortable the shoes are they are wearing? Let’s get serious, shall we? America is about to elect their next President in slightly more than a month and we have to listen to such trivia?
Another aspect of the debate – and they spent a lot of times on this – was the exchanges of accusations between the two candidates. Obama tried many, many times to tie McCain to President George W. Bush in an attempt to convey ‘guilt by association’ and co-responsibility for everything that’s wrong currently in America and the world and McCain’s reaction was to just smile and ignore it. When McCain brought up previous statements by Obama and also called him to be the Senate’s most liberal member, Obama was defensive and immediately responded by voicing his objections while McCain was still talking. On the other hand, Mr. Obama stated about a half a dozen times that “John (Senator McCain) is right about this” when asked to respond to a statement by McCain.
All in all, the entire event was over-billed and the participants did not truly live up to expectations, there were no fireworks, real ‘zingers’ or memorable one-liners by either candidate. Even though, this debate was supposed to address issues of ‘Foreign Policy and National Security’, nearly the first half of the spectacle was spent on the financial crisis America finds itself in. This was to be expected since it is so very important at this time. Both candidates claimed that they had warned about two years ago that this crisis was about to happen, whether or not this is true, who knows? The fact remains that neither one of the two spoke or even yelled loud enough for America to hear them back then! Therefore, these kinds of claims are meaningless to a voter. Real leadership would have required that they had taken a strong position back when and support their current claims with verifiable documentation. But no, this was simply silly “Me too ism”. And in terms of making very strong specifics available for resolution of the financial crisis, there were absolutely none by either one of them other than some general platitudes such as “protecting the interests of the American taxpayers”! What kind of double-talk is that? You are protecting the taxpayers by taking their money to save the irresponsible actions on Wall Street? Please, spare us the nonsense!
While McCain had at least shown a willingness to participate in the Washington events by suggesting a ‘summit’ at the White House (that Senator Obama also attended) and afterwards spending time in Congress to help the negotiations along, Senator Obama stated that he had ‘called his recommendations in’ to the leadership in Congress by phone.
Gracefully, the debate only lasted ninety minutes and we can only hope that the next two debates between these two will be more substantive and definitive. But we doubt it very much since they are both members of the United States Senate and are therefore experienced in talking, talking and talking without necessarily making a point! We shall see what they will do for encores. We here at Common Sense Politics however feel that the first debate did very little to sway an undecided voter one-way or the other. And, of course, people who have made up their mind as to how they will vote come November 4 were not giving a reason to change their positions or their vote.
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