With a typical day in the Dow Jones becoming a 500-700 point loss, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama know all too well that a turbulent economic situation awaits the next President of the United States. This was one of the main topics of the third and final presidential debate on October 15th, held at Hofstra University in New York. In an article that both summarizes the events of the evening and refuses to give either candidate the right to declare victory, Laura Meckler and Christopher Cooper of the Wall Street Journal pointed out the truths and stretched-truths of the debate, and even provoked discussion of the now-infamous Joe the Plumber.The two presidential candidates exchanged jabs throughout the evening, rarely letting up from the offensive, in an effort to squeeze every last vote that they possibly could from crucial swing states. One of the early stories that came up was about a certain Joe Wurzelbacher from Ohio, a plumber who told Senator Obama in a town-hall meeting that he was afraid to purchase his company because of higher taxes that would be imposed on people earning more than $250,000 a year. Senator McCain was quick to point out this issue in an attempt to catch Obama off-guard in front of a national audience, but Obama was always quick to fire back with a stinger like this. Obama pointed out that he will exempt small businesses from paying these taxes, again leaving McCain open-mouthed, frantically blinking, and smugly smirking.
McCain got in his good comebacks as well. When criticized by Obama for the umpteenth time for being a President Bush clone, McCain fired back, "Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." Not to be outdone or shaken from his calm, cool demeanor, Obama jeered back, "The fact of the matter is that if I've occasionally mistaken your policies for George Bush's policies, it's because...you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush." What I would like to know is why Obama always resorts to using poor old President Bush as a tool for attacking McCain instead of using McCain's policies themselves, and why McCain seems to never fully read Obama's stances on issues or even pays attention to what he's said in previous debates. To me, the candidates are almost like horses with blinders on at this point, they just keep repeating a lot of the same old stuff that we've heard over and over for months, hoping that somewhere they'll make their opponent slip up, in a desperate attempt to make their opponent lose votes. McCain is especially buying into this tactic since he's been behind in the polls for some time. He's in danger of losing key states like Michigan, which the authors of this article say is now "out of reach", and our beloved own Virginia, a "longtime Republican stronghold". This has forced the McCain campaign to be on the defensive in areas that it didn't expect. You could probably point to the ever-increasing liberal population of Northern Virginia (which should probably be its own state) as one of the reasons why Virginia may go blue for the first time in a long time.
There was a lot of finger-pointing in this debate, notably with the candidates bringing up past affiliations that were either questionable or downright despicable. McCain would point out Obama's affiliations with William Ayers and Acorn, and Obama would point out people who had accused McCain of being racist and McCain's "100% negative" campaign ads (they're actually 73% negative according to the CNN post-debate analysts, while Obama's are 61% negative). To McCain's credit, though, he did air a congratulatory commercial when Obama won the nomination. And you could even see the candidates showing a little bit of their hurt feelings when the negative ad competition was brought up, but I don't think that this should have been as big of a deal as they made it out to be. It's politics as usual; we've been seeing hurtful and insulting ads for years attempting to slander other politicians' reputations, and that's not about to stop anytime soon.
Overall, the debate was productive for both candidates in that we saw their aggressive and defensive sides, and we got to hear a little more deeply what they feel about certain important issues. It's hard to say at this point what effect these debates will have until we know the election results and we can look back on key turning points in each campaign. Over the next few weeks, anything can happen, and there is almost always a candidate that tries to pull some trick out of his sleeve at the last moment to gain an edge. With the racial tension underpinning this election from the start, I'm almost afraid to see what they'll come up with.
Questions:
1. Did you feel that there was a winner in this debate? If so, who is it and why?
2. Do you think that McCain gained more ground in the polls from being on the offensive most of the time, or that Obama maintained his lead by being steadfast and defensive?
3. Are there any domestic policy/economic issues that were not discussed that you would like to have seen in this debate? What are they and why?
1 comment:
1. I felt that Obama won this debate by a wide margin. The senator from Illinois made more points and defended himself against his opponent better than John McCain. Obama left McCain wide mouthed and looking for a way out on more than one occasion, especially on the topic of his health care plan. McCain seemed to have not even read Obama's positions and it made him look like the weaker candidate when Obama corrected him with solid rebuttals.
2. McCain obviously came into the debate with the intention of attacking Obama on every issue in an attempt to show the flaws of his plans but looked like a fool when his attacks fell flat. Barack Obama stayed on the defensive for much of the night, successfully turning McCain's hits into easy outs. Obama looked cool and collected while McCain seemed to grow more agitated with every exchange.
3. The questions asked in this debate were very good, addressing the key issues of the campaign. I did not feel as though any topics of considerable interest to myself were not covered.
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