I managed to
watch all four of this year’s presidential debates live. Instead of sitting at
home in front of my Xbox 360, I traveled around to interact with fellow debate
watchers as the primaries went on. For the first debate I got stuck in traffic
for about an hour before tuning to the radio to hear it begin. After watching
the rest in the bar at a local restaurant, I had some idea of how the
presidential race would change.
The October 3 debate
turned out to be different than I was expecting it to be. The first debate of
four was scheduled to be about domestic issues. Each debate would be about
ninety minutes without any commercial breaks. For most of the broadcast, there
was a split screen of Obama and Romney from the waist up, so you got to see
both of the candidates most of the time. I think all of the news channels were
getting the same broadcast, and the lack of commercial breaks meant there were
no distractions in commentary until after the debate was over.
Romney showed an
edge in attacking Obama on issues like the economy and the deficit. Obama
really wanted to push the idea that Romney was going to cut government services
to balance the budget, but Romney just shrugged it off. Obama didn’t look so
great, pretty clearly frowning at times when his opponent was speaking. For
issues like health care, Obama delineated a difference in opinion between his
and Romney’s. However, I was expecting Obama to take more control of the
situation and try to call out Romney for misinformation. Instead they stuck to
their talking points.
I had a fun time
watching the debate. It was too bad Obama didn’t press Romney that hard, but I
figured things would be different next time. The news was talking about both
candidates lowering expectations for the confrontation, so the debate wasn’t as
exciting as I was expecting. At least the next debate brought with it an
unexpected and entertaining television event.
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