First Presidential Debate 2008

I eagerly awaited the debate last night, hoping that I would see Barack Obama trounce John McCain. I thought overall Obama did a very good job, but McCain did get in some good jabs. McCain likes to be snarky, and it seemed Obama had to take the defensive more often. The Washington Post stated that McCain twice called Obama's views "naive," called them "dangerous" four times, and seven times said Obama doesn't "understand." In reply, Obama said nine times that what his opponent claimed was "not true." Four more times he piped up to "correct" his opponent.

My ears tuned into how many foreign countries McCain has been to, and it's true, he has had plenty of time in office to travel the world twice over. I guess if we need to cut out the pork we could schedule a few less field trips? What really chaffes me is that if "foreign experience" is so tremendously important to John McCain, how on earth did he feel Sarah Palin would be ready to roll should she need to sit in the big seat? If you compare the two tickets, I feel far safer with Obama/Biden at the helm.

Barack has been accused of late of being to "cool", with newspeople saying he needs to show stronger emotion. I don't think I can agree with these opinions. I prefer to see Obama remain cool and collected. I don't think, and this has been mentioned before on the campaign trail, that appearing as an "angry black man" is going to score any points with a good deal of the population. I hate to mention race, but I would be naive myself to deny the type of comments I hear around Platte County on a regular basis. This county is full of people who won't give the man a chance because of the color of his skin. I think Barack needs to remain calm under pressure. This type of mature stature is an asset if we are to have dialogues with the leaders of foreign nations, both those who like us and those who don't.

Concerning the current economy crisis, I think Obama did a good job tying McCain to Bush, stating that eight years of bad policy is how we got into this mess. I am fearful of this bailout, but it seems it is going to happen. We're pretty much screwed either way this goes down. This whole issue is a pivotal point for our history books. I believe they're adding a chapter called "The Second Great Depression" as we speak. Obama made a good point that while McCain is railing against pork barrel spending (which has decreased over the past five years), we do have this occupation over in Iraq that is costing us billions every week.

In the sorting the fact from fiction department, both sides had misrepresentations. Rather than repeat the work of the pros, I'll simply point you to factcheck.org's summary of the debate.

The polls are showing Obama as winning, but admit the demographics watching the debate were slanting left. Most are saying it was a draw. I think, with foreign affairs being McCain's strong suit, Barack held his own. That's a good thing. Next week Joe Biden will have his chance to take on Sarah Palin. If she performs like she did when speaking to Katie Couric this week, I'm going to bring some popcorn to this comedy special.