Political Blog #2: McCain vs Obama

After watching the first presidential debate this past Friday I had my own idea of who "won". I think that it was a very close debate, both sides made good arguments and, as well, both candidates made statements that i found immature and overly repetitive. However, when I watched the debate live, I was watching it with my room mate, who has an extreme bias skewed the same direction as myself. My room mate and I started discussing comments each candidate said while the debate was still going on, and because of this I felt I missed important points. So I took the time to watch the debate again, alone, and with no outside influence. The result of this was about the same as the first time. In my opinion I believe senator Obama won. There are many reasons I came to this conclusion and I'm sure that many people disagree with me and even find my reasoning naïve and simple, but so be it. Something major that both candidates did constantly that I found to be misleading was answering a question by criticizing the other candidate's viewpoint. This always led to the candidate that was attacked pointing out how the attackers translation of their policies and views was completely wrong. It made it seem like both people were saying the same thing in the end. However, I was surprised to hear senator Obama speak very clearly on a few topics. When he was asked about sending troops to Afghanistan he very clearly said that we should send more troops there and possibly to Pakistan as well if they are unable to act accordingly. This is something I agree with and have felt since our involvement in Iraq and I'm glad Obama was able to speak plainly about it. A few times, however, senator Obama was fairly childish. Making many comparisons to McCain and president Bush, he pointed out times where the Arizona senator backed the president on issues. Obama made it obvious that he feel that having McCain in office will be the same as having Bush back in office, something that I don't think any intelligent person can actually believe. Although I found Obama attacking McCain, simply because he is affiliated with with the same party as Bush, to be very low. With no real surprise, however, Senator McCain did something even worse and with much more frequency. It seemed every possible time he could, McCain would tell a story about going to a country or talking with a general or president directly, where Obama had not. it was obvious, and even plainly said at times, that McCain was pointing out Obama's inexperience. It seems like most of this presidential race has been the two sides arguing the same two points, that McCain is a republican and all republicans are like bush, and that Obama doesn't have enough experience. I personally don't think either statement is true, and either way, I'm very tired of hearing it, and hearing it during a debate seemed very inappropriate. Although, because of the repetition of McCain's comments on Obama's inexperience, I feel that Obama won, simply because he didn't find as many ways possible to say the same over beatten point. After watching the debate and making my own conclusions on it I looked at a few websites too see what other people thought and who won the debate. Most sites, including the political blog I'm following (http://www.bipolarnation.com/2008/09/29/the-first-mccain-obama-debate/), felt that it was a tie. I can understand this viewpoint since I feel that it was very close with both sides having their own pros and cons. I did also see a few sites that actually referenced polls conducted by CNN and The USA Today, in which concluded that Obama was the winner (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/3104504/Barack-Obama-won-first-presidential-debate-over-John-McCain-say-polls.html and http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/09/27/Poll_Obama_won_presidential_debate/UPI-20721222512164/). However, it does seem like the opinion of most news sites, which did'nt take polls, is that there was a tie.