| CNN has had a rolling transcript throughout the debate tonight. I watched the debate all night and a few things stuck out to me:
- Barack Obama was attacked all night by John McCain. On at least three occasions, Obama was presented with the first question by Jim Lehrer. When McCain was given his time to respond, he would immediately go after Obama.
- McCain apparently likes to boast about the leaders he has met or supposedly has met and the places he has traveled to. He reminds me of a bunch of high school seniors I once knew who like to brag about where they went for spring break.
- McCain kept spreading the whole "If we leave Iraq, Al-Qaeda will create a base there" misconception. We have ignored Afghanistan and where is Al-Qaeda and the Taliban building up? He also kept saying that the surge has been successful.
- McCain also played the experience card, saying that Obama didn't have the knowledge or experience in dealing with certain areas of foreign policy. "I don't need any on the job training," McCain said.
Okay, you don't need any training. How about the Pride of Wasilla that is your running-mate?
- I thought Obama's responses were strong. This was McCain's strength and McCain certainly tried to flex his muscle with all of the countries he has been to and with all the leaders he has met with. McCain hit him every chance he got but Obama stood his ground. McCain was trying to slap him around but Obama brought it right back and reinforced his stances. That was strong.
- Obama stressed these points when talking about the bailout package:
No. 1, we've got to make sure that we've got oversight over this whole process; $700 billion, potentially, is a lot of money.
No. 2, we've got to make sure that taxpayers, when they are putting their money at risk, have the possibility of getting that money back and gains, if the market -- and when the market returns.
No. 3, we've got to make sure that none of that money is going to pad CEO bank accounts or to promote golden parachutes.
And, No. 4, we've got to make sure that we're helping homeowners, because the root problem here has to do with the foreclosures that are taking place all across the country.
Who won this debate? Well, this debate was supposed to be about foreign policy. But a significant portion of the debate was dedicated to the financial crisis. If there was a debate McCain could win, it was this one. But his answers were very weak when it came to the financial crisis.
That said, I thought Obama's answers on foreign policy were very strong. He was going up against the man who seems to want to brag about how many leaders he knows and how many countries he's been to instead of talking about real, sensible policy. Obama brought up Afghanistan, which is key because it has been this Republican administration that has forgotten about Afghanistan. A recent report has said that Afghanistan is 15 times deadlier than Iraq for our U.S. soldiers. That is astonishing. Obama tried to put Afghanistan front and center while McCain kept repeating that the surge was working.
I think if you break this debate up into parts, Obama had more key points and better points than McCain did. Obama talked about two key issues: The economy and foreign policy. Obama played off McCain's weakness (the economy) and showed that he can compete with McCain on issues of foreign policy. |
