Blogocentric Formulations

Good Questions, So-So Debate

I'm sure I'm not the only one who watched the third and final presidential debate last night... overall I thought this one was the best of the three, but still pretty underwhelming. I kind of feel like the debates are little more than another forum for the candidates to go over their talking points.

I give a great deal of credit to Bob Schieffer, who was by far the best moderator of the series. Many of his questions were, to me, interesting, insightful and offered the candidates opportunities to really speak to the American people. My favorites were:


"Are each of you tonight willing to sit at this table and say to each other's faces what your campaigns and the people in your campaigns have said about each other?"

"Why would the country be better off if your running mate became president rather than his running mate?"

"Could either of you nominate someone to the Supreme Court who disagrees with you on [Roe v. Wade]?"


I thought that these questions offered the candidates a unique opportunity to really get into some of the issues that many Americans have with this election. But neither of the candidates really used their response time to do much more than reiterate their positions on issues they've already made clear.

I guess I was kind of hoping for someone to take these interesting and non-traditional questions and provide us with some insight on issues that aren't often at the forefront of a presidential race (i.e. Supreme Court nominations, the qualifications of their running mates, and negative campaigning).

With most polls indicating that Obama (and Biden) won all three of the previous debates, Obama's objective seemed to be "stay the course" while McCain's appeared to be, "shake Obama and convince the American people that you can lead." To me, McCain came off as more combative than confident, and more negative than anything else. And I suppose if the goal was to keep doing what he's been doing, Obama succeeded in that respect... but could have better used this opportunity to show the audience who he is, not just what his policies are.

At the end of the day, I don't think this debate (or any of the other ones) will change many peoples' decision about who they're going to vote for in a few short weeks. I think most of us have already made up our minds, and aren't going to be swayed by either ads or debating.

It'll be interesting to see what happens, come November 4th!