Bayonets, Binders and a highly amused Biden – the American Presidential and Vice Presidential debates.
First debate: Obama is disappointing
Generally, it’s hard to pick a “winner” in a debate. Mostly, people will think the candidate that they already liked performed the best. But in this first presidential debate, the outcome was clear. Mitt Romney won, hands down. Imagine that really intelligent but really dull lecturer you have. That was Obama. Apparently he got bored during the debate practices and went off to call voters instead; his lack of preparation showed.
Not only was he boring, he failed to pick Mitt Romney up on the, many, factual errors and contradictions in his arguments; he let Romney bullsh*t, which Romney did very well. Because for all his arrogance fuelled gaffs, Romney is a good speaker. He’s not as good as Obama at his best, but he is far better than Obama at his worst.
Round one to Mr Romney.
Vice Presidential debate: Joe Biden is amused
After the disappointment that was Obama in debate number one, Team Obama knew that Joe Biden would have to really kick it out of the ball park to prevent the Democrat submarine sinking fast. Paul Ryan, the Republican candidate for VP who looks a bit like a cartoon character, is from the far right of the party; his famous “Ryan budget” proposing massive cuts to America’s welfare programs that most Republicans wouldn’t dare suggest because of the public reaction.
During this debate, however, it was rather hard to take Ryan seriously; at least if you were Biden. Although strong and serious making his own points, while Ryan was talking Biden was at first smirking, then grinning, then outright laughing at his opponent, whose lack of experience, especially in terms of foreign policy, showed.
Best line of the debate goes to Biden, calling Ryan’s arguments, “a lot of stuff”; he was then asked to clarify what he meant by the moderator…apparently it’s an Irish term for malarkey.
Second debate: Romney has binders full of women
This time, Obama had clearly learnt his lesson, done his homework, and came back fighting; although his much improved performance was matched by what was still a strong performance from Romney.
Highlights of the debate, though, are both at Romney’s expense; firstly, when Romney tried to claim Obama did not initially call the attack on the American consulate in Libya an act of terror, he found himself corrected by the moderator; “He did in fact, sir” (a rather smug looking Obama chimed in; “could you say that a little louder?”).
But the best quote of the night, was, by far, Romney’s response to the question of how he would work to rectify unequal pay between men and women (Obama talked about his Lily Ledbetter Act which helps women bring forward lawsuits if they are paid less than men for doing the same jobs as them). Instead of talking about what he would do about this problem; Romney described how he, when he was Governor of Massachusetts, questioned why so few women were applying to be in his cabinet; an effort was made to find more women qualified to apply and Romney was brought “binders full of women”. America’s political satirists had a field day.
Third debate: Obama is awesome
“If this debate had gone on for 30 more minutes, Mitt Romney would have endorsed Obama”, said one CNN commentator after this debate. It does, of course, help, when the debate is on foreign policy, to have been the Commander in Chief of the United States of America for four years; but Romney’s lack of foreign policy awareness is quite staggering…leading to a debate where Romney found himself pretty much agreeing with most of what Obama said.
Quote of the debate goes to Obama, in response to Romney saying the American navy is “smaller now than at any time since 1917”; “Gov Romney hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works…we have fewer ships than we did…well governor we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military’s changed; we have these things called aircraft careers where planes land on them; we have ships that go underwater”.
A rocky start for Team Obama, but a strong end, leaves Romney and Obama neck and neck in terms of the popular vote, but America’s state based voting system is still working to Obama’s advantage.
Still, I’m sure the Obama team is missing 2008, when the probability of an Obama victory was as certain as you can get in politics…now, four debates done and just over a week to go till results are announced on 6th November, it’s still too close to call.
Images from:
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/race/news/2012/10/04/40697/…
http://politicalfiber.com/tag/2012-vice-presidential-debate/
http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/10/16/presidential-debate-2012-celebrity-r…
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/live-blogging-the-th…