Presidential Debate - Free Food, Laughter, and (Not Enough) Information

With only a month left before the Presidential Election, the voters have only a few more opportunities to evaluate the candidates and decide whom to vote for. The Presidential Debate this Tuesday provided such an opportunity. BCVotes2008, a group on campus dedicated to educating BC students about the 2008 election and, you guessed it, getting them to vote, sponsored a viewing of the debate in the Yawkey Center. AID cosponsored the event. There was a decent turnout at the Yawkey Center, with about three quarters of the seats filled. I suspect that the free wings and pop didn't hurt the attendance level. 

The second in the trio of debates this year was held in Nashville and moderated by Tom Brokaw. It was conducted in a town-hall format, with many of the questions being asked directly by a few of the eighty undecided voters that made up the live audience. 

Given the state of the economy (not good, if you've been living in a cave for the last month), it was no surprise that economics dominated the early portion of the debate. Among the other topics touched upon were taxes, healthcare, foreign policy, and energy. I'm not going to provided an extensive summary of the debate - watch it on YouTube if you didn't on Tuesday! - But in general what happened was: 1) Obama tried to connect McCain with George Bush and McCain sought to repudiate that connection (poor W!) and 2) Obama preached for government intervention and McCain for government to get out of the way of the private sector. 

One of the things that I noticed was the relative lack of meaningful discussion in the debate. This is a crucial time in our history, and still both candidates seemed much too concerned with bringing down his rival. Finger pointing was rampant throughout the debate from the economy to the War in Iraq to healthcare. Although there were definitely some useful policy points put forth, the issue-to-smear ratio was not where it needed to be. 

Also, it is clear that both candidates have embraced the current media climate of sound bites and one-liners. There were actually some funny ones throughout the night, including McCain's description of trying to nail down Obama's tax policies as "like nailing Jell-O to a wall" and the Illinois Senator's remark that "the straight talk express lost a wheel."

All in all, BC viewers at the Yawkey Center got a little bit of everything at Tuesday's debate viewing: Free food (the wings were messy but still excellent), humor (the facial expressions of the candidates were fodder for roaring laughter at times), and of course positions of both senators on a few issues. Hopefully we can have less of the humor and more of the issues at the final debate before we all cast our votes in November.