Politics: The Presidential Debates: ROUND ONE

Wow this was depressing.

I watched this with another McCain supporter, three Obama supporters, and an independent. We were all surprisingly relaxed with one another while the candidates talked nonsensically about the issues. There was one major thing that brought us together, our mutual hatred for both the candidates.

Since his nomination, I've been a McCain supporter. I hated Obama from the beginning, and still hate him. The only thing that could have gotten me to vote for him would have been if he chose Richardson as his running mate. But he didn't, and probably because Richardson is Latino.

But all that aside, the debate was horrible. I watched the Saddleback Church 'debate' in which both candidates were brought on the stage in a controled situation and asked the same questions. I thought Obama danced around most of the questions whereas McCain answered straight-on which garnered my respect (whether I agreed with him or not). I was hoping for a round two of McCain actually answering questions while Obama put on his point shoes to dance around questions.

The first question was asked and both candidates wasted their time giving the boring thank-yous and introducing themselves with little mini stump-speeches. Then the moderator had to verbally slap them by asking the question again. I figured that the problem would not persist and both candidates would at least be better about it for the rest of the debate.


First question is about a minute into the video.

The rest of the debate was a travesty. Both candidates danced around the question by either not addressing anything remotely close to the subject of the question or by redefining the question and THEN answering their own question (Edwards used to do this by outright saying 'the real question is' and then answering it).


Note Gravel answered the question HEAD ON. The other two didn't even touch the issue. Ballerina alert on Obama. What the heck does that have to do with the question? At least Edwards tried to answer the question before redefining the question and then not answering it.

This is a major problem with presidential candidates. I want to see some answers from the candidates at some point. This has gotten sooo irritating for me. It seemed that the only two candidates who never danced around a question were Mike Gravel for the democrats and Ron Paul for the republicans, and neither of them were given any value for it.

It's depressing.