In the beginning, before any of the debates even started, John McCain decided he had to postpone his campaign, cancelling an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman to "rush" to Washington to solve the economic crisis.
Disregarding the interview he did with Katie Couric in the same timeslot and night as his cancelled Late Show appearance.
After the "postponement" of his campaign, McCain put forward the idea of postponing the debate as well. This concept wasn't received by the public very well.
Surprisingly, the first debate happened without any postponement. Yet, neither candidate seemed to act like there was an economic crisis happening.
To quote Paul Begala, a Democratic Strategist, "I was astonished – it seemed like the economic debate, it could have been frozen in time from two or three months ago. McCain yapping about earmarks, and Obama yapping about his programs to cut taxes." Begala is a former advisor for President Bill Clinton.
In the second debate, they chose to have a "town hall" setting, where people in the audience would ask the candidates their questions. John McCain has been fighting to get his opponent, Barack Obama, to do something like this over the campaign trail. So, one would assume that he must shine in this setting, and would undoubtedly think that he would pull away with the debate.
Sadly, this was not the case. The debate, all 93 minutes of it, was the same jabs that we've all heard before. "[Obama's] tax increases increase taxes!" McCain exclaimed. This was one of the many attacks McCain put on Obama throughout the night, with Obama spending much of his time defending himself from these attacks.
McCain also tried to talk himself up, "I've reached across the aisle…" when regarding his past voting record, citing Joe Lieberman as an example. Most people who are politically aware would barely consider Lieberman "across the aisle" anymore.
Out of the countless irrelevant anecdotes that both candidates gave to support their stances, Obama had one that was touching. When asked about healthcare, Obama told the story of his mother, who died of cancer, fighting her insurance company over coving her hospital bills. The insurance companies claiming that there was a chance of it being a preexisting condition. Obama went on to call this a "fundamentally flawed system".
Then the night came to the moment that defined the entire political atmosphere: the debate had concluded, and McCain and Obama went to congratulate each other and awkwardly waved to the crowd. In their awkward embrace, they got in between the moderator, Tom Brokaw, and his prompter. Brokaw couldn't help but mention their blocking of his view, and got a small laugh out of it. Tom decided to try to get a laugh several times throughout the debate, mostly at inappropriate times.
The third presidential debate, on Oct 15, was moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS news.
Like the majority of the other debates, this one was filled with random attacks from McCain and Obama spending a lot of time defending himself.
One thing that made any intellectual mind twitch was the mentioning of the Bill Ayers issue for, literally, the millionth time. Not only was there no reasoning for it, there was no real conclusion to it. Like many of the issues, they both just made accusations of each other and fought for more airtime.
Of the many annoying terms used to represent us, the American people, John McCain introduced "Joe the Plumber" at the last debate. The title was a reference to Joe Wurzelbacher, a plumber from Ohio. He became a pawn in the political chess game, because he is supposed to represent the average American.
"Joe the Plumber" is just another cheap way for politicians to try to appeal to the Middle class. More classless tactics to get more votes, you betcha. Sadly, both candidates jumped at the opportunity to use this eponym, to use it over twenty times.
Both candidates also stuck to their tendencies, by cutting one another off midsentence, and requesting more time to say absolutely nothing new. Schieffer did his best to keep order, and a few times, it actually worked. One man, however, cannot stop the egos of two mainstream politicians. To his best efforts, "times up" just wasn't enough most of the time.
Surprisingly, McCain and Obama both claimed to be running "clean" campaigns and said that their opponent wasn't. This would be true, if they were both completely unaware of both of their campaign's commercials where "I approve this message" appears at the end of each one.
When the comments of Congressman John Lewis came up, McCain said that the comments were despicable and the Obama is supposed to repudiate them. Lewis' comments were about the exclamations from McCain supports when Obama was mention, i.e. "Kill him!" and "Terrorist!" Obama put out a statement that called the comparison "inappropriate".
"But when people suggest that I pal around with terrorists, then we're not talking about issues." Obama said. McCain cut in, saying that the actions of the few should not represent all of his supporters, even though Obama never implied that all of his supporters were that way.
Obama was addressing the inaction by McCain and Palin, to which McCain said, "Let me just say categorically I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally… you're going to have some fringe peoples… and we've always said that that's not appropriate… I'm not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they're great citizens."
The issue of abortion even came into the dialogue. Obama was in favor of Roe v. Wade, while McCain opposes it. John McCain went so far to question the definition of "health risk to the mother" when it is cited as a reason to perform the abortion.
A CBS poll of undecided Independents immediately following the debate showed that 53% thought Obama won. 24% said it was a tie, with 22% favoring McCain.
"I didn't think Obama was as comfortable this time as he was in the other two debates, but I didn't really hear any gaffe, any major mistake," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia, "he might even be judged the winner." (Courtesy of reuter.com)
If a winner must be declared, and it can't be "Joe the Plumber", Obama would have to be it. He was able to carry himself in a more professional manner. When McCain would send around his nonsensical attacks to Obama, Barack mostly smiled and waited until McCain finished the attack before he made his rebuttal. He thoroughly struck back against these attacks, and even took a swipe at Fox News and their conservative reputation, "Even FOX News disputes [Obama raising taxes for people who make $42,000 a year], and that doesn't happen very often when it comes to accusations about me."
McCain, on the other hand, would just break into Obama's rebuttals to snicker, breathe heavily, or even try to retort rudely. He stuttered through many of his words, and tried to go around some of the questions he was asked. It got to the point where Schieffer had to cut him off saying, "But what the question was-" to which McCain jumped back onto subject. Not to mention his multiple uses of Autism, a brain development disorder, to try to appeal. Even when autism had little to do with the topics he was on, and was merely used for political gain.
By any measure, the last debate was the most important. It held more weight than the other two, and covered some of the most interesting topics. It was the best performance of Senator McCain, but Obama kept his cool, and was able to beat McCain.
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