http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/us/politics/after-debate-a-torrent-of-criticism-for-obama.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp
This article is about the presidential debate that was on October 3rd. I did not watch the debate, but I thought that this article was really interesting. The article says that Democrats and Republicans were disappointed in Barack Obama's performance. That his tone was flat and and his speeches were "uninspiring". On the news, I heard people saying that Mitt Romney was a definite winner of the debate. The article says that "Mr. Romney will have to find a way to turn the positive reviews from the debate into a sustained push that changes the dynamic of the race". I agree with this. After a debate that he did so well at, he will have to keep doing well to keep the people voting for him. The same problem that happened to Obama at the debate, could happen to Romney also. Each debate has a different result. Focus groups of Democrats even said that they were impressed with Romney and surprised by Obama. I feel like it is always hard to tell who is in the lead for president. The winner switches back and forth so often. This debate was really interesting to read and hear about, and the other peoples reactions to it.
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I'm a bit disappointed that this article focuses so much on Romney's superior performance, without mention of his lack of accuracy until the second page. Although it is true that, when watching the debate, Romney was clearly the more engaging of the two, many of his statements were simply false. Yesterday, when canvassing, my fellow volunteers and I knocked on the doors of undecided voters and talked to them about the candidates' stances on various issues. And when we asked what appealed to them about Mitt Romney, the vast majority of them answered, “nothing.” Those of them who had watched the debate were disappointed in Obama's performance, but hadn't been convinced that Romney was the preferable candidate. Nobody seemed surprised to hear that Romney had been fudging the truth—in fact, it seemed to make sense to them. Despite his superior performance, I'm not convinced Romney really won this one. He may have convinced those who take his words at face value, but not those who know to check up on the figures. And the most memorable moment of the debate —possibly Romney's lowest point—was definitely him threatening to cut funding to PBS. As one voter put it: “You don't mess with my Big Bird.”
ReplyDeleteI agree with many of the things Alana mentioned. Although it is clear that Romney’s PERFORMANCE was superior to Obama’s in the debate, the majority of the points he made were false or very misleading. For example, he mentioned that right out of college, the unemployment rate is over 50%. However, this is misleading in the sense that he grouped together both unemployed and UNDERemployed people, since underemployed people hold a vast majority. Also, people tend to forget that although Obama was very much lackluster and allowed for Romney to say, essentially, whatever he wanted, he is currently trying to run a country and campaign at the same time, whereas Romney can focus all of his energy into campaigning. This allowed him to put vast amounts of time into preparing for this debate, resulting in him being regarded as the “winner” (although, in reality, there is not technically a “winner” of the debate; it is not a competition). I also agree that people focus far too much on the fact that Romney performed well, without mentioning facts or giving a perspective from Obama’s side. To close, I’ll leave you all with a statistic I found very interesting, from a poll held by NPR: there are a vast amount of Republicans who either believe that Romney was behind killing Bin Laden or they were not sure who was actually the man behind Bin Laden’s death. While it is not a majority of people, it is a bit worrying, nonetheless.
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