The First Presidential Debate
- By Simple Politiks
- 9 October, 2012
- 13 Comments
I know that I wasn’t the only person who was surprised by President Obama’s performance in the first presidential debate. I can say the same thing about Romney’s performance as well. Romney appeared to be in control throughout the entire debate and it seemed like Obama wasn’t making an effort to change that. I don’t understand why he didn’t, though. Obama isn’t in a great position in the polls or anything, each campaign is spending massive amounts on advertising, and Obama’s campaign has been sending borderline desperate emails asking for money/support. You would think that the situation would call for a much stronger debate performance… Not a submission. His performance is especially surprising to me because of how often Romney used inaccurate information to criticize Obama’s policies. If you’re in a close presidential debate then you can at least put some effort into taking apart your opponent’s argument by saying the facts. But maybe Obama didn’t even know the facts? How else can you explain his incompetence?
Romney wasn’t the only one who was spewing inaccurate information. Below is an article which takes note of the inaccuracies and exaggerations said from both sides of the presidential debate. Definitely check it out.
Fact Checking the Presidential Debate (some of the facts are at the bottom of this post)
There’s a bigger problem with the last debate than inaccurate speculations about performance. The problem has more to do with the system than anything else. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand hearing all of the fluff in these presidential debates. It’s like the debates are really bullshit contests and the winner is the one who can pack the most pleasant-sounding promises into each “2 minute” segment. If one candidate lies about one statistic the other will retort with another exaggeration and it just keeps piling on. But who actually notices? Obviously journalists and the ardent opposition to each candidate. But… Who else? I don’t think the typical American notices as much as we would like to believe. This is especially influential during times of non-polarizing politics because of how much sway the moderates have in each election, but it is still extremely significant in this polarized environment. These moderates are still going to decide the election, after all.
And this is getting to why I absolutely despise the debate process for the presidential election. You are campaigning for the highest public office in the land, debatably the most powerful position in the world… Yet there is nobody to fact check you during the debate. You can build yourself up on a foundation of lies. Something doesn’t feel right about our system when you look at it like that. We need other moderators or journalists or economists to sit with the moderator who asks the questions. We need those informed people to correct the candidates on inaccurate claims and exaggerations. We need people to call the candidate’s out for all of the garbage that they spew just to gain popularity and win the election.
The news attempts to do it after the debates, but many news stations are already biased. Just look at FOX and MSNBC and you’ll see the world through two different lenses. Also, fact checking after the debates doesn’t have the same effect as telling the candidate he/she is lying in person. They have to change their argument/explain why they’re lying right on the spot. This can make the discussions change very quickly for the candidates who are not using accurate information. Everybody would notice that. So no, the reporting from news stations is not good enough by itself. And why should it be?? How can we just sit back and let both candidates lie during a debate for the position of President of the United States?! I can’t stand the prevelant absurdity in our current system! The primaries too, for that matter! All of the political debates need to be fact checked more extensively than they already are. People need to hold our politicians accountable for what they say in front of the public. Otherwise we have an uninformed electorate that doesn’t know what to think. Embarrass these people publically to force the truth out of them in the future!
I hope to see some type of change to our current system in the near future. Luckily fact checking websites are getting more popular so I do believe there is hope for something like that to trickle into the debates themselves. It will just take a bit of time and a huge amount of support.
Trust me… It’s worth fighting for.
- Obama accused Romney of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Not true. Romney proposes to offset his rate cuts and promises he won’t add to the deficit.
- Romney again promised to “not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans” and also to “lower taxes on middle-income families,” but didn’t say how he could possibly accomplish that without also increasing the deficit.
- Obama oversold his health care law, claiming that health care premiums have “gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years.” That’s true of health care spending, but not premiums. And the health care law had little to do with the slowdown in overall spending.
- Romney claimed a new board established by the Affordable Care Act is “going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Not true. The board only recommends cost-saving measures for Medicare, and is legally forbidden to ration care or reduce benefits.
- Obama said 5 million private-sector jobs had been created in the past 30 months. Perhaps so, but that counts jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics won’t add to the official monthly tallies until next year. For now, the official tally is a bit over 4.6 million.
- Romney accused Obama of doubling the federal deficit. Not true. The annual deficit was already running at $1.2 trillion when Obama took office.
- Obama again said he’d raise taxes on upper-income persons only to the “rates that we had when Bill Clinton was president.” Actually, many high-income persons would pay more than they did then, because of new taxes in Obama’s health care law.
- Romney claimed that middle-income Americans have “seen their income come down by $4,300.” That’s too high. Census figures show the decline in median household income during Obama’s first three years was $2,492, even after adjusting for inflation.
- Obama again touted his “$4 trillion” deficit reduction plan, which includes $1 trillion from winding down wars that are coming to an end in any event.
Copyright © 2013
Roll the tape from Obama’s 2008 debate performances against Hillary and Romney’s 2012 primary debates and one shouldn’t be too surprises. obama is a creature of the teleprompter and Axelrod’s Talking Points.
I wouldn’t be so quick with the lies. Much are policy differences and the natural bluster of advertising.
I think the debstes captured what is important which is the differences in leadership and governance.
The lies are prevelant and brought to the light by the link I attached.
These debates mainly show people the candidate’s public speaking ability. Leadership is shown through policies and character is shown through honesty. We need fact checking and more rigorous debates to let everyone see more of the last two qualities I mentioned. I don’t care about public speaking ability if the candidate has common sense policies and doesn’t try to deceive the people who vote for him/her. It would be foolish for anyone to prefer that.
Just my 2 cents.
You are SO right!
Thanks!
I think it would be difficult, yet amusing, to do a real time fact check during the debate, especially in the standard format. I think the town hall style keeps candidates genuine because the person asking the question will “call bullshit” more readily than a newscaster seeking to secure future presidential interviews.
Yeah I know what you mean about the difficulty. How it would happen is still a mystery to me… I can’t see it being a smooth debate if people interrupt the candidates mid-sentence. Perhaps they debate for a smaller amount of time, there is an intermission, and the economists/journalists/other fact checkers get into the nitty-gritty details for a second half of the debate by pointing out inaccuracies in each candidate’s statements. Maybe the next day there is a follow up debate with the fact checkers clarifying statements. There are multiple ways of implementing a newer system… I don’t know what would be best but it is something I’m going to be thinking about for future posts. I might write a post about it if I truly think of something promising…
I agree with you on how the debate format can just become a means to “sound and look presidential” rather than to actually debate policy differences. A few things about the debate itself… I agree that eliminating any tax loophole/deduction would cause the deficit to be less than $5 trillion. However, why is Romney unable to identify what those deductions are? Just yesterday, he announced that he will eliminate neither the homeowner’s mortgage deduction nor the deduction on charitable contributions for middle class families. This has just made the math even more difficult for him, almost impossible to achieve. While the $5 trillion may a number we could argue about, the bigger problem is that more tax cuts will add significantly to the deficit, not reduce it.
A second point is whether it is fair for Obama to count the $1 trillion from winding down the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as part of his deficit reduction. Personally, I do think it is fair because when Obama was running for election in 2008, we had not established any concrete timeline for winding down these wars. I remember the “surge” and how it was working in Iraq. I remember John McCain talking about the need to keep the troops until we “achieve victory” without actually defining what victory meant. So ending the wars is in fact an achievement of this administration and was also a electoral promise from Obama in 2008. However, whether he counts it or not, do his policies go far in solving our debt problems? Not as far as it should! The Simpson-Bowles would be a great starting point for it, and building consensus around it should be his target.
I am sorry for such a long comment. I just starting reading your posts and I very much like the style of your blog. It makes me want to put more work into my own blog!
You raise very valid points and these are the discussions that I would rather see in the debates. It would bring light to so much obscurity.
I’m glad you like it! And don’t apologize for the long comment, I really enjoy reading what other people have to say. The comments section is usually where I do the most learning/critical reasoning. So I’d actually prefer longer comments over shorter ones if you really have something to say about the post
Best of luck with your blog! By the way, you chose a very entertaining name haha.
By all means! Call them on it, turn their faces red and maybe they will be more careful with their “facts” or not try to be so sneaky…next time. I agree!
That is essentially what I would like to see! On the spot fact checking would have a much greater impact on the outcome of the debates than fact checking once they are over.
First of all, love your article and was surprised to find how much I agree with you. During the debate I basically took the same notes! I thought Obama behaved down right inappropriately too when mentioning it was his anniversary the very first minutes he had to speak! A president should be a role model, not some guy begging for sympathy…
Anyway, my favorite part is when you criticize the system:
“We need other moderators or journalists or economists to sit with the moderator who asks the questions. We need those informed people to correct the candidates on inaccurate claims and exaggerations. We need people to call the candidate’s out for all of the garbage that they spew just to gain popularity and win the election.” In sum, we need fewer actors and more real people to make politicians face their flaws.
I love that. I’m not sure whether it’s the citizens of this country’s fault if they’re not fact checking or understanding. Journalists were once called the “watchdogs” of the centuries, and it hurts me to see that BLOGGERS like yourself or normal citizens end up doing their job. It’s as if it were convenient for everyone to worry about what we’re spending and be ignorant or uninterested when it comes to governing our country…
Anyway, please keep up the good work, I hope that these kind of blogs will end up truly making a difference in the future… one day we will wake up from this bad dream and decide to act. I hope to see a post on the vice presidential debate soon!
As I mentioned in my post, I could not sleep after the debate and wish I had not watched. I feel both are misleading the American people. As one of the least taxed countries in the world per the Paris based OECD and at the lowest tax rates we have had in years, we cannot solve the debt without also increasing taxes while cutting spending. The math will not work otherwise. Romney’s plan will actually increase the deficit and Obama’s doesn’t do near enough to make a dent. We need to get real and start having an adult conversation about what we need to do. On the differences side, Obama could run on his record. While not perfect, he has done a much better job than he is given credit for. Check out Vincentmudd.wordpress.com for his look at 18 measures. Romney did come across better, but his words are what disturbed me. Why Obama did not go after Romney, I have no clue. Obama looked at him and was likely thinking what have you done with Mitt Romney. Several policy positions were reversed by Romney, so while cheering him on, I am sure some GOPers looked at each other and said did he just say that. I personally find much of the GOP platform built on weak foundation – taxed enough already, global warming is hoax so let’s double down on fossil fuels, it is OK to pea on the heads of the impoverished by cutting Obamacare and other key programs and the lies about the failed stimulus, which actually worked per non-partisan economists not on Romney’s payroll – JPMC, Moody’s Analytics, Wells Fargo, CBO, etc.
Please note, this is from a true independent voter. I will vote for the Republican gubernatorial candiadate in my state as he is a moderate and served well as mayor. Yet, I will be voting for Obama for the reasons above. He certainly is not perfect, by Romney and the GOP would do more harm. I have not even mentioned the GOP social issues which scare the crap out of reasonable people. Sorry for the rant. BTG
I could not agree with you more that politicians today can indeed build themselves up on a foundation of lies and that debates, speeches, interviews, etc. need to be fact-checked in much more depth. That being said, I do not think it will be feasible in the near future to have people calling out candidates on the spot during debates. The major party campaigns leverage candidate participation in debates to such a great extent these days and get the format in which responses to questions are 2 minutes or less and the candidates can mostly put out their talking points (and 3rd party candidates can never participate). The system is additionally set up to allow candidates and those already in office to appear as official and presidential as possible – “above the fray”. The more combative, give-and-take exchanges are left to political operatives and pundits on cable news shows. As noted earlier in this thread, the newscasters may be less confrontational with candidates themselves so they can land interviews with them in the future.
With all this in mind, I think the best remedy against political propaganda at the moment is the last thought in your post – that fact-checking websites are becoming increasingly popular and more people are becoming informed this way.
You may like my latest post on my blog — I go on somewhat of a rant about political propaganda and why it is part of our system today. http://underdogs101.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/spin-kills-underdogs/