The Fine Art of Debating

In reference to Obama apparently threatening Pakistan, McCain says a president has to be more careful about what he says. Obama responds by repeating exactly what he’d said about Pakistan, which completely flattens McCain’s lazy interpretation, then points out two examples of McCain letting his mouth go - saying North Korea should be wiped off the map and singing Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb Iran. McCain’s response? To once again reiterate his record in the senate (stopping short of certain decisions made regarding Iraq) and telling some irrelevant story about a woman giving him a bracelet at a town-hall meeting commemorating her son who died in Iraq.

Less than two minutes after Obama has said the situation in Afghanistan can’t be solved by more troop deployment alone and needs some careful strategy, McCain accuses him of not understanding that it’ll take more than just increased troop-deployment to improve the situation and some careful strategy is needed.

That was pretty much the theme of the whole debate. McCain accuses Obama of something, which Obama casually discredits or puts in context before bringing up two or three examples of McCain doing exactly what he’s accusing Obama of, to which McCain has no reply, or Obama says something that McCain immediately forgets and accuses Obama of having the opposite view.

The only reasoning I can think of for why people can’t decide who won, or even think McCain won, is that McCain appeared to be on the offensive more, while Obama was willing to admit when he was in agreement with McCain, but the fact is McCain was stuck with rehashing his campaign ads, while Obama was responding intelligently and articulately to the questions being posed and the responses from the other side.

Judge for yourselves: