The Second Presidential Debate

Unopinionated piece:
The second debate has been widely hailed as more confrontational and aggressive than the first. Obama, who lost the first debate by general consensus given his easygoing and weaker manner, stepped up his game by making a point of addressing Romney directly - as opposed to the first debate in which he mostly spoke to the moderator or the audience. The town-hall style setting allowed for the two candidates to interact more with each other, as well as interrupt one another on a regular basis. It felt significantly more charged than the previous debate.

Romney and Obama discussed the September attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya for the first time face to face. Romney accused Obama of taking too long to refer to the attack as a terrorist strike, and of flying to Vegas for a political fundraiser the day after rather than responding to the incident. Obama, visibly upset, said that neither of those things were true, claiming that he denounced the attack as an act of terror right away, and went to the Rose Garden the day after the attack to meet with the grieving families. ". . . .the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the secretary of state, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we've lost four of our own, governor, is offensive," he said. That's not what we do. That's not what I do as president, that's not what I do as commander in chief."

The candidates were both clearly vying for female supporters, and this was especially clear when they were asked a question about pay equity for women. Obama cited a piece of legislation he'd signed when he first took office that made it easier for women to seek equal pay as men. Romney cited work he'd done as governor of Massachusetts to hire women to leadership positions, which led to his soon-to-be viral comment about "binders full of women." Obama claimed that Romney wanted to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, a plan that Romney had outlined earlier in the campaign, but Romney vehemently denied this, saying "I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not, and I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives."

The most harrowing topic, however, was that of energy policy. Romney denied that Obama had increased production of American oil or coal in the past four years, but the president gave several examples to the contrary: an example of this is when the republican cited an incident where Obama had revoked an oil-drilling company's license. Obama claimed that the oil company simply hadn't been using the land and so it was going to waste. The president also stressed that renewable energy resources were the way of the future, a point that Romney largely ignored in rebuttal. 

Overall, Obama came out on top, with an altogether more self-assured air. He delivered several zingers that left Romney stuttering and caught off guard. Both candidates ended the debate, however, with confidence in their own plans for America and their chances of winning.


Opinion piece:
When watching this debate, the thing that bothered me most was how disparate the two candidate's views of the reality of the current state of America are. Obama painted a picture of steady, if slow, improvement - that he was currently in the middle of a long-term process to carefully restore America to its former glory, and that the effort was going well so far. Romney painted an entirely different picture, depicting his opponent's administration as well-meaning but dysfunctional, constantly setting forth plans that simply didn't work and were hurting America. Romney even said at the end of the debate:

Actually, that's not so bad in and of itself. They're bound to - and supposed to - disagree on the way to go about solving our issues. But in addition to disparities in philosophy, they seemed to have a plethora of disagreements on the solid facts. Romney kept saying that Obama was shutting down domestic oil, but Obama kept claiming that he was actually increasing American drilling. Romney said that he supported insurance for female contraceptives, something that Obama (and me, for that matter) vehemently denied was in the governor's policy. Romney said Obama hadn't implemented immigration reform; Obama said he had.

Do you want to know how I just came up with those examples? I found a transcript of the debate. I pressed Control+F and found out how many times a candidate used the word "true." In every instance, it was one denying something about what the other had said.

I frankly find it disturbing how truth, in politics, have become increasingly fluid. It's one thing to present facts in a misleading way; it's another to just make stuff up.

As a sort of political agnostic, I find it morbidly fascinating how liberals and conservatives live in completely different worlds. We paint the other side as evil and mystify over how our 'enemies' could possibly believe what they believe and think the way they do. All over the country, there have been instances of friendships ending and families being torn apart over these two conflicting realities.

And I don't buy the whole schpiel about how politics ultimately isn't that important and we shouldn't let it divide us. Because these issues are important, and their effects on our lives are more immediate than we might think. And SOMEBODY has to be right. I don't know who it is, because I'm a 17-year-old who doesn't intend to research this stuff until he can actually vote. But the straight-answer-dodging and the fact-distorting that this debate exemplifies sure isn't helping.