First Presidential Debate

I thought the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney went quite well. While both pretty much dominated Jim Lehrer, not letting him get a word in edgewise when their time was up, the debaters remained civil in the midst of making jabs at the other’s platform. While it appears that the pundits have basically declared Romney the winner of the debate by a fairly large margin, I thought it was by a smaller margin.

Obama has been accused of being a teleprompter speaker, meaning that he is a great orator with the words in front of him, but not so good when speaking off the cuff. Actually, I was quite impressed with Obama’s knowledge and point making abilities in this impromptu environment. Of course, Romney was just as good. However, it was obvious that much of what passed as answers to Lehrer’s questions were simply the talking points they use every day on the campaign trail.

While both candidates expressed their views rather well, I have to give the edge to Romney despite a couple of misspoken words.

First, there were times when Romney cited studies concerning the negative consequences of Obama’s policies that Obama left unanswered, deciding rather to move on to other aspects of his policies.  This leaves the impression that he knew of the negative consequences and did not want to address them, or he did not have a good counter argument. Either way, it’s a point loser for the debate.

Second, while both candidates spoke about the prosperity that free enterprise brings to a nation, Romney seemed to back this up more with the plans he has for the future. There was also somewhat of a difference concerning how much regulation is enough, with Romney indicating he thought there was too much in some cases.

That being said, I was a bit disappointed that there was so little difference in Obama’s and Romney’s views of the role of government in society. It is obvious that they both believe in big government. Their differences were more over where the money should be spent rather than how much should be spent. Oh sure, they both gave lip service to reducing the deficit, but I didn’t hear much about any specific substantial cuts. Romney seemed to be on the right track when he talked about cutting funding to the Public Broadcasting System and a few other items, but when it came to education, he said the funding should remain the same, but turned over to the states to decide how to use it. However, there was one ray of hope amongst Romney’s statements. It was when he said that he would judge a program’s usefulness by asking himself “Is this program so important that it is worth borrowing money from China to fund it?” This sounds like an excellent criterion for budgeting decisions, but I fear that there will be too many programs that Romney believes are worth borrowing money for. That has been the trend of federal government regardless of which party controls the presidency.

We desperately need Gary Johnson in these debates to counter the big government philosophy with a true small government view. While I don’t agree with everything Johnson stands for, I believe having a real alternative to a tax and spend government presented in the debates would be quite refreshing. But alas, that might be difficult to pull off given that the Republicans are spending so much time and money to keep Johnson off the ballots in the key swing states for fear he will sway too many Republican voters to turn to the dark side of Libertarianism.