What do you expect to see in the debates?
October 3, 2012
Topic: Domestic policy
Air Time: 9:00-10:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Location: University of Denver in Denver, Colorado
Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debates
Participants: President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
Moderator: Jim Lehrer (Host of NewsHour on PBS)
The debate will focus on domestic policy and be divided into six time segments of approximately 15 minutes each on topics to be selected by the moderator and announced several weeks before the debate.The moderator will open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the topic.
October 11, 2012
Vice Presidential
Topic: Foreign and domestic policy
Air Time: 9:00-10:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Location: Centre College in Danville, Kentucky
Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debates
Participants: Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan
Moderator: Martha Raddatz (ABC News Chief Foreign Correspondent)The debate will cover both foreign and domestic topics and be divided into nine time segments of approximately 10 minutes each. The moderator will ask an opening question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the question.
October 16, 2012
Topic: Town meeting format including foreign and domestic policy
Air Time: 9:00-10:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Location: Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York
Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debate
Participants: President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
Moderator: Candy Crowley (CNN Chief Political Correspondent)The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which citizens will ask questions of the candidates on foreign and domestic issues. Candidates each will have two minutes to respond, and an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate a discussion. The town meeting participants will be undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization.
October 22, 2012
Topic: Foreign policy
Air Time: 9:00-10:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Location: Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida
Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debates
Participants: President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
Moderator: Bob Schieffer (Host of Face the Nation on CBS)The format for the debate will be identical to the first presidential debate and will focus on foreign policy.
I expect Romney to come across as very forced and desperate as he tries to manufacture a bounce from the debates.
I think Obama will look presidential but will go after Romney in one of the negative ways consistent with his style and that is with a smile, a bit of sarcasm and a twist of the knife.
Obama will slay Romney on foreign policy but only 4% of the country will recognize that because so few Americans pay close attention to foreign policy details.
I hope Obama roasts the Repubs for attempting to erode SS and Medicare and privatizing them so corporate buddies can cash in. I hope Obama finds the occasion to thank Romney for his participation in the health care program in MA. I think he should mention it a few times and find the right moment to physically applaud Romney for it.
Another election year, another lecture explaining to the troops in Speech and Debate class why the ‘debates’ dominating the news aren’t debates.
At this point — I think the file creation date is in 2000 — I just need to freshen up the Powerpoints, and direct them to our library’s copy of the wonderful Donald Strathairn/Richard Dreyfuss version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
60-90-30 timing — and that’s not seconds, folks… No moderators. No mikes. Standing audiences — or sitting in their buckboards. Hooting and heckling.
Oh, how far the Democracy has fallen….
I’m curious, why did NBC get shut out? The only moderator worth anything is Jim Lehrer, and that’s like calling him the tallest midget in the circus.
I thought I read somewhere that the Romney camp refused to agree to any debate involving NBC News (i.e. MSNBC) personalities. And the flip side being that the Obama camp refused to agree with any of the Faux News people either.
That foreign policy debate won’t be pretty. Romney couldn’t buy a clue on foreign policy.
You can hire a clue. That’s what CEO’s do. That’s why there’s staff.
Run government like a business, baby….
The Soviet Union is our enemy, and our allies are Switzerland, Bermuda, and the Caymen Islands.
I expect Romney to do disconcertingly well in the first debate. The topics will be given in advance. Romney will be uber-prepared for them. He will have some pretty good, totally-thought-out-in advance zingers. It is common in the first debate for the incumbent to be somewhat surprised by the aggressiveness of the challenger – think Reagan-Mondale in 1984, or Bush-Kerry in 2004. Debates are not Obama’s strength, and I expect it to show. The media will be quite eager to tell a “Romney comeback?” story after a few weeks of Obama being ahead, and I predict they will pronounce Romney the winner.
But somewhere along the line, Romney will make a gaffe that exposes exactly what a dork he really is. Something like the $10,000 bet. Probably this will happen in the town hall debate. His inauthenticity will not wear well when answering questions from real votes.
These are my predictions. Usually I charge six cents for them, but I am happy to give them to the frog pond for free 🙂
I think people are underestimating Obama. Yes the debates in ’08 wasn’t his best, but they were against much stronger debater than Romney.
Romney debate performances this year in particular have been against horrible candidates. Go back to ’08 and see how Romney was with better candidates opposing him. McCain and Huckabee were no slouches.
Also, Obama has had almost 4 years to prepare for these debates. And unlike Mitt, Obama doesn’t have to learn what the particulars are of the subjects, Obama’s lived it.
I guess what I’m saying is that, I don’t think people are giving Obama his due in this arena.
But hey, maybe it’s good to have Mittens expectations so high. The higher you are the longer the fall.
McCain was a good debater?
My assessment of the 2008 debates was that McCain thought that he was smarter than he actually was. After all, he had been in the arena for years – who the heck was this kid to question his wisdom? The fact that Obama didn’t defer to him–in fact, knew a lot more than he did, even on foreign policy–drove him crazy. McCain was easy to beat. All you really had to do was show up.
In the GOP debates McCain was better than Romney.
I’m talking about Romney debating with better candidate debaters
Romney will have to learn a whole new set of answers that are different from his endless lies for the base so that he doesn’t sound absurd to normal people, and his new answers have to not piss his base off. Today he said he would retain certain popular elements of Obamacare- expect a walk back tomorrow.
His entire campaign is built on lies. It’s a horrible box, but he built it himself.
Except Obama will have no opportunity to dog him about his lies, and the “moderators” won’t bother.
I thought he cleaned McCain’s clock in the presidential debates primarily because he learned from his primary debates mistakes. The one thing I think Obama has more than any president in recent memory is to learn from his mistakes (especially campaign mistakes) and not repeat them again.
Dork, or dick? Dick, or dork? I’m so torn….
If it walks like a dick and talks like a dork…
I think the debate to watch will be VP Biden vs Paul Ryan. first because the GOP has so bought into the caricature they’ve created of Biden, that I bet Paul Ryan actually believes it. Second, Biden will be “unchained”, so to speak, instead of being in the “don’t beat up on the girl” box he was in with Sarah Palin. As a feminist, I think the woman should give as good as she gets, but it still would have been disasterous if Biden had been seen to be dismissive of Palin, even though she deserved the dismissal. Biden had to be careful and not have a “you’re likeable enough Hilary” moment with Palin.
Biden won’t have the same restrictions with Paul Ryan. I suspect that will let Biden be unleashed.
Finally, go back and watch the Dem primary debates, Biden, IMHO outright won a good bit of the ones he was in if not a win, he was no slouch either. No one will ever forget “a noun, a verb and 9/11”
Candy Crowley was totally in the tank for Bush. She was one of the MANY TV news people on election night 2000 who started the night with a very depressed facial expression – trying hard to pretend to be objective – and turned into all smiles after the news on Florida turned.
Dunno where she stands on Obama, but I would never have agreed to her as a moderator.
Schieffer was an old buddy of Bush the first – but although that colored his “moderation” of Bush’s “debates”, not sure what that will do here. After all, a Romney loss helps Jeb Bush’s prospects in 2016. But I wouldn’t trust him either.
I think Schafer was really pissed about being used in a Romney ad this year.
So I can hope that still pissed him off.
Plus wasn’t Schafer the one who really tore into Newt about his Tiffany bill?
Hell, Schieffer was an old buddy of Martin Van Buren…
Wasn’t Martin Van Buren the eighth President?
Just after Old Hickory?
Just before the guy that had the shortest Presidency ever? 30 days? Poor guy…
I don’t know what she is, other than stupid. Remember she, of all people, called Dennis K. ugly on live TV a few years ago.
I half expect Crowley to pose for a photo clinging to Romney’s leg.
Ok, sorry, this is way OT, but needs to me shared to be believed.
ya’ll have got to see the pic of 1st Biden with the biker chick on his lap:
http://twitpic.com/aswlo7
On Biden per pool: @samsteinhp
Biden asked biker at diner: “Can I borrow one of your bikes? They don’t let me ride anymore.”
The Photo of the Day has to be this pizza restaurant owner lifting POTUS!
http://tinyurl.com/9str9h2
On POTUS per pool: @samsteinhp
“Look at that!” Obama exclaimed once back on firm ground. “Man are you a powerlifter or what?” (pool)
@samsteinhp
Of the Secret Service agents flipping out over Van Duzer lifting Potus, he said: “He said I was alright as long as I didn’t take him away.”
BTW, @BuzzFeedAndrew
RT @laurameckler: The pizza shop owner says he is a Republican who voted for Obama in ’08 and will in ’12. #goodstaffwork.
Count me in with the biker on the right in the Biden photo who is thoroughly uncomfortable with what is going on at that table.
yep, that biker ain’t amused. Thank goodness SS is close.
Still at the very least, the difference in the 2 camps are are obvious form the pics. One camp is just more comfortable campaigning among the people. The Obamas and the Bidens are always working beyond the ropeline.
How often does the Romney camp do the same?
I remember the wrestler at the Olympics who asked to pick up FLOTUS. And FLOTUS was like alright, if you want. She was there to support the athletes and if she figured lifting FLOTUS would help, FLOTUS was like ok. Could you even imagine Miss Ann letting that wrestler pick her up, or Mittens even allowing a big hug from the restaurent dude? I sure can’t.
The interaction with regular people is way more intimate with the Obama camp than the Romney.
Romney would have gone stiff like Angela Merkel.
Romney probably would have pepper sprayed him.
we now have video of the Obama lift!
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7421142n
Even better than the stills?
Favorite comment on it:
People need to stop ragging on the President’s debate skills. It’s like the “fair-and-balanced” version of the teleprompter lie. It’s almost like folks need to be able to ding him on something, so they make stuff up.
How could he be bad at debating when he wiped the floor with McCain and Hillary one-on-one? How does that make any sense? When he gets equal, extended time to focus on a specific adversary, he’s absolutely fine.
97% of the objective facts of the engagement will be on his side, not Romney’s. And Romney isn’t running his campaign based on that 3% vulnerability. It will not be competitive.
Agreed. As I said above, I think people are underestimating Obama and overestimating Romney.
but we’ll see
Isn’t that what the Obama campaign would want going into the debates?
Yup
I expect to see another series of crappy excuses for debates, with no real chance for questions or followup between the candidates without useless blabbering from the “moderators”. Obama, judging from the schedule, will have no opportunity to confront Romney with his chronic self-contradictions and follow up on the answers (if any). Romney will get away with well-rehearsed answers to questions he knows well in advance. He will not face any significant confrontation on how he took the opposite stand last week, or whether he stands by the party platform and Ryan.
How is it possible that a joint that calls itself the world’s greatest democracy settles for “debates” that work more like an argument among 3rd graders tightly controlled by mommy than anything Lincoln or Douglas would recognize without puking? How is it that two people running for the highest office in the land can’t run their own debate without intervention by a news-reader nanny? How can people read that “The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the question” and not wonder who the hell gave some newsreader more power than the president and wannabe president of the United States? In short, the “debates” will be the usual sorryass infomercials we always get.
As to the outcome, Obama will win on likeability, quickness, and knowledge. The media will find some “gaffe” to focus on that has nothing to do with substance. The whole exercise will cement Obama’s lead and the election will come out for the best, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons.
You don’t think Obama will have time to rebut Romney’s bullshit? Why not? I know the moderators will be beyond useless, but why won’t he? Especially when it comes to the townhall style.
Because rebutting Romney’s lies will take a lot of back and forth as Romney goes through serial evasions and attempts to change the topic. The format doesn’t allow the time to dog him down and point out the contradictions and misdirections. Maybe I’m forgetting, but I can’t recall a “debate” of this type where the moderators didn’t routinely shut down anything that looked like a real extended confrontation — they’re scared above all of being accuses of “losing control”. Which is exactly what I want them to do.
Pretty sure there was substantial back and forth during one of the McCain-Obama debates.
For all of Fox’s bullshit, I actually prefer them to moderate debates. They definitely did the best job during the GOP primary. CNN was the worst by a mile.
How do I think it’s going to go?
1.) Romney sucks at debating. What is with this myth of him being a skilled debater, and where’s it coming from? Here’s the deal: Romney is a decent bullshit artist with a media that doesn’t call him out (check out Fluffy this morning). However, it’s really easy to get under his skin. Similar to McCain, but Romney is worse at holding it in. Look at how he handled Rick Perry. It’s like watching Buckley and Vidal go at it; Vidal keeps his composure with a witty punch, and Buckley can barely contain himself from actually getting physical. Obama will get under his skin, and it will be very visible. Count on it.
2.) Obama’s got facts on his side, and excels at townhalls. Romney’s got nothing in terms of foreign policy, and he’s all over the place on domestic policy. What’s he going to do? Tell the moderators what they’re allowed to talk about? Bc if issues don’t get brought up by them, Obama will. Count on that as well.
3.) Obama rips you to shreds with a smile on his face.
It’s going to be a shitshow for Romney. Even on his best debate night with the Clown Car he barely came out ahead. I can’t remember which debate it was, but it was the only debate where he even was actually the winner without defaulting to their insanity.
Yeah — the townhall part will be interesting, even though the questions will range from inane to planted. This is where Obama will be at his charming, involved best and Romney will lecture the questioner about how its his own fault. As to the other “debates”, I can only hope Obama gets a chance to really engage Romney in a way that’s unexpected. If he can, it’s all over.
The town hall undecideds will be plants. i.e. Republicans who aren’t sure they can stand Romney. Look for some A-hole to ask for Obama’s birth certificate and another to call him a Socialist.
As I recall that one primary debate in which Romney came out the winner was the one for which he’d hired a hotshot debate coach, and afterwards fired him because he’d gotten too much credit for the Mittster’s noticeably improved performance. I’m sure Romney won’t make the mistake of hiring someone like that again.
Yep, that’s the debate I’m talking about. Sure, he “won” most if not all of the debates, but it was only by default. That was the one debate where he won on the merits. And because of his ego and because he gets easily rattled, he fired the guy. He’s going to get creamed.
Too bad Chris Hayes locked out with MSNBC. He can pour more smart words into a sound byte than anyone on the planet!
I hope we hear that the percentage of Americans participating in the labor force is the lowests it’s been in 31 years, since the Carter Recession!
Or that median income has done down during Obama’s “recovery”…
Those would be nice to hear!
Or we could talk about how Obama added 6 Trillion to the debt!
Oh…and we could talk about how the growth in GDP after this recession is the worst ever!
We’ve got to let him go!!!
Well, there you go again!
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
We gotta let him go!
Yep. I am. In fact, I got a grant that I wouldn’t have gotten, and now I have a job. I’ve budgeted to pay down $20,000 of my student loans in one year (about $12k paid down thus far).
You’re a boring troll. At least the true Ron Paul fanbois do more than spout Republican talking points. Also, stop spamming. Are you a dog? Do you see a squirrel out of the window mid-thought whereby you forget to post everything in 1 post?
It’s a technique called staccato…Clinton and Obama are good at it!
Why so hostile?
You are a true believer…from each according to his ability, to each according to his need…You believe it…so does Boo…
Question…in the long run, how can the needy enslave the able?
Why not say what you want to say in one post instead of spamming the thread with several short posts? All the short posts do is force people to scroll down.
I want to run for office some day!
Being a thread spammer has no relation to running for office some day. Like I said below it is just an obnoxious way of communicating on a message board. Nothing more.
we here at the pond do not argue with ignorance
Well, I’m older than I was four years ago. At my age, thats never good.
Really, I’m sick of that question. I may need to stop reading the news until Nov 7.
Well, I’m paying 4.25% on my mortgage instead of 6%. That’s a whole lot better. And yes, my income is up because I’m taking my Social Security before Paul Ryan gets it.
Oh, and I’m driving a 2012 Impala LTZ with all the gadgets (LOVE the bluetooth phone, great clarity in the 8 Bose speakers) that wouldn’t have existed without Obama.
Yeah, you should hear Il Divo booming through those Bose speakers.
Can’t wait for my “Osama bin Laden is dead, General Motors is alive, Obama-Biden 2012” bumper sticker to come via US Mail. It was made for that car. What are you driving, Nick? My money’s on some rice-burner made by scabs in Dixie.
HAHA!
Rice burner? I do drive a paid-for Lexus LS 460…great ride!!! American cars can’t beat it!!!
Isn’t “Rice Burner” racist?!?!
Ha Ha You paid for a BMW and got a Toyota. Has it taken off by itself yet?
Didn’t call the Japanese people names, just their cars.
And I love Dixie!
I love Dixie cups.
I was laid off in 2009 but got another job a few months later. I took a pay cut to get it but due to the company I am working for booming I have made up my salary and then some.
My student loan interest rates have gone down.
My 401K is up better than ever
As for other people I know my grandmother’s donut hole started to close. As has my 4 sets of aunt’s and uncles.
My brother was able to re-finance and that means more money is his family’s pocket.
A good friend started a business that has built some specialized software used in wind energy and his business is taking off,
Another good friend started a patent lawfirm and his firm has taken off.
Want me to go on?
Isn’t that “anecdotal”?
As a radical right-winger, I’m actually better off too…not because of Obama, but because “I Built That”! I got better at what I did.
To judge Obama, you’ve got to look at Macro numbers…less people working…lower median income…higher poverty…
That by nature results in an anecdotal response. Now if you want the question answered is the US better off? YES!
Those are just a few and by the way that is a staccato style versus the obnoxious thread spamming you just did,
Most of what you mention above aren’t actually “facts”…
None The Less..
Have you researched the economy Ronald Reagan inherited? Statistically worse than Obama’s…higher unemployment, higher inflation…
Did you see his growth rate?
Spare me the bull shit about his deficits…his revenue went up! Couldn’t control spending…just like W…
And I never said the economy is where it should be. Just that it is in a better place than it was 4 years ago.
Obama has repeatedly said it isn’t where any of us want it to be and I agree with him. That said I never thought this would be a short recovery. There were too many structural issues and it was too global in nature for it to bounce back within 4 year. For example I firmly believe we would be growing at a much faster pace if it weren’t for the uncertainty in Europe. The recession Reagan inherited wasn’t near as structural nor global in nature
Also I never said a word about deficits so I have no idea why you said to “spare me.” If you want my thoughts on deficits – I think deficits growing during economic downturns due to government spending to stimulate growth is fine. I also think that the other half of Keynes philosophy needs to be heeded – that when the economy is growing at a good pace deficits should be paid down. That is what Clinton did and what BOTH Bush and Reagan failed to do.
Unemployment was lower at the start of Reagan’s term than mid-way through, got worse, then the Fed intervened and it got better. Ronald Reagan didn’t do shit. His unemployment rate ended at the rate he started.
Obama unemployment February 2009: 8.3%, with 750-800k jobs per month shedding.
Current rate: 8.1%
IOW, about what it was when he took office, and even lower. IOW, better than Reagan.
Yeah, I’m better off.
Here’s what I’d like to see in a debate:
I’d also like to see Halle Berry’s phone number on my Recently Called list…
The only problem is that the “fact-checkers” are liberal hacks! See Paul Ryan’s speech!
Facts do have a liberal bias…
Nothing.
Not a chance in hell I will watch.