Thoughts on the Debate

These are my thoughts on the presidential debate a little less than an hour after it ended.

Tonight's debate was very exciting and quite competitive. I would argue that Governor Romney won, but that wasn't for any mistakes the President made. Often times, the debate is decided as much for one candidate's mistakes as for the other's successes. I didn't see this to be the case.

If Barack Obama had one mistake, I would say it was him mentioning Romney's $5 trillion tax cuts multiple times, after Romney did his best to dispel that. It made it seem that Obama wasn't listening. I think what he was trying to do by saying that is that Romney wouldn't have been able to accomplish his plan without doing that, but if you're going to call him out for lying, I say actually call him out. Anyways that's a minor complaint but that was the big difference of the first third or so of the competitive debate.

I must say that I think the big difference between the two candidates and the biggest potential advantage to the incumbent lies in the social issues. They discussed medicare tonight, but only in the financial sense, really. I think Obama would have come off stronger if he were to focus more on the social concerns of this instead of sticking to the economic policies, where I think Romney has the advantage the way the economy is.

The line of the night came from Governor Romney and I'm paraphrasing here: "As President, you have your right to your own private jet, your own home, but not to your own facts." It's pretty funny but as far as jabs against the President go, it seemed clean to me. Of course, I already know who I'm voting for, but I think this will stick in undecided voters' minds as being the most poignant quote of the night. I think debates are often decided by the small instances like that more so than the big picture, which I would argue Romney won anyway.

It was a great debate and I'm looking forward to the next one. With Romney behind in virtually all the polls, he may need to win the upcoming debates even more convincingly to have a shot come November.