{"id":2691,"date":"2012-10-06T08:00:55","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=2691"},"modified":"2012-10-05T12:58:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T16:58:25","slug":"i-hate-campaign-debates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/10\/06\/i-hate-campaign-debates\/","title":{"rendered":"I hate campaign debates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The 1992 presidential debate was a bit different: Bill Clinton, George Bush, Ross Perot.<\/p><\/div>\n

Apparently, I’m not alone. Everyone I’ve talked to since Wednesday’s first presidential debate, regardless of political affiliation, seemed to agree\u00a0 that Romney performed much better than the President, but remarked on the 90 minutes as “boring,” “truth took a holiday,” “lacking substantive questions,” “boring,” “nothing new,” “boring.” Want to weigh in on debate policy, structure, style? Here’s the link<\/a> to the Commission on Presidential Debates.<\/p>\n

The thing is, while this debate may have been particularly deadly, I always hate them. “He said, she said” writ large, answers carefully pre-scripted by teams of handlers working for each of the candidates. Ugh.<\/p>\n

In an NPR\u00a0It’s All Politics<\/a><\/em> blog post by Linton Weeks published just before the first debate, young people across the political spectrum were asked what they wanted to hear during the debate. Here’s the big (non-partisan) takeaway that hits the nail on the head regardless of your age:<\/p>\n

“…have the courage to be frank, to express genuine empathy of what (we) are going through as people in a tough economy, and to respect (our) intelligence as informed voters.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney finish their debate at the University of Denver on Wednesday.<\/p><\/div>\n

In a story on NPR earlier this week (you can follow NPR’s coverage of the campaign here<\/a>), a comparison was made between the 5-point plans of the two candidates. Turns out, their 5 points are almost identical, though how to deal with those points varies more or less depending upon the specific issue. Barack Obama’s top five: jobs and the economy; education; energy; health care; and national security. Mitt Romney’s top five: energy; skills training; deficit reduction; international trade; small business growth.<\/p>\n

You might argue that, of course, their 5-point plans are similar: everyone agrees on what matters most. Not true. In an edgy (language advisory) blog post<\/a> at Salon this morning, Andrew Leonard claims the five most important issues aren’t even being talked about during this campaign: climate change; Afghanistan; poverty; drone wars; gun control.<\/p>\n

So, here’s your chance. What’s on your “5 most important issues” list?<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently, I’m not alone. Everyone I’ve talked to since Wednesday’s first presidential debate, regardless of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6993,8519,8522,8520,6994,89,8516,8521],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2697,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2691\/revisions\/2697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}