President Obama and Governor Romney participated in this election’s first Presidential Debate on Oct. 3.
Directly following the debate, former Republican Presidential candidate and senior advisor Pat Buchanan stated, “I think it was the best performance of any debate I’ve seen him [Romney] do. If I had to mark this as a 15-round fight, I think that Governor Romney won 13 of the 15 rounds.”
Additionally, CNN, a traditionally left-wing news source, stated, “By most accounts, Republican challenger Mitt Romney was the clear winner of Wednesday’s first debate with President Barack Obama.”
“I thought Romney won,” student Vincent Haenni said. “He made a lot of good points that he hasn’t made in a long time.”
The candidates addressed various voting issues and spent a large amount of time speaking on eliminating the deficit. It is no surprise that both candidates’ ideas reflected their respective parties. While Obama reinforced his ideals on higher taxes for the wealthy, Romney argued that lower taxes would leave more spending money for individuals and small businesses, and would thereby help create jobs and boost the economy.
Romney presented his disdain for “Obamacare” and both candidates argued back and forth about the future of the increasing cost of the Medicare program.
“The tweets flashing across the bottom of the screen were funny,” student David Flick said. “I was more watching the tweets than the debate.”
While both touched lightly on the issue of the war in Afghanistan, most of the concentration was on the fiscal involvement of the United States and ways to stimulate the economy, provide jobs, enhance education and decrease the debt internally.
Intrade, which is a prediction market, showed that polls forecasting Obama’s re-election fell from 74 percent to 66 percent.
The implications of this presidential debate are important to all students in the United States, but they are more significant for students in Ohio. As a swing state, Ohio plays a large role in who will be elected president. According to pbs.org; “From the election of 1904 through that of 2004, the candidate who won Ohio won the presidency 24 out of 26 times.” In fact, in the last 11 presidential elections, the candidate who won Ohio also won the election.
More than other states, the vote of Ohioans matters. Check out the debate online, if you haven’t already, and look into the upcoming Vice Presidential debate on Oct. 11.
