Political Views?

After watching the presidential debate on Friday night, I feel that I did not learn anything necessarily new about either candidate.  I did not learn anything special about the stance of any politician on any issue.  I don't even feel that either politician had a clear upper-hand over the other, although Obama's relatively level-headed style of speech delivery sometimes seemed a step ahead of McCain's occasional blatant appeals to American sentiments (the story of dead veteran's mother giving him a wristband to wear in honor of her son, for instance).  But watching the debate reaffirmed one thing for me: that the American campaign process is a crazy one.

It appears that on just about every issue, the argument between the two candidates would not boil down to the specifics of what needs to be done or an actual solid plan.  Instead, both politicians would immediately resort to taking the other side's stance and twisting it out of proportion so that it ends up meaning something completely different and less sensible, thus making it much easier to attack.  In order to counter this technique, either politician would then rely on taking previous statements that were used against them and then attempting to rephrase them.  This would often lead to a long ramble of circular logic that when spoken out in plain words clearly contradicts itself.

And so the debate did not seem to give any better understanding, at least to me personally, of where our politicians stand or what they believe in, for it is very predictable where each one is always going to stand.  Either candidate is clearly a carbon copy Democrat and Republican, although McCain likes to be called "the maverick."  And so rather than clearing up my understanding of stances on various policies, the presidential debate of 2008 only proved to me how much the American campaign style of negative campaigning, twisting facts, and blowing miniscule statements out of proportion, can completely convolute a politicians message and how people view it.

--Ryan