First Democratic Presidential Debate
Tonight I watched the first Democratic presidential debate in its entirety. Going into it, I wasn’t particularly excited about any of the candidates, and I feel pretty much the same coming out of it as well. (I really want Al Gore to throw his name into the hat, but that’s another story.)
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seemed to get most of the attention, followed closely by John Edwards and Joe Biden. Then came Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, and Dennis Kucinich. Mike Gravel, whom I had never heard of, was pretty much a complete kook, though I did find myself agreeing with something he said toward the end of the debate.
Terrorism has been with civilization from the beginning, and it will be there till the end. We’re going to be as successful fighting terrorism as we are fighting drugs with the war. It doesn’t work. What you have to do is to begin to change the whole foreign policy.
What bothers me the most about these presidential debates is the inability of the candidates to actually answer the questions posed to them, and Barak seemed to be the biggest offender. Three separate candidates were asked what they would change militarily in the Middle East if the US was attacked twice simultaneously by Al Qaeda, and none of them had an answer. It seems a candidate just hears the topic and immediately jumps to his or her talking points, regardless of whether or not any of the points actually answer anything.
I was impressed with both Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, though. Both of them seemed to address the actual questions posed to them. Richardson had very concrete plans developed, and Chris Dodd was very good at articulating himself.
I was both impressed and disappointed with Dodd’s comments regarding civil unions and gay marriage. First, he said he believes that everyone should approach this issue as if they had a son or daughter who is gay, and think about the rights they would want their son or daughter to have. And of course he would want his child to have the right to enter into a relationship that is legally recognized. He is very proud of his state of Connecticut for enacting civil unions. But he also said that he doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage. Now, I’m hoping this is just one of those “let’s give them all the same rights of marriage but call it something else” things. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn close, if you ask me — if all the same legal benefits are there, I’m not too concerned about what it’s called. But it’s not totally clear to me whether or not that’s what he believes.
I also give props to Biden for his uncharacteristically curt answer of “Yes” when asked if he could control his tendency to be verbose. Though I’m not sure he’d make a good president, there is something very likable about Biden. He’s very much a real person. Sometimes he unintentionally says dumb or offensive things, but he owns up to it, and he’s not afraid to poke fun at himself.
John Edwards had the best line of the night:
We ought to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war.
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