Debate #1

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/gradingthefirstpresidentialdebate
This article analyzed each candidate's substance, style, offense, defense, and overall job and gave each letter grades.
The writer favoured Obama, giving him an overall grade of A- while giving McCain a B-.
When commenting on McCain, the writer said that the speech was too cluttered.
When the writer began commenting on Obama, it was like he was praising God. Okay that's an exaggeration. But he left the negative Obama comments to a minimum. He felt wrote that Obama was respectful, knowledgable, composed, and well prepared. He's perfect.

http://voanews.com/english/2008-09-27-voa22.cfm
I liked this review more because it did not take one side. Most reviews claimed that there was no real winner and that the two candidates had a "tie". This mentions different things that the candidates did, and said how they could either be seen one way, positively, or another way, negatively. The article showed no favoritism.


I didn't watch the whole debate and I don't know much about either candidate, so I'm just basing what I'm about to say on the part of the debate that I saw.

McCain did seem temperamental. He was a little rude, making a lot of negative comments, which I don't like. I think negative comments are bad. Then again, they might be true and I don't really know.
McCain was unappealing, but he did show that he knows a lot (even though the writer of the first article didn't think so). Whether or not he's going to do great things, I don't know, but he seemed to know what he was talking about. He had details, and I don't remember Obama getting into specifics. It was just hard to understand him and what he was trying to say. It was kind of like he was throwing out facts, but not really explaining what he wanted to do to change anything. Maybe you can't blame him because it must be hard to change things right away. I don't understand politics too well yet, so I can't be sure.

As for Obama, he's definitely a good speaker. He's pretty poetic when he speaks. He kept calm and cool, but he seemed "all talk" to me. When he spoke, everything was very idealistic. He is a wonderful speaker, though. I think that speaking in simple words and still being able to get your point across is a skill. ("A smart person can make an easy thing seem complicated, but a genious can make a complicated thing seem simple") I don't really remember Obama getting into specifics of what he's going to do. I remember him talking like "Things need to change, we need to improve, we need to do better...", but I don't remember him saying any specific details. I think he did that purposely though. He also seemed pretty knowledgable. I just don't know what it is he wants to do.