by Anisha Bhardwaj
From the previous article, we learned the basics needed to understand the upcoming elections. However, the amount of jargon prevalent in the pre-election debates requires specific attention. Some of the distress the US is facing today was inevitable. The credit crunch was always going to cause a lot of suffering in America regardless of who was in control. But politics, far from offering a remedy, is now adding to the national angst.
The deadlock between the Republicans and President Obama in Congress this year has meant that precious little legislation has been passed. The President's jobs bill has not been passed, which aims to increase jobs for Americans without increasing the national deficit. Its main features include cutting payroll taxes, expanding opportunities for low income youth, improving infrastructure, protecting existing sources of jobs for teachers, regulations on businesses practising hoarding and loosening regulations on small businesses.
At the end of this year, temporary tax cuts and other measures, worth around 2 percent of the GDP, are set to expire which could push America back into recession. Obama has tried harder to compromise. However, he failed to embrace a long-term budget solution put forward by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission, which he himself appointed. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRR) is a presidential commission created in 2010 by Barack Obama to identify ‘policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.’
Before the nominations for the 2012 elections were finalised, many believed that Americans might be presented with a wider choice for President this November. The reason for this idea is the universal belief that America's politics are ‘broken.’ The cry goes up that the ideological polarisation of the political parties’ leaves the great bulk of the electorate unrepresented. This is now popularly known as the ‘missing middle.’ Some Americans lament what they consider the missing right-wing, and some complain of a missing left-wing as well.
Starting with the left-wing, Barack Obama is not facing a primary challenger from his own party. For all the Republican claims about the President being a ‘socialist,’ a group of deep-pocketed Democratic donors are disappointed by what they see as his timid centrism that they searched the country for a candidate willing to take him on from the left.
What about the missing right-wing? It is not missing at all, say those Democrats who think that the Tea Party movement has wormed its way into the brain of Republicanism, thereby taking it over. So, what is the Tea Party? It is a movement that advocates strict adherence to the US constitution, reducing government spending and taxes, and reduction of the US national debt and federal budget deficit. The movement is considered to be one part conservative, one part libertarian and one part populist.
Now let us analyse the three debates that have taken place and how they mould the outcome for the upcoming elections. The first debate exposed Obama’s lack of rhetoric and it was popular opinion that Romney had the debate go his way. Romney was able to correct a number of misleading statements that Obama had been making about Romney’s plans for health care and entitlement reform. He clearly stated that Obamacare’s new spending on prescription drugs and preventive care is offset by a far greater amount of cuts. The cuts outweigh the new spending by a ratio of fifteen to one.
Romney accurately made the following points differentiating Romneycare from Obamacare:
Obama failed to go after Romney enough. There was no mention of Bain Capital or Romney's dismissive videotaped comments about the ‘47 percent’ of Americans who are dependent on the government and will definitely vote for Obama. Only in the last 20 minutes of the 90-minute debate did Obama have much of an impact, complaining that Romney was keeping the specifics about his tax plans and his approaches to health care and banking regulation too much of a secret.
Both candidates paid tribute to members of the middle class. Each referred to specific members of the middle class that they had met along the campaign trail who had gone back to school or were now out of work. Each insisted their plan would do more to help such people and create jobs for the middle class people.
Obama argued that Romney's plans to cut taxes and increase military spending would cause the deficit to ‘burden’ the middle class, because there would not be sufficient savings available to offset their cost by ending deductions or closing loopholes. Romney insisted that his tax cut plan would impose no such hardship.
Romney used an education question to repeat a charge that Obama had squandered billions on unsuccessful green energy programs. As a result, the debate's intended format, of 15-minute segments, each covering six different topics, was broken almost immediately, leaving only three minutes for the concluding segment.
The second debate between Romney and Obama was set up as a ‘town hall’ format, with the audience asking the questions in a more relaxed atmosphere. Although less formal, it made for a better performance all around. This time, Obama was more enthusiastic and showed a greater fight. The moderator had some more control over the candidates, and Romney was still fired up from his performance in the first round. All this led to an interesting night.
There was an interesting moment during the debate when Romney said that while he was Governor of Massachusetts, he wanted to get more women in his cabinet, so he said he went through ‘binders full of women’ to fill positions in his administration. The comment did not go over well with liberals and this quote of his continues to make headlines in all the wrong ways. This, along with his comment about employers needing to give women flexibility in their hours to be able to take care of their children angered and offended many women and single working fathers. However, Obama had a few slip-ups as well that include his comment about ‘clean coal,’ which confused environmentalists about his sustainable energy policy.
As is common for debates featuring incumbent presidential candidates, Obama’s track record was a big part of the debate. Romney pointed out some flaws from Obama’s first term, stating that the President had not kept his promises, and that that it will be “four more years of the same,” if Obama is re-elected. Obama defended himself, noting various accomplishments during his first term. He stated that he had done several of the things he had pledged during his 2008 campaign and that he would continue to keep the promises he has not yet fulfilled with another four years in office. As a result, Obama performed much better in this debate than the last and the polls showed that the American public responded well to having the ‘old Obama’ back.
Hot topics of the debate included education, job creation, tax deductions, sustainable energy, assault weapons, immigration, and equality for women in the workplace. Both candidates mentioned the importance of small businesses and middle-class families, each citing how their economic plans would sustain both. They also discussed plans to keep manufacturing jobs in the US and to make outsourcing less appealing to businesses.
Overall, analysts were split on who had won the debate but the general consensus was that Obama won by a small margin.
The third and final presidential debate was in a similar setting to the vice-presidential one with both candidates sitting down with the moderator. The main topics discussed were the national deficit, job creation, balancing a budget and trade ideals.
This time around Obama was more aggressive and called Romney out on his flip-flopping. For example, when the Governor said that Republicans and Democrats worked on a bipartisan basis in Massachusetts, Obama countered by saying, “But that was 10 years before you took office.” Fact checkers found out that both Obama and Romney were right in their statements.
There was a funny moment during the debate when President Obama contended, “You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed.” As Roger King, of the Huffington Post, accurately suggests, “Barack Obama, because of his role as president, is intimately aware of military tech and how best to transform and modernize our military through regular council with the Joint Chiefs. Mitt Romney has a more conventional approach to military intervention that might be out of touch with present capabilities.”
The polls suggest that President Obama edged the Governor as he showed more prowess in the way he made his points clear while at the same time making sure the public realizes Romney’s flip-flopping on policy issues.
Greenblatt, Alan. "Five Takeaways From The First Presidential Debate." NPR. NPR, 4 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.npr.org/2012/10/04/162265100/five-takeaways-from-the-first-presidential-debate>.
Hart, Lynsey, and Zoe Barker. "The Second Presidential Debate: A Summary and Commentary." The DePaulia. DePaul University, 17 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.depauliaonline.com/nation-world/the-second-presidential-debate-a-summary-and-commentary-1.2929505>.
King, Roger. “2012 Presidential Debate #3 Wrap: Shock and Awe, More Like Kumbaya”. The Huffington Post. 24 October 2012. Web. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-king/foreign-policy-debate_b_2006484.html>.
Roy, Avik. "In the First Presidential Debate, Mitt Romney Told the Truth on Health Care and Obama Tried Not To." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 04 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/10/04/in-the-first-presidential-debate-mitt-romney-told-the-truth-on-health-care-and-obama-tried-not-to/2/>.
Roy, Avik. "The Ratio of Obamacare's Medicare Cuts to New 'Benefits' Is Fifteen-to-One."Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 02 Oct. 2012. Web. 03 Nov. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/10/02/the-ratio-of-obamacares-medicare-cuts-to-new-benefits-is-fifteen-to-one/>.
From the previous article, we learned the basics needed to understand the upcoming elections. However, the amount of jargon prevalent in the pre-election debates requires specific attention. Some of the distress the US is facing today was inevitable. The credit crunch was always going to cause a lot of suffering in America regardless of who was in control. But politics, far from offering a remedy, is now adding to the national angst.
The deadlock between the Republicans and President Obama in Congress this year has meant that precious little legislation has been passed. The President's jobs bill has not been passed, which aims to increase jobs for Americans without increasing the national deficit. Its main features include cutting payroll taxes, expanding opportunities for low income youth, improving infrastructure, protecting existing sources of jobs for teachers, regulations on businesses practising hoarding and loosening regulations on small businesses.
At the end of this year, temporary tax cuts and other measures, worth around 2 percent of the GDP, are set to expire which could push America back into recession. Obama has tried harder to compromise. However, he failed to embrace a long-term budget solution put forward by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission, which he himself appointed. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRR) is a presidential commission created in 2010 by Barack Obama to identify ‘policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.’
Before the nominations for the 2012 elections were finalised, many believed that Americans might be presented with a wider choice for President this November. The reason for this idea is the universal belief that America's politics are ‘broken.’ The cry goes up that the ideological polarisation of the political parties’ leaves the great bulk of the electorate unrepresented. This is now popularly known as the ‘missing middle.’ Some Americans lament what they consider the missing right-wing, and some complain of a missing left-wing as well.
Starting with the left-wing, Barack Obama is not facing a primary challenger from his own party. For all the Republican claims about the President being a ‘socialist,’ a group of deep-pocketed Democratic donors are disappointed by what they see as his timid centrism that they searched the country for a candidate willing to take him on from the left.
What about the missing right-wing? It is not missing at all, say those Democrats who think that the Tea Party movement has wormed its way into the brain of Republicanism, thereby taking it over. So, what is the Tea Party? It is a movement that advocates strict adherence to the US constitution, reducing government spending and taxes, and reduction of the US national debt and federal budget deficit. The movement is considered to be one part conservative, one part libertarian and one part populist.
Now let us analyse the three debates that have taken place and how they mould the outcome for the upcoming elections. The first debate exposed Obama’s lack of rhetoric and it was popular opinion that Romney had the debate go his way. Romney was able to correct a number of misleading statements that Obama had been making about Romney’s plans for health care and entitlement reform. He clearly stated that Obamacare’s new spending on prescription drugs and preventive care is offset by a far greater amount of cuts. The cuts outweigh the new spending by a ratio of fifteen to one.
Romney accurately made the following points differentiating Romneycare from Obamacare:
“First of all, I like the way we did it in Massachusetts. I like the fact that in my state, we had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together. What were some differences? We didn’t raise taxes. You’ve raised them by $1 trillion under Obamacare. We didn’t cut Medicare. Of course, we don’t have Medicare, but we didn’t cut Medicare by $716 billion.”On the contrary, Obama repeated familiar talking points, and didn’t seem to anticipate the critiques that have been so common in these pages and elsewhere. He appeared more comfortable on stage than the President and was at least able to lay the groundwork for a message of bipartisanship that could appeal to remaining undecided voters. But it's notable that Obama failed to do much of that himself, launching far fewer attacks during the debate than his aggressive campaign advertising strategy suggested that he might.
Obama failed to go after Romney enough. There was no mention of Bain Capital or Romney's dismissive videotaped comments about the ‘47 percent’ of Americans who are dependent on the government and will definitely vote for Obama. Only in the last 20 minutes of the 90-minute debate did Obama have much of an impact, complaining that Romney was keeping the specifics about his tax plans and his approaches to health care and banking regulation too much of a secret.
Both candidates paid tribute to members of the middle class. Each referred to specific members of the middle class that they had met along the campaign trail who had gone back to school or were now out of work. Each insisted their plan would do more to help such people and create jobs for the middle class people.
Obama argued that Romney's plans to cut taxes and increase military spending would cause the deficit to ‘burden’ the middle class, because there would not be sufficient savings available to offset their cost by ending deductions or closing loopholes. Romney insisted that his tax cut plan would impose no such hardship.
Romney used an education question to repeat a charge that Obama had squandered billions on unsuccessful green energy programs. As a result, the debate's intended format, of 15-minute segments, each covering six different topics, was broken almost immediately, leaving only three minutes for the concluding segment.
The second debate between Romney and Obama was set up as a ‘town hall’ format, with the audience asking the questions in a more relaxed atmosphere. Although less formal, it made for a better performance all around. This time, Obama was more enthusiastic and showed a greater fight. The moderator had some more control over the candidates, and Romney was still fired up from his performance in the first round. All this led to an interesting night.
There was an interesting moment during the debate when Romney said that while he was Governor of Massachusetts, he wanted to get more women in his cabinet, so he said he went through ‘binders full of women’ to fill positions in his administration. The comment did not go over well with liberals and this quote of his continues to make headlines in all the wrong ways. This, along with his comment about employers needing to give women flexibility in their hours to be able to take care of their children angered and offended many women and single working fathers. However, Obama had a few slip-ups as well that include his comment about ‘clean coal,’ which confused environmentalists about his sustainable energy policy.
As is common for debates featuring incumbent presidential candidates, Obama’s track record was a big part of the debate. Romney pointed out some flaws from Obama’s first term, stating that the President had not kept his promises, and that that it will be “four more years of the same,” if Obama is re-elected. Obama defended himself, noting various accomplishments during his first term. He stated that he had done several of the things he had pledged during his 2008 campaign and that he would continue to keep the promises he has not yet fulfilled with another four years in office. As a result, Obama performed much better in this debate than the last and the polls showed that the American public responded well to having the ‘old Obama’ back.
Hot topics of the debate included education, job creation, tax deductions, sustainable energy, assault weapons, immigration, and equality for women in the workplace. Both candidates mentioned the importance of small businesses and middle-class families, each citing how their economic plans would sustain both. They also discussed plans to keep manufacturing jobs in the US and to make outsourcing less appealing to businesses.
Overall, analysts were split on who had won the debate but the general consensus was that Obama won by a small margin.
The third and final presidential debate was in a similar setting to the vice-presidential one with both candidates sitting down with the moderator. The main topics discussed were the national deficit, job creation, balancing a budget and trade ideals.
This time around Obama was more aggressive and called Romney out on his flip-flopping. For example, when the Governor said that Republicans and Democrats worked on a bipartisan basis in Massachusetts, Obama countered by saying, “But that was 10 years before you took office.” Fact checkers found out that both Obama and Romney were right in their statements.
There was a funny moment during the debate when President Obama contended, “You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed.” As Roger King, of the Huffington Post, accurately suggests, “Barack Obama, because of his role as president, is intimately aware of military tech and how best to transform and modernize our military through regular council with the Joint Chiefs. Mitt Romney has a more conventional approach to military intervention that might be out of touch with present capabilities.”
The polls suggest that President Obama edged the Governor as he showed more prowess in the way he made his points clear while at the same time making sure the public realizes Romney’s flip-flopping on policy issues.
References
Dickson, Caitlin. “Obama vs. Romney Presidential Debate Fact-Check Part 3: Who Lied?” The Daily Beast. 23 Oct 2012. Web. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/23/obama-vs-romney-presidential-debate-fact-check-part-3-who-lied.html>.Greenblatt, Alan. "Five Takeaways From The First Presidential Debate." NPR. NPR, 4 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.npr.org/2012/10/04/162265100/five-takeaways-from-the-first-presidential-debate>.
Hart, Lynsey, and Zoe Barker. "The Second Presidential Debate: A Summary and Commentary." The DePaulia. DePaul University, 17 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.depauliaonline.com/nation-world/the-second-presidential-debate-a-summary-and-commentary-1.2929505>.
King, Roger. “2012 Presidential Debate #3 Wrap: Shock and Awe, More Like Kumbaya”. The Huffington Post. 24 October 2012. Web. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-king/foreign-policy-debate_b_2006484.html>.
Roy, Avik. "In the First Presidential Debate, Mitt Romney Told the Truth on Health Care and Obama Tried Not To." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 04 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/10/04/in-the-first-presidential-debate-mitt-romney-told-the-truth-on-health-care-and-obama-tried-not-to/2/>.
Roy, Avik. "The Ratio of Obamacare's Medicare Cuts to New 'Benefits' Is Fifteen-to-One."Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 02 Oct. 2012. Web. 03 Nov. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/10/02/the-ratio-of-obamacares-medicare-cuts-to-new-benefits-is-fifteen-to-one/>.
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