SpicyTricks

Written by Sarah Vassello

The first of the three presidential debates was broadcasted on October 3. It was the first time that the two major candidates, Republican Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and current Democratic President Barack Obama, verbally sparred against each other, using ideologies and figures to spear his opponent. The debate was moderated by Jim Lehrer, Host of NewsHour on PBS. The first debate focused on domestic policy and featured opportunities for the respective candidates to showcase his platform.

Out of the six fifteen minute topics, unsurprisingly, three focused on the economy and how the respective candidates plan to fix the economic crisis. Governor Romney took the lead, aggressively criticizing President Obama’s control of the economic situation in the past four years while repeating his catchphrase, “Let’s put America back to work!” However, Governor Romney failed to effectively outline his plan on how to put America back to work and it was very unclear as to how his plan was better than President Obama’s.

However, President Obama did not effectively defend himself against Governor Romney’s attacks. President Obama, a notoriously well-spoken and inspirational speaker, was dull in this debate and responded to Governor Romney by spewing facts that disinterested the viewers. His body language was unusual as he looked at the floor or the podium instead of facing Governor Romney and he looked tired compared to the energetic Romney. President Obama did not focus on his platform but instead focused on brushing off every remark that Governor Romney made, which has been his campaign strategy thus far.

Considering these points, Governor Romney is the winner in my mind. While he definitely made mistakes and cut the moderator off an unbelievable amount of times, he was the more lively in the debate. I do think that the margin was very close in terms of who won and if President Obama focused more on capturing the attention of the viewers and outlining what he was about instead of constantly defending himself he would have been the clear winner. However, this was the first of three debates and it’s quite possible that the remaining two could have different outcomes.