KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- In last night's first and only vice presidential debate, Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin sparred on tough issues including energy, taxes, economic policy, and the need for change.
The debate, held in Washington University in St Louis, Mo., was to focus on issues of domestic and foreign policy, with topics chosen by moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS. It was similar to the presidential debate held last week but followed a more structured format. The participants had 90 seconds to respond to questions, then two minutes to respond to each other.
Biden began the debate, as determined by a coin toss beforehand. Immediately the candidates launched into the high-speed back-and-forth that is debate. Throughout the entire debate, however, the candidates attacked not each other, but the presidential candidate of the opposing party. The voting records of senators Barack Obama and John McCain were called into play on the issues of taxation, party polarization, alternative energy, and the conflicts abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Everybody gets extra credit tonight," quipped Ifill, after both candidates failed to respond to one question she asked about how they would proceed if their respective candidate died in office. The dodging of questions and answering of unasked ones was another theme of the night. Neither candidate answered a question about what the trigger should be if the world was thrown into nuclear war; likewise with a question about whether an unstable Pakistan or Iran with nuclear weapons was more dangerous. Palin in particular left questions unanswered, in one case moving from a question concerning a bankruptcy bill of several years ago to her party's stance on energy.
In the case of both candidates, nothing out of the ordinary was said or done. Both expressed typical party statements on all of the issues - Repulicans as usual favoring smaller government, and the Democrats vice versa. Both candidates showed themselves to be their own definition of what a vice president should be - "supportive and cooperative of the president in all cases," as Palin put it. There was no clear winner in the evening's debate, as both participants made strong showings. Palin appealed to the American "Everyman" in using phrases such as "Joe six-pack" and "darn right." Biden showed his experience in formal debates and managed to shore up his arguments with many figures and statistics from different issues. Both agreed that America needs to work together in order to solve its problems, both abroad and at home. As Biden put it, "It's time for America to get up together."
1 comment:
Yo Ellen! This is an interesting article that actually I find helpful because it focused a lot on how the debate would be carried out logistically and gave me information I didn't know about. The only thing is you have some good quotes and information at the end of the article, I think you inverted the whole thing and start it off with the timely stuff--quotes, reactions, etc. and then continued with all the information about how the debates work it would keep all the readers who already know that info and can just stop reading at any moment.
Anyway, it looks like you did research and you have a strong article here!
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