A complete waste of time

When asking candidates about the financial crisis, moderator Tom Brokaw remarked that “the federal government got drunk and, in fact, the American consumers got drunk.”

College students taking shots each time John McCain said “my friends” were probably pretty drunk too. They got more out of the debate than any sober person could have.

Tuesday night was a sad affair. The debate showed more clearly than any other moment the complete transition of Barack Obama and John McCain from real people to walking sound bites.

The town-hall style debate had the appearance of being more open, but the candidates didn’t engage each other and follow-ups were scarce. Some of the questions were actually pretty good, but few were answered adequately.

At one point the candidates were asked whether health care should be viewed as a commodity. Both just spewed off their typical talking points.

We were glad to see entitlement reform discussed and McCain even managed to admit that future retirees may see reduced benefits. Still most specifics, such as raising the retirement age, were shunned.

It was a night of contradictions and misrepresentation. McCain talked about our support of “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan during the Soviet Invasion failing to acknowledge that the Taliban was a direct descendent of those fighters.

Obama mentioned the lax credit card regulation in Delaware that Joe Biden is largely responsible for.

There was much talk about preventing a “second holocaust” in Israel – a country with nuclear weapons and one of the best equipped armies – but only tepid support for peacekeeping in Africa.

McCain’s attack on Obama’s economic plan suggested raising taxes were always bad. However, he expressed support for the bipartisan agreement between Reagan and congressional Democrats to fix social security that involved raising payroll taxes.

Neither candidate seemed to realize they were often contradicting themselves. Neither candidate even seemed to be thinking about their answers.

It is the tragedy of today’s debates that the hours of preparation candidates go through focus them on hitting specific points regardless of the question.

All of us here at the IDS Editorial Board implore IU students to educate themselves on the candidates and the issues for this historic election.

Yet, based off what we have seen so far, we wouldn’t be disappointed in anyone for skipping out on the last presidential debate.