I heard the topics to be debated tonight concern only foreign policy and national security. Gee…is there a common theme here, or what? Don’t domestic issues count around here, in the good ole USA, anymore? :mad:
There! I asked the question restraining myself as best I could. :o
Those are the only topics for tonight. Domestic debates are scheduled down the road a stretch. As is the town hall-style “debate” in St. Louis.
Waste
As I understand it, the October 13th debate is promarily focused on domenstic issues. From this pdf:
This format seems reasonable to me, as it prevents either area from getting short shrift.
Damn, nothing like keeping up with current events, huh Jinx? :rolleyes:
I suspect that if Bush were pulling the strings, he would put the domestic issues debate today and save the foreign policy, etc. issues for closer to the election. I would think that the way it’s currently set up would be advantage-> Kerry.
Don’t get snarky. We can’t ALL be CNN junkies.
I’ll bet the OP is glad he was able to “restrain himself”.
This is actually a GQ thread, and I believe the quesiton has been answered.
Nyeh. In the absence of certain politicos giving up the booty I don’t think there IS a definitive answer to which side choose the topics (or the order of topics).
In the spirit of Letterman (who has been doing this same joke for about a week now), the three debates are foreign policy, domestic policy, and:
TV sitcom neighbors
Girl groups from the '60s
Well, I don’t remember any of the others.
Nah. More people will watch the first debate than the other two- the historical trend is that the first debate gets a lot of attention, then the others get very little unless a candidate delivers a serious good line (“I do not hold my opponent’s youth and lack of expertise against him”; “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”; etc.), and even then it’s something on TV for the following week, not something that draws people to watch the debates.
By setting up the first- i.e., most important- debate to be about foreign policy, Bush has put Kerry in a seriously bad position. This is Kerry’s big chance to seriously define himself to the undecideds who haven’t been paying much attention until now, and to those who have been paying attention but what something more than the glorified autobio that the DNC was. He has to do this definition while discussing issues that most Americans feel Bush is stronger on (re: recent polls showing nearly 60% of Americans trust Bush to handle the war in Iraq, while less than 40% trust Kerry to be able to).
Kerry might be able to get more mileage out of the issues at the second and third debates, but he’ll be playing to a much smaller audience.
It’s been widely reported in the media that the Bush-Cheney campaign sought for (and got) foreign policy/Iraq as the first debate topic, because they believe (a) more people will watch the first debate than the other two, and (b) Bush is stronger on foreign policy than Kerry is. :rolleyes:
Sure: Cheney called Haliburton and Haliburton committed 72.6 million to the bribery effort and next thing you know, Bush picks the topics.
When you’re like me and have an uncle that lives next door to Cheney’s driver it’s easy to find stuff out.