Last night, October 22, 2012, hosted the third and final presidential debate of the 2012 presidential election year. The debate was set to cover foreign policy, national defense, and international relations.
On both sides of the aisle, pundits awaited, with bated anticipation, for more body blows delivered by Romney into Obama's still bruised ribs over the terrorist attacks in Libya that killed our ambassador and four others.
However, Romney seemed reluctant to beat that dead horse into glue, thereby demonstrating a level of class and decorum. Obama, on the other hand, seemed to use issues more sensitive to his campaign and his failed policy of apologizing as a platform to conduct personal attacks, off-issue, towards Romney. Obama achieved little to nothing in doing so except to assist in dragging the debate off-topic and to effectively distract from the topics at hand.
Disappointingly, the debate did not seem to cover many of the important topics we, as a republic of free individuals, face on the world stage. Among those topics avoided are, most importantly, items such as our the authority of the UN and their role in dictating our sovereignty, proposed treaties concerning disarmament, and the tyrannic Agenda-21 treaties. If brought into the debate, Obama would have likely lost the debate, hands down.
Again, we have a virtual tie with, perhaps, a slight edge given to Obama despite the fact that I disagree with most of his policies. However, an incumbent president always has an edge in foreign policy debates since they have better intelligence and are actively engaged in conducting foreign policy.
In debate scoring, distracting off topic actually earns negative points, as does following that rabbit down the hole. In that scoring, both candidates earned negative points throughout the debate. The debate seemed to head more into domestic economic issues and how they relate to international trade more than to cover actual foreign policy.
I counted fifteen total questions and graded each on a ten point scale, granting negatives to personal attacks that had no statements of fact or data to support them. Both candidates were abysmal in their scores with Romney scoring 41/150 and Obama ending up with 26/150.
In many policies, both had similar ideas, making it a difficult topic to debate. The largest diversity between the two seemed to be in pacing, relations with out allies, definition of a global threat as something other than a military threat, military strategy, national defense, and negotiating from a position of strength.
Fact checking is ongoing. So far, the facts state that Obama did not go on an "apology tour", since it took him several trips over the course of two years to do his apologizing.
Despite the results my objective scoring system showed, there are other factors to consider. First, an incumbent president usually has an edge coming into such a debate due to already being in the position of highest diplomat for our great republic. Obama's record on foreign policy is not great. On the other hand, unlike domestic issues and the economy, he isn't as much of an obvious failure in this arena.
For my full commentary and a blow-by-blow dissection of the debate, please read the full article at
Mental Aikido.
I for one, will simply point out the United States Military Academy, at West Point.
