By IRNA,
New York : From the economy to foreign affairs to the way they carried themselves on stage, John McCain and Barack Obama offered a dramatic contrast Friday night in their first presidential debate.
The two men met for 90 minutes against the backdrop of the worst US financial crisis since the Great Depression and intensive negotiations in Congress over a $700 billion bailout plan for Wall Street.
Despite repeated prodding, McCain and Obama refused to point to any major adjustments they would need to make to their governing agendas – like scaling back promised tax reductions or spending programs – to accommodate what both men said could be very tough economic times for the next president.
For the first 40 minutes, Obama repeatedly sought to link McCain to President George W. Bush and suggested that it was policies of excessive deregulation that led to the financial crisis and mounting economic problems the United States faces now.
“We also have to recognize that this is a final verdict on eight years of failed economic policies, promoted by George Bush, supported by Senator McCain – the theory that basically says that we can shred regulations and consumer protections, and give more and more to the most, and somehow prosperity will trickle down,” Obama said.
“It hasn’t worked and I think that the fundamentals of the economy have to be measured by whether or not the middle class is getting a fair shake.”
McCain became more animated during the second part of the debate, when it shifted to the advertised topic: foreign policy and national security. The two men offered strong and fundamentally different arguments about the wisdom of going to war against Iraq – which McCain supported and Obama opposed – as well as how to deal with Iran.
More than anything, McCain seemed intent on presenting Obama as green and inexperienced, a risky choice during a difficult time.
Again and again, sounding almost like a professor talking down to a new student, he talked about having to explain foreign policy to Obama and repeatedly invoked his 30 years of history on national security (even though McCain, in the kind of misstep that no doubt would have been used by Republicans against Obama, mangled the name of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and stumbled over the name of Pakistan ‘s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, calling him “Qadari.”).
“I don’t think I need any on-the-job training,” McCain said in the closing moments of the debate. “I’m ready to go at it right now.” But Obama seemed calm and controlled and seemed to hold his own on foreign policy, the subject on which McCain was assumed to hold a natural advantage.
Obama talked in detail about foreign countries and their leaders, as if trying to assure the audience that he could hold his own on the world stage. He raised his own questions about McCain’s judgment in supporting the Iraq war.
“You like to pretend like the war started in 2007 – you talk about the surge,” Obama said. “The war started in 2003. At the time, when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy, you said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were. You were wrong.
You said that we were going to be greeted as liberators. You were wrong.”
There were no obvious game-changing moments – big mistakes, or the kind of sound-bites that dominate the news for days – in the course of the debate, held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.
Still, the debate served as a reminder of just how different these two men would be as president as they appeared for their first extended session together before a huge global audience, including many Americans who are just beginning to focus on this long-lasting race.
The differences were in no small part stylistic and visible with a glance to the stage: a 47-year-old man who has been in the Senate for nearly four years standing at one lectern, facing a 72-year old fixture of the Senate standing across from him.
In many ways, Obama was a very different candidate than he was during the primary battles.
He answered questions directly and affirmatively, typically looking right into the camera as he spoke.
Throughout the debate, Obama called McCain by his first name; McCain called Obama by his title and last name.
Direct engagement was encouraged by the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, who declared: “I’m just determined to get you all to talk to each other,” though it was an invitation that the two men repeatedly ignored.