After US presidential debates
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By Jay Kim
For the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the two candidates, President Barack Obama and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, have had three TV debates. The first was held in Denver, Colo., on Oct. 3. It was focused on domestic policy, and 60 million people watched the 90-minute event. Sixty-seven percent of the public thought that Romney won it. Almost all of the media said that the debate was a sweeping victory for him, and even James Carville, who played a major role in Bill Clinton’s win in the 1992 election, expressed his disappointment, saying that it looked like “Obama did not want to be there.” Romney listed the failures of Obama’s “trickle-down government,” to which the President didn’t have any answers. And during the whole debate, Obama looked down at his notes, and drew criticism from all corners, even Democrats, that he did not look presidential. In short, he entirely lost the first debate.
Strangely, polls showed just a 5 percent drop in support for Obama after the first debate. Furthermore, good news came from the Department of Labor that the unemployment rate sharply decreased from 8.1 percent in July to 7.8 percent in September, which brought the S&P 500 up by 0.43 percent. It was perfect timing for the Obama campaign to stop the fall and shift momentum back to the President. After all, Romney’s overwhelming win in the first debate fell short of giving him a big boost in popularity.
The second debate was on Oct. 16. It took the form of a town hall meeting where 80 undecided voters, selected by Gallup, participated and asked the candidates questions. Obama prepared for two days at a resort in Virginia in an effort to recover from the humiliation of the first debate. Romney came to the debate triumphantly carrying the momentum of the first one. Surprisingly, the public decided by 5 percent that the second debate was a victory for Obama, who strongly rebutted many of Romney’s arguments. The debate became quite personal, and the moderator (Candy Crowley from CNN) arguably added to the fraying tempers.
Romney severely criticized the Obama administration over the terrorist attack at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, for initially announcing that the attack, which killed four American diplomats including the U.S. ambassador, was caused by a spontaneous demonstration, only later to describe the incident as a planned terrorist attack. Then Romney further attacked Obama for attending a fundraiser in Las Vegas following such a serious incident, and that it took 14 days for Obama to admit that the attack was an act of terrorism. In response, Obama stood up from his seat and refuted Romney’s accusation, pointing out that he announced in the Rose Garden the day after the attack that it was an act of terrorism. The moderator, who I feel should have left the subject alone, said to Romney that Obama was right, and the President asked her to repeat this again a little louder. Later, Obama harshly criticized Romney over China, saying that even though he was talking tough regarding the country, he had made many investments in Chinese companies that build surveillance equipment to spy on their own people.
Furthermore, when a college student expressed concern about getting a job after graduation during the debate, Romney answered that the middle class had been crushed by four years of Obama’s policies and things would become worse during another four years under him. Against this, Obama claimed that he was the one who saved the American automobile industry, while pointing out that Romney claimed that the Detroit car industry should go bankrupt.
The third debate, which was on foreign policy, had a lower TV rating as expected. It was not expected to be interesting, because the two candidates already went after each other on Libya during the second, and, in fact, there is no big difference in foreign policy between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Also, Monday Night Football was on that day.
As expected, Romney criticized Obama’s foreign policy for lack of leadership, and Obama refuted this, claiming that his administration was sweeping away al-Qaida and the issue of Libya would also be resolved in a matter of time. Romney attacked Obama on China, its currency manipulation and its stealing of U.S. intellectual property. Obama seemed to escape with poor answers, but the public decided that he won the debate.
In U.S. history, no president has ever been reelected when the unemployment rate has been higher than 7.2 percent. The reason that Obama is maintaining his lead over Romney despite the unemployment rate being over 7.8 percent seems to be the result of people thinking that they should allow Obama four more years because the U.S. economy is doing well compared with the European economy that is in serious financial turmoil.
It seems that there has never been an election as unpredictable as this one. Things, however, look just as perplexing in the Korean presidential election.
Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Kim Chang Joon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim
’s website at www.jayckim.com.