On Wednesday, October 3rd, the first presidential debate of the 2012 election took place at the University of Denver. President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney finally met face-to-face to explain and defend their stances on important domestic issues and to share the plans they each hope to enact within the next four years if elected president. Under the weak hand of moderator Jim Lehrer , host of NewsHour on PBS, the candidates went overtime on nearly every two-minute allotted response time, refusing to cease discussion of the economy, healthcare, the role of the federal government, and education.
Each candidate made sure to appeal to our ethos and pathos with anecdotes, starting with Obama’s happy anniversary wish to Mrs. Obama. Next Romney shared stories of the suffering, jobless Americans he has met during his time as Governor of Massachusetts and on the campaign trail.
As in any good debate, the candidates repeatedly offered strong rebuttals against the each other’s claims. Most notably, Romney consistently refuted Obama’s explanations of Romney’s plan for taxes and the country’s budget deficit. Romney adamantly denied the supposed five trillion dollar tax cut plan; he claimed that, contrary to Obama’s allegations, his intentions are to raise revenue and close the deficit not by burdening the middle class or over-taxing the upper class, but by eliminating the loopholes that exist in our current economic system. In essence, Romney explained trickle down theory of economics. Obama countered Romney’s seemingly sound plan, saying Romney’s math simply does not add up.
Other hot topics and phrases of the evening included: top-down economics, Education and the Race to the Top program, Clean Energy, Jobs, Medicare, and Obamacare.
Now, how many of you:
a) watched the debate
b) had at least one of your social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) open during the 90 minute broadcast?
Apparently, many of you did both.
The night of the debate, my Facebook newsfeed absolutely exploded with posts recounting and interpreting the words of Obama and Romney. Among these posts were a silly, debate-themed meme, reactions to Mitt Romney’s plan to cut government funding to PBS—effectively killing Big Bird (particularly horrifying to children born in the 1990s!), and even poll questions posed to inspire debate among friends.
Apparently I am not the only one who was bombarded by political commentary and satire. With over 10.3 million tweets, this presidential debate was the most tweeted about event in U.S. political history. Of course, we must consider that many political events never had the chance to live-blog about the current count of tea chests thrown into the Boston Harbor.
Finally taking my eyes off of my newsfeed, I visited the Hewitt halls and asked Upper School students to speak candidly about their thoughts on the debate:
Janae Barret ’13 (on Romney and Obama’s performances): “I watched the debate. Disappointed in Obama as a democrat. Impressed by Romney’s ability to perform but not his ability to tell the truth. I also believe that Obama needs to step it up because if he’s going to lose this election, its going to be because of his own campaign.”
Marlena Rubestein ’14 (on the state of her Facebook during the debate): “My Facebook updates were freaking out, they were politically fired. The leaning was against Romney…mostly because I have democratic friends. I do have a few pro-Romeny friends, but they were scattered throughout the feed updates.”
“Facebook is like teenager CNN,” Janae interjected.
Zoe Himmel ’14 (on watching the debate): “It was interesting…and frustrating because they were all cutting each other off, you could feel tension. Being pro-Obama, it was aggravating to see he didn’t get much time to say his opinion and thoughts. The whole thing was really unorganized, a headache to watch—that’s why I stopped after a while.”, and on the state of her Facebook during the debate: “When [Romney] mentioned big bird I saw comedic posts about big bird [on Tumblr], so I would post it on Facebook. People were upset because of ignorant posts trashing both candidates, even if they were both pro- Obama. Some of my friends posting were giving their opinions….and they were making fun of [the debate]. They made jokes about it while supporting what they thought. Most of the other posts were saying stop with the ignorant comments, for example—I bet you guys don’t know the background behind all of what they believe and all of this stuff.”
After hearing from these Hewitt students, I wondered: Are youth genuinely interested in the 2012 Election because we hold a true concern for the state of our country and because we are intrigued by the running candidates? Or are we simply enticed by social media, seeking only to be heard?
In response to my question, Mrs. Bowllan says, “I think it definitely has to do with the social media, the fact that you have easy access to a forum of people, who may not have the same views as you, makes a difference, but your voice will be heard no matter what. You can have a voice in a conversation and then you go about your own business/direction, but when you’re on Facebook or Twitter, or Tumblr, and you’re putting your position out there, you have people analyzing and giving you feedback—positive or negative, you will have feedback, and I think that gets the younger generation more energized to want to keep posting because they’re seeing the feedback they are getting, and that feedback is very unique. It causes the students to take a very strong stance [because]they can’t turn back their stance once they’ve put it out there [on the internet]…I hope young people that are having these discussions on social networking outlets are able to understand the power that they have and use the power to a positive direction as opposed to just aimlessly saying things that may or may not be effective in the long run.”