Who Won The Presidential Debate?
 Wednesday, October 8th, 2008  by Connie T.

John McCain brushes off Barack Obama's handshake offer. Can't we all just get along?

I actually hate that question, "who won the debate?" but it's what everyone searches for the morning after. As if there was a scorecard and there were points awarded for blows landed and takedowns.

But if you must know, according to a poll by CBS News, 40% of uncommitted voters identified Barack Obama as the winner of last night's debate, 26% thought John McCain won, and 34% thought it was a tie.

Polls on every other site we've checked have also shown Barack Obama to be the winner.

Overall, the best part of the debate for me was when Barack responded to McCain's allegation that Obama spoke "softly" with an ally like Pakistan. Barack answered, "Now, Sen. McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I'm green behind the ears...and he's somber and responsible. Senator McCain, this is the guy who sang 'Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran;' who called for the annihilation of North Korea. That I don't think is an example of 'speaking softly.'"

Is 'green behind the ears' actually a saying? Apparently it is. I always thought it was 'wet behind the ears' or just plain 'green.' I guess Barack is more hip than I. The other zinger we liked was on foreign policy, where Obama said,

Senator McCain, in the last debate and today again, suggested that I don't understand. It's true. There are some things I don't understand. I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us. That was Sen. McCain's judgment and it was the wrong judgment.

When Sen. McCain was cheerleading the President to go into Iraq, he suggested that it was going to be quick and easy, we'd be greeted as liberators. That was the wrong judgment, and it's been costly to us.

With all that being said, I still think that choosing between these two candidates may be the lesser of two evils once again. While I agree with a lot of what Obama says - the majority, even - I can't help but notice that his voting record in the Senate is eerily similar to McCain, as are their stances on many issues where I think real change is needed.

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