Snap Thoughts on the Obama/McCain Debate in Nashville

Snap thoughts on the debate:

• Tom Brokaw was an insufferable ass during the debate. That cannot be stressed enough.
• Considering this was the 'open' and 'participatory' debate with questions coming in over the intertubes, this was a much more structured, controlled event than the last debate. And I would say that voter participation in this debate was zero to nil. C'mon, I mean there were four questions from "the internet," zero transparency in how those questions were selected, and Brokaw decided to throw out one of the questions and ask his own on the fly.
• Considering the role that young people are playing in this campaign, and that this debate was focused on the economy, the #1 issue for young voters, there was very little youth input in the debate. Correct me if I'm wrong, but only 1 questioner seemed youngish: the woman who asked about Green jobs. This needs to be double checked and I'll be happy to be proven wrong, but after 90 minutes I was asking "where were we in this debate?"

  Now, that makes sense. Supposedly these questioners were chosen by Gallup and were all "uncommitted" voters. Youth are anything but uncommitted this year. This might have been an instance where high youth participation and partisanship actually cut our chances of having our voice heard at the debate.

Continuing on the youth thread, I need to go and read through the transcript to get a better sense of how youth issues were addressed (a task for tomorrow morning), but a quick search of the CNN transcript for the terms "youth," "young" and "student" reveals 6 instances - 3 by McCain and 3 by Obama. Two of McCain's answers dealt with his own military record and were highly defensive. In comparison, all three of Obama's answers substantively addressed the current situation of young voters:

Mccain - Debt: We obviously have to stop this spending spree that's going on in Washington. Do you know that we've laid a $10 trillion debt on these young Americans who are here with us tonight, $500 billion of it we owe to China?

Obama - Education: And, number three, we've got to deal with education so that our young people are competitive in a global economy.

Obama - Service: And the last point I just want to make. I think the young people of America are especially interested in how they can serve, and that's one of the reasons why I'm interested in doubling the Peace Corps, making sure that we are creating a volunteer corps all across this country that can be involved in their community, involved in military service, so that military families and our troops are not the only ones bearing the burden of renewing America.

McCain - Military Service: In Lebanon, I stood up to President Reagan, my hero, and said, if we send Marines in there, how can we possibly beneficially affect this situation? And said we shouldn't. Unfortunately, almost 300 brave young Marines were killed.

So you have to temper your decisions with the ability to beneficially affect the situation and realize you're sending America's most precious asset, American blood, into harm's way. And, again, I know those situations.

I've been in them all my life. And I can tell you right now the security of your young men and women who are serving in the military are my first priority right after our nation's security.

McCain - Military Service: I understand what it's like to send young American's in harm's way. I say -- I was joking with a veteran -- I hate to even go into this. I was joking with an old veteran friend, who joked with me, about Iran.

Obama - College Costs: Wages and incomes have gone down. People have lost their health care or are going bankrupt because they get sick. We've got young people who have got the grades and the will and the drive to go to college, but they just don't have the money.

I'll try to go over to the "My Debates" site and see if I can pull video of these quotes out (like you are theoretically supposed to be able to do).