Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
October 5, 2012
Did you watch the presidential debate on Wednesday night? It is
absolutely amazing how they can have an hour and a half debate about the
economy and say so little. It seemed like both candidates were falling
all over each other wanting to talk about how much they value
education, but will more education really solve our problems? After
all, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor's degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed
in 2011. So perhaps they should just both agree that education is a
good thing and start talking about how to create more jobs for all of
us. If you want to grade the debate from a technical standpoint,
clearly Romney was the winner of the debate. Romney was full of energy
and was generally sharp with his answers. Obama looked like he had just
popped a couple of antidepressants
and was ready for nap time. As a result, this might have been the
worst blowout in the history of presidential debates. A CNN/ORC
International poll that was taken right after the debate found that 67 percent
of all Americans that had watched the debate thought that Romney was
the winner. Never before had any presidential candidate crossed the 60
percent mark in the history of their post-debate polling. So Romney
definitely had a big night. But the reality is that both candidates
were telling the American people what they want to hear. If either
Obama or Romney told the truth about what we are facing they would lose
votes, and in a race this tight both of them really want to avoid doing
that. Obama and Romney both desperately want to win this election, and
the words that are coming out of their mouths have been carefully
crafted to appeal to the "undecided voters" in the swing states. If you
actually believe that they can deliver on everything that they are
promising, then you must not have been paying much attention to U.S.
politics over the past several decades.
Perhaps the biggest failure on Wednesday night was debate moderator
Jim Lehrer of PBS. His questions were about as far from "hard hitting"
as you could get.
The hour and a half debate was almost entirely about the economy, and
yet almost all of the critical economic issues were ignored.
Yes, Obama and Romney have slight differences when it comes to tax
rates and regulations, but those small differences are not going to do
much to change the direction of this country one way or another.
Meanwhile, there were some really huge issues about the economy that were not addressed at all last night....
1 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the Federal Reserve was not mentioned a single time.
2 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, Ben Bernanke was not mentioned a single time.
3 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, quantitative easing was not mentioned a single time.
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