The Controversy: The Last Wednesday's Debate

This political cycle surely has made a spectacle of American politics. Donald Trump, the boisterous personality and current GOP presidential

In the beginning of the debate, both Trump and Clinton had a fierce attitude. The candidates had brought up many past events. They debated against each other`s plans to create a better country. One of the main

Political impact of television, In 1960 Presidential Debate between Republican Vice President Richard Nixon and Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy was the first to be televised. “Television gave elected officials and candidates for office and unprecedented way to speak directly to millions, face-to-face”. The increasingly negative tone of ads and political commentary has driven many to abandon interest in politics. Television lets the viewers see what is going on in a political race, debate, and the polls as it is happening, and the viewers will make their minds up by what they see and hear. This is more expensive for the candidates, because they have to pay for air-time. The TV networks usually let you see what they want you to see, during a broadcast, especially when they cut to a commercial often.

As the running mates to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took the stage to further their platform and earn voters, millions tuned in hopes of further solidifying their choice for President of the United States of America. The Vice-Presidential debate was moderated by Elaine Quijano, CBSN anchor and former CNN journalist, who Dan Gainor of FOX claims to have been left from the very beginning (“Another Debate”, 2016). According to numerous articles as well as commentary by FOX news affiliates, Mike Pence was viewed as the winner of the Vice-Presidential debate over Tim Kaine by this Conservative news outlet. The focus of much discussion was the numerous interruptions that occurred throughout the debate resulting in Quijano herself, being spoken over on multiple occasions. An unofficial Fox News count identified Pence as being interrupted by Tim Kaine over 39 times where as Kaine was interrupted around 19times by Pence (“Pence Trumps”, 2016). Elaine Quijano drew criticism from the conservative identifiers for allowing the debate format to get out of hand. From the onset of the debate, Tim Kaine stepped into the role of the aggressor by going after Pence on the hot topics relative to the Trump campaign on items such as the release of Donald Trump’s taxes. FOX news claims that with a factor of 8-1,” Quijano peppered Pence with tough question after tough question and reserved one for Kaine”. Dan Gainor identifies the debate as being

After watching thirty minutes of both the Republican debate and the Democrat debate it is very evident the differences between the political parties. The Republican race is very different from the democratic debate because of the level of competition. After only a brief time in watching both races it is evident who the moderators feel are front runners in this year's election. The Republican debate was very competitive because of the larger amount of people running. Each candidate did not have enough time to fully debate topics because of there are just too many people up at the podium. Some of the Republican candidates make it priority to follows Reagan's rule of talking about the fellow candidates but, others such as Bush and Trump try

This election cycle has already been hectic and irregular and we’re not even close to past the primaries. The number of debates that have been held on both sides is already staggeringly high. The GOP has already had twelve debates and the Democratic Party as already had eight. As we gradually approach the final primaries and see who will be pitted against who in the general election the Republican party, which started with a record number of candidates, is now whittled down to three and the Democrats have only had two major candidates for a couple of months now. The debates on both sides thus far have been exhilarating; Bernie and Hillary constantly attacking each other’s policies and voting records and on the GOP side of things a bevy of wild

This first presidential debate was chaos! The two candidates were just screaming over one another, and I couldn’t hear myself think! The night started out normal, or as normal as a debate is supposed to be. The two candidates seemed composed for a small period of time while acting like actual adults running for president. Unfortunately, when the first question about the economy was asked, Former Secretary Clinton decided to take a jab at Mr. Trump using a quote he had said about a potential real estate market crash in 2006. She quoted that Mr. Trump hoped for the market to crash so he could potentially buy it. To respond, Mr. Trump interrupted her and countered, "That's called business, by the way." This remark

In general, the debate was not unlike any other presidential debate. The candidates did their best to avoid answering questions that made them look bad by responding with an answer to a different question. When given a chance to respond, the opponent would present their own argument, which always sounded like a rebuttal but never really addressed their opponent. Throughout

Call me crazy, but watching the talk shows on Wednesday night I noticed something extremely. All of the hosts seemed to be chattering less about the election and had more discussion on things like upcoming movies, TV shows and even music. Yes, there were some political jabs, but nothing like what was seen building up to the debates. What is this technically called in the TV world? Refreshing!

As previously mentioned, the candidates lacked focus. A common theme at the debate was their indirect responses. When asked a question, the candidates would engage in a monologue criticizing the Democratic Party (popular targets were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama). The candidates frequently went over their allotted response time without offering a substantive response to questions asked of them. Marco Rubio was especially guilty of this, as evidenced by moderators chiding him for being off topic. When asked of the country’s financial situation, Rubio, Bush, and Cruz fervently agreed that Clinton should be banned from the White House and the military needed to be rebuilt. However, there was never

Another thing they had talked about during this program was the fact that at the Republican Presidential Debate, the moderators were deliberately turning the candidates against each other with the questions they were asking. They were purposely trying to get them to fight with each other instead of trying to get them to discuss the real issues that needed to be discussed. The moderators just wanted to see how the candidates reacted to this

The debate was held at the Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, and started at 8:00pm. According to CNN money, over 80 million people watched the debate (money.cnn.com, 2016). It was moderated by Lester Holt of NBC News. The electorates expected Donald Trump to demonstrate that he would be able to manage his temper as the commander-in-chief when faced with challenging situations. This was expected because he has shown overtime during the campaign, that he was easily upset when he was asked certain questions. The electorates wanted to see how prepared he was for both the debate and office of the president. The electorates expect Secretary Clinton to be prepared, but are still concerned with if they could trust her if she becomes the president of the United States of America. Both candidates were courteous and professional at the beginning of the debate. Trump asked if it was ok to call his opposition, Secretary Hillary Clinton, because he wanted her to be happy. The debate was divided into six segments of 15 minutes each on major topics that were selected by the moderator.

This is of course because of the many different aspects of a candidacy that lead to a successful election, but perhaps the article could have gone more in depth as to, say, the relationship between voter perception of candidates and candidates’ eventual success or failure, or between voter perception of candidates and their willingness to go out and vote. This is perhaps because of other influences on the activeness of voters, and more so because the article seeks only to examine “success” of a presidential debate. This also raises the question of what the authors define as a success—whether it’s the definition given earlier in the study from Schrott and Lanoue or if it whether it leads to winning the election, it’s not stated. The influence of language and biases on voter perception of the debates is made clear,

CNN wanted this second Republican primary debate to look like a 3-hour WWE wrestling match. The motive was obvious. The first debate host by FOX News had blows between Donald Trump and Senator Rand Paul, and Paul against Governor Chris Christie. A month later, CNN are the hosts, airing commercials letting the audience know they wanted all the Republican candidates to fight with each other in a no holds bar match. The debate rules from CNN were “simple”- candidates were asked a question and if that candidate criticizes another candidate in the answer, the candidate invoked would have the chance to respond back to the criticism. And our friends at CNN intended to make sure the candidates would attack each by the questions they were given.

On October 13th, I watched the Democratic Debate hosted by CNN in the Terrace with many other Honors students. I decided to watch in order to inform myself about politics and potential presidential candidates, since I will be a voting citizen by the time the next election rolls around. Coming from a poor small town community in northern Michigan, few people are involved and educated about politics. Voting is a private issue, and our government class was basically limited to the three branches of federal government. By attending the debate, I hope to become more educated about the politics in America, and be a more informed voter.