The Debate Over Presidential Debates

Another four years another presidential debate. Before I go on to the current debates let me state a few facts about past ones. The Lincoln and Douglas debate was in important because it started Lincoln presidential career. The Debates lasted from August 21 -- October 15. There where seven of them, with two days to two weeks in between. Each debate lasted three hours; first candidate spoke for one hour; the second for one and a half hours; the first replying for a half hour. Candidates alternated going first. The topics involved where primarily slavery and the Union. Other important debates were the '48 and '57. They were the only debates before 1960; there were no presidential debates between 1960 and 1976. In

Climate change is one of today’s most hotly debated topic. Scientists for many decades have made supposed claims that current energy creation and reliance on fossil fuels will lead to inevitable changes to the planet. Today, climate change denial is still a popular to most of the world despite the mounds of evidence to support that it exists. The climate change issue suffers from being mismanaged by various parties through focusing on the wrong issues and the lack of true commitment from the general public, according to Sandra Steingraber.

Democrats and Republicans highly differ when comparing views on climate change. The Democrats accept human role in climate change while many Republicans question if climate change is even real. In the 2016 Democratic Party Platform (27), they state “in the first 100 days of the next administration, the president will convene a summit of the words best engineers, climate scientists, policy experts, activists, and indigenous communities to chart a course to solve the climate crisis.” This is highlighted previously when President Obama, a Democrat, traveled to Paris for a convention about climate change where he met other leaders around the world to make a plan to help fix the issues surrounding climate change. This shows the basic principles of the Democratic Party as internationalist and having the large government—as it states in the

During the second Presidential Debate, which was televised on October 9, 2016, I was able to detect many logical fallacies within the arguments of both candidates. For example, when Donald Trump was first asked about the controversial tape that contained footage of him disrespecting and admitting to sexually assaulting women, he avoided this question by attempting to divert attention from this issue. Instead of concretely answering the question, Donald Trump briefly apologized, and then blatantly attempted to ignore the issue by talking about Isis “chopping people’s heads,” and randomly describing all the horrid things that Isis is doing. This logical fallacy is characterized as “Red Herring,” which

A constructive national debate is something that is quite important to the functioning of the American system of democracy. A simple definition of democracy offered by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is that democracy is “a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting” (Merriam-Webster). Now, at a time of heightened awareness from many American people, the political debates in this country don’t seem to be providing them with good cogent arguments. Instead they are filled with fallacies and many falsehoods. In this essay I argue that the presidential debate system is currently not living up to its potential, and I will focus specifically on Republican primary debate that took place at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. In doing so, I will argue that the main flaws in this cycle’s presidential primary debates were the amount of fallacies used, as structure used as well as provide some counter-arguments to my claims.

The election of 2000 took place during a time that was mostly peaceful, unemployment rates were historically low, but however, there were a record number of terrorist threats (Muhlhausen). Despite all of these headlining topics presidential candidate Al Gore and Vice President Joe Lieberman were far more concerned about global climate change (“Al”). Gore was, and still, is very passionate about this topic (“Al”, 9). He has challenged the two biggest polluters in the world, China and The United States to, “Make the boldest move in climate change.” Figure 5

Did you know that every president that america had so far came from the united states? In all the years that the Presidential debate has be going on more and more people from different countries and since then won or lost. Would you want to have a president from a different country? I would want a president from a different country. I think that it would be better if we had the chance to expand our presidential line. People from all around the world would like the chance to have the experience of becoming the United States President.

Lastly, the most worrisome of all, there was no mention of global climate change within Trump’s speech. Not mentioning the issue of climate change means that he is not concerned with it, and therefore by association, neither is America. Furthermore, the neglect of mentioning climate change within the speech means that he has no future intentions of addressing the issue, and that we will have to wait for our next president to act. This is time that we do not have to

It was a great experience to watch vice presidential debates as it was different from presidential debates. Also, was engaging to see what will be different from presidents to vice presidents. As I watched vice president debates after third presidential debate, I can say that topics were same. They were discussing topics about immigration, Syria, Russia, economy and education. I did not like that vice presidents interrupted each other a lot of times, but overall, it was a very cognitive and open debate.

What do I think? After reading NPRs fact check of the third presidential debate I maintain a different mindset than when I first endured the debate of our two presidential candidates. Although seeing the debate on tv might cause some voters to sway towards one candidate rather than the other it is apparent to me now that we are not always getting the full story. I am not as thoroughly educated as some of my peers or voters I do have an opinion on who I would vote for if I could and if I hadn't read this article my decision would have been made under false pretenses under the debate itself not the tangible evidence. This is a well known problem for americans voting without true understanding for the issues or for the suggested solutions, I didn't

"Transcript: The Most Important Exchanges of the Presidential Debate, Annotated." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 26 Sept. 2016. Web. 12 Apr. 2017.http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-debate-transcript-clinton-trump-20160926-snap-htmlstory.html

Presidential Debates! Those two words can either send an agonizing cringe down one 's spine or it can send nerve-wrecking excitement down one 's spine. Whichever way it may be taken, Presidential Debates are interweaved into America 's tapestry of tradition. It has always been to one of the most exciting events that take place every four years. Accompanied with Presidential Debates, precedes Presidential Candidate. We all know that there has to be at least two Presidential Candidates in order for Presidential Debates to exist.

I was not able to watch the debate the day it took place, however I did watch the entire debate online a few days after. It has been extremely difficult for me to watch this debate as well as the presidential debates focusing solely on their speaking styles, without paying much attention to the content that they are speaking about. It was also difficult to understand both candidates in some places, for they continuously talked over one another! Kain seemed to have more thought out answers. At one point Pence even asked, " Did you work on that one a long time? Cause that had a lot of really creative lines in it." They both used lots of personal examples throughout the debate. For

In this first presidential debate the speaker I chose to focus on presidential candidate Senator Hilary Clinton. This speech was given at Hofstra University, which is located in Hempstead, New York. This debate was held on Monday, September 26th, 2016 to a large audience. The audience included many politicians, everyday Americans, neutralized individuals etc... In the opening segment of this debate, Mr. Lester Holt opened up this event asking each presidential candidate how would they respond to the issue of jobs in the entire United States if they were elected. In her response she was very focused and determine to get her point across. She was trying to persuade the audience that she would make the more valued

There is a divide between the opinions of Republican and Democratic candidates on the topic of climate change. The Republican candidates tend to refuse and ignore the idea entirely while Democratic candidates acknowledge the severity of it and want to make a stand.