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Eli Melrod

Week 9: Debate's Omissions Highlight Skewed World View - 3 views

www.nytimes.com/...ghlight-skewed-world-view.html

debate foreign_policy swing_states

shared by Eli Melrod on 24 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Eli Melrod on 24 Oct 12
     
    This article spoke to what I thought about the presidential debate. I would be really interested to hear what the candidates had to say about the Euro-zone crisis or other real issues, but they were forced to tailor their comments to appealing to people in Ohio and other swing states. Classic American political system messing up real conversations from taking place.
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Jonah Schacter on 28 Oct 12
     
    I think there were two reasons why the debate was so bland and avoiding of issues. 1. so close to the election neither candidate wants to stir things up and make a fool of themselves and 2. the world is a big place and it would take a long time to cover all the issues around the world. Also they agree on a lot of issues surrounding foreign policy so how deep could they really go just agreeing about topics.
  • John West on 29 Oct 12
     
    When you brought up how absent the Eurozone crisis was during class, Eli, I realized two things. One, I hadn't heard one mention of it in the past three debate and two, this hadn't struck me as odd. I know way less about this than, say, Iran, and I don't think I'm alone in that across the US. That being said, I think a lot of what the FP debate missed out on is about accessibility to a wide audience. That would be the third thing I would add to Jonah's list: the "real" issues in foreign policy like the Eurozone crisis are both more complicated and less clear-cut/good vs. evil/"American values" based than the Middle East and China, for instance, and are thus way harder to spin to favor the candidates. In that way, like Eli's saying, I think it's even more important for the candidates to bring up "real" issues like these.
  • mabel taylor on 29 Oct 12
     
    I noticed the same thing Eli and also become frustrated when politicians' definition of foreign policy is dominated by historical problem countries in the Middle East. It's especially confusing considering that situations in Europe can be more relevant to the US' economic situation and future and that America really has little power when it comes to influencing the Middle East. I don't know a lot about the Euro-zone and I think that really relates to how little politicians bring it up, the problem is cyclical, if people don't talk about Europe, not a lot of people will know about it, and if few people know about Europe, politicians aren't going to want to talk about it... It's not that productive.
  • Anna Schutte on 09 Nov 12
     
    It does seem like the debate and most of the election focused on foreign policy issues that involve controversies about trade, oil, and military intervention. The broader issues that effect the world like climate change, nuclear proliferation and the economic troubles in Europe are not as compelling.
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