Obama Won First Debate Over McCain

Loren has closed down her clothing shop located in front of Oxford Town Hall with polite excuses for her customers who came to shop. She said “I have been waiting for this evening for several weeks.” Everybody will watch the debate between Obama and McCain. About her preferred candidate, Loren said, “I support the GOP candidate and see that McCain is the leader we need in this period which requires an experienced man who could bring the country out of this economic crisis.”

The mayor of Oxford, Richard Howarth, has put a large screen in front of the city’s church while small kids have gathered to take pictures with the memorial monuments of the two candidates carrying balloons with the colors of the U.S. flag. Howarth said, “It is a historical moment in the history of our small town when we receive the two candidates for upcoming presidential elections.”

The city’s local residents had decorated the front doors of their houses, and some ambulant vendors came close to the Fire Department to sell Obama T-shirts. The small city received about 3,500 journalists from all over the world to cover the debate. Oxford, whose population does not exceed 19,000, has hosted a presidential evening that put it in the midst of this big event in Uncle Sam’s country.

Major U.S. media outlets competed to send their correspondents to the city, while Americans stayed at home many long hours to listen to and watch live TV coverage and analysis of the debate between the Democratic candidate Barack Obama and GOP candidate John McCain, in the first of three national debates preceding the presidential elections scheduled for next November.

Jim Lehrer mediated the debate, in which several hot economic, social and national security topics were discussed. The debate uncovered a wide gap of difference between the two candidates in terms of issues related to foreign policy and economics.

During the debate, McCain, who did not look at his competitor throughout the entire debate, doubted that attacks like those of 9/11 would repeat, saying, “America is safer today than it was on 9/11. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a long way to go.”

Concerning relationships with Russia, Obama called for the reassessment of U.S. dealings with Russia in the light of recent events in Georgia, saying, “you cannot be a 21st century superpower, or power, and act like a 20th-century dictatorship.” The two candidates agreed on one point, which concerns the bailout being proposed by President George Bush to pump $700 billion into the budget to compensate for the losses of the economic crisis.

Opinions differed widely when it came to foreign policy issues. When McCain firmly asserted that Iranian nuclear weapons would represent a threat against the state of Israel and would encourage other countries to acquire nuclear weapons, he said, “Now we cannot [allow] a second Holocaust.”

Obama, however, has taken a rather moderate position after he has considered that the U.S. could not permit Iran to retain nuclear weapons and that the solution remains to impose hard sanctions on Tehran.

Obama has attacked his competitor concerning the war in Iraq and the failure of the U.S. forces’ surge, and the explosion of ethnic strife/sedition in Iraq. In the same context, Obama told the Arizona senator, “at the time when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy. You said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were.”

The Republican representative in Arizona, Jill Hazlebaker (sic) said that McCain proved his capacity to handle big issues that concern the nation and so succeeded over his Democratic foe. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was not convinced of this when she stated to Al Massae that, “Obama was realistic in his vision for upcoming foreign policy which is based on repairing/correcting what was done by the Bush Administration during the last eight years”; and this is what Robert Gibbs, Director of Communications for Obama’s campaign reiterated when he said, “Americans should feel safe about the county’s future after the debate, which proved that Barack Obama is capable of leading the country and reestablishing America’s principles and correcting/repairing George Bush’s policy, which Americans don’t want McCain to repeat.”

As was expected, each camp, Republicans and Democrats, think that their respective candidate won the debate. Some people believe that the two men have brought nothing new. “The debate did not bring any surprise and no one won over the other,” said one professor of political science from Mississippi University.

CNN conducted a poll revealing that 51 percent of Americans think that Obama was the best while 38 percent have chosen John McCain. The Washington Post opined that both candidates have/share the same ideas concerning ways to tackle Iran’s nuclear programs/ambitions, response to Russia, and the Middle East peace process.

The two candidates will meet again in two more debates, the first one at Belmont University in Nashville, and the second at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.