Every time Sen. Clinton says she’s more ready to be commander-in-chief, Sen. Obama just points to the scoreboard and says “Iraq”. Certainly I’d prefer HRC over the current occupant by leaps and bounds, but contrasting with Obama on this is just a loser for her.
Whatever you want to call them, these things are not debates. Every sentient being who cares to know already knows about each candidate’s issue and policy positions. Neither one of them ever really talks about important things, neither one of them can really commit to anything too specific until after they take office, and neither one of them is interesting enough at discussing policy issues that anyone is ever going to ask a real issue question.
So why do we keep doing these things?
These televised things are really exercises in “let’s keep taping you two until one of you makes a mistake we [the corporate press/media] can use to end your campaign.”
There is no other purpose to these things.
I’d wager it’s even shallower than that–it’s not even about things they say, it’s about how they look on TV. One of TV’s first televised debates was between clean-scrubbed Jack Kennedy and Richard “5-o’clock Shadow” Nixon, and Nixon was beat before either of them spoke a word.
The blood’s been in the water ever since then.