Student Vice-Presidential Debate at CWRU -- Thoughts

041004

Student Vice President Debate at CWRU
[Officially known as the National Student Debate]

Apparently, it's an Republican vs Democrat matchup that looks like a mock VP debate on various issues

Colleges: JHU, Fisk, Emory, CMU, ROchester, Stanford, Cornell, CWRU, MIT, Duke, OSU (Ohio), University of Miami, Vanderbelt, Washington U @ St. Louis, and U of Florida.

At first glance, this gathering has a lot of medial presence with cameras and reporters around the room with press passes. Apparently, the BBC News World Service is also here. Will this debate ever be broadcast on any news or local channels? Most likely not, though it may be broadcast locally. The room only 2/3 full. I was expecting a packed event. It just seems to be an informal confrence on the presidential race.

I forgot, Judy Woodward is here. She's the anchor of CNN News. Perhaps this will have some attention after all.

The debate format for this student debate is no different from the Presidential/Vice Presidential Debate. 2 minute initial response; 1 minute rebuttal; 30 second follow-up.

Topic: Foreign Policy

1921
The debate seems to follow all of the issues that have been already brought up in the Presidential debate last week. The views aren't any different from both parties. However, there are some discrepancies with the main messages from each of the real campaigns, even with the same 'inaccuracies' that have been used and repeated in the actual debates.

1932
I've noticed that the responses to all of the questions from the moderator keeps on drawing from the president's or the presidential candidate's policies. The candidates don't mention much about themselves or their views or experiences. They just buttress the candidate's views without any new material. Is this really what the real vice presidential debate will be all about? If so, this will be a severely disappointing event on any further discussion from what has been last Thursday.

Democrat: Long winded; some missteps; some views don't match what Kerry put down last week, esp the primary threat [she mentioned terrorism as opposed to nuclear proliferation]
Republican: Spoke too fast, and is barely comprehensible at some points. He also follows closely to what the Bush campaign has said. But without the stammering and twitching.

Bush campaign wins by a small margin.

Topic: Economic Policy
1946
Ouch. The Republican debator just claimed that rich Americans shouldn't be discrimnated by income and pay more money.

1952
The Republican economic policy debator is intelligent and nuanced. What's ironic is that his attitude doesn't represent the labeled bullheadedness of the Bush/Cheny campaign.

1959
But he's not paying attention to responses and he isn't constructing rebuttals to rebuttals.
And he has a lot of holes in his arguments, and outdated according to Bush's policy

2002
Democrats win this round pretty resoundingly.


Topic: Domestic Policy
2010
Higher Education: Republican response: An extra $1000 to poor students to help them to go through college. That amount of money is a drop in the bucket compared to the real costs of college.

Standardized testing -- not necessarily better to get funding. Some just teach how to test and don't go after the real material that is important for education


Health Insurance: I will have to admit, Bush, IMO, has a better plan for long-term health insurance consolidation especially with capping malpractice rewards to really slash prices for health insurance. However, I don't believe Bush will really follow through with the policy considering the behavior of the administration. This includes insurance company lobbyists. I am also disappointed that Medicare was forbidden from negotiating lower prescription prices for drugs that the military and other government agencies can obtain as well.

I disagree strongly with any policy of letting the courts to determine what doctors keep practicing. It encourages frivilous lawsuits and also make doctors care more about whether they'll get sued instead of how they should treat the patient -- the real job of the doctor.

2025
Tie.

Topic: Social Issues
2027
Bathroom Break for the Democrat side

2029
Sanctity of life: That is certainly a good reason for abortion. But what about the moral position of premarital sex? Is Bush really doing anything to promote such 'moral' ideals to prevent such an act from being committed? All he talks about is abortion. What about campaigns for premarital sex? (Note that I have no interest in other people's sexual choices on time)

2037
Republican representative says that the party promotes tolerance. How can they claim that if they want to ban gay marriages? Rogue judges? They only interpret the constitution. They by definition cannot be partial, and being unelected allows them to be so without worrying about constituent ideals.

Battery to the laptop died here, so I took notes on paper as afterthoughts after the debate.

Two other issues in this topic section was piqued my interest:

Stem cell research: As the Democratic representative put it tactly, if Republicans respect the sanctity of life, does denying a person a normal life or a life without discomfort disease really follow their creed of preserving the sanctity of life? Whether an individual cell or an embryo has a soul or should even be considered a "human being" in terms of a fully developed child, adolescent, or adult, can always be debated and will never be resolved on religious or moral grounds (as much as a virus is debated as to whether or not it is alive or not). Instead, the issue needs to be focused on a more mundane issue as to whether or not stem cell research is worth the biological, financial, and moral risks (eg. whether a person should be cloned or not)

The church role in politics: secularism is a tricky issue in the national government. Churches certainly do good through public works, donations, food/hunger centers, temporary living quarters for the homeless, but they also push morals that conflict with other religions or other religious interests. If the government decides to recognize these religious institutions, it starts to dictate preference for certain religions (eg. faith-based initiatives -- who gets the money and what religions? Would it unfairly promote one religion over another? I believe that it would.) Secondly, the democratic representative raised an issue on presidential endorsements through church affiliations. It would certainly violate tax codes which allow religious institutions to file for federal tax-exempt status being a non-partisian body. Not only that, but it would violate the separation of church and state, where the church starts to put its hand into politics and influence how the government appeals to one religious group over another.

This match-up was probably the most interesting. The Republican representative was the most eloquent and passionate of the two debators while the Democratic representative was the most logic-driven debator. This would have fit well for a mock debate of presidential status compared to the vice-presidential status.

If there was a winner, I would have put Team Democrats as the winner by a slim margin. They had the most sound logic between the two (as a scientist). However, other people (the religous and those who are more driven by morals) would have considered the Republicans as the winner; or even a tie.

However, I was surprised as to how this whole debate went. There was a good discussion on the issues, and there weren't as many attacks as the presidential debate had last Thursday. This was also dispite the debate format of 2/1/30. There was also very little brow beating and "I art holier than thou" that I saw in high school where people tried to be politically correct or attempt to elevate themselves higher than others. It was certainly worth the attendance.