After watching Wednesday night’s debate, I realized how vast a topic domestic policy is. As someone actively following politics, I gained a lot from last night’s debate, but this debate was clearly not  to aid  the opinion of the viewers. This was for analysts and informed voters. While both candidates had errors, and I can see why people consider Mitt Romney the “winner” of the night, this debate solidified my feeling that President Obama should be re-elected.

Romney was a stronger speaker than usual, and made some very informed statements, but I could not get past the fact that he would criticize Obama and fail to explain his own policies. A great example of this was during the healthcare segment when moderator Jim Lehrer asked Romney, “If  Obamacare is repealed, how would you replace it?” and Romney answered, “It’s a lengthy description” continuing with “…free enterprises trying to find ways to do things better are […] more effective in bringing down the cost [of healthcare] than the government will ever be”. Essentially, Romney puts down the government on their cost reducing skills, something important to him, but failed to mention any parts of his replacement plan in the rest of this 2-minute period.

Romney criticized Obama in very educated ways, but a handful of his comments put me off for the rest of the debate. Of course, this column couldn’t be complete without a mention of the Big Bird comment. Romney told Lehrer he would “stop the subsidy to PBS” because the only programs that we should be spending on have to be “worth borrowing money from China…”. Why would Romney pointedly antagonize a channel that is airing this event? More importantly, Romney couldn’t think of another program to point out that would have a greater impact on our budget? Neil deGrasse Tyson, a well-respected and well-educated astrophysicist, tweeted that “Cutting PBS support (.012% of budget) to help balance federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500 gigabyte hard drive.” As well, because I’m not religiously affiliated, I did not appreciate his nod to the importance of religious tolerance followed by the contradictory comment that “we are all children of the same God”, which makes me feel like Romney really doesn’t understand the concept of separation of church and state.

I can see why people thought Romney was the winner. The public became distracted by how negative Romney was. The figures that each candidate pulled out have been used before, and I felt like I was listening to each candidate try to one up each other on small details. Obama seemed disinterested at times, and missed some in roads to bring up big Romney gaffes like his 47% comment.

But overall, I felt as if Obama was trying to be the better speaker in the sense that he didn’t take every opportunity to slam Romney, and that he took time and added details to his statements. I like that Obama has solutions to our current problems, but more importantly that his solutions include preventative ideas. Prevention is key; we need to make sure that our nation never reaches this current state again, and Romney failed to back up his claims and ideas with what matters most, the truth.