Both won, say supporters, but it was no JFK-Nixon game-changer
Tony Castro
Staff Writer - Los Angeles Daily News
October 16, 2008
The Kennedy-Nixon debates these weren't.
The final presidential debate of the campaign Wednesday night, like its two predecessors, likely won't be remembered as a game-changer.
Oh, the supporters of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain crowed about their respective candidate winning, especially here in the shadows of the entertainment industry where many San Fernando Valley residents witnessed it at television debate watching parties, which had the feel of mini campaign rallies.
"I thought John McCain won the debate," said Nancy Spero of Tarzana, co-chairwoman of the San Fernando Valley McCain campaign, who had a small get-together at her home. "I thought he scored well in telling Senator Obama that if he wanted to run against George Bush, he should have run four years ago."
"I thought it was the best debate, but all 30 of us here thought Obama won and that nothing will change," said Linda Fidell of Winnetka, a retired professor at California State University, Northridge, who hosted a party at her home. "McCain was just testy and irritable."
But in the end, even Republican Valerie Basham of Mission Hills admitted that she feared that McCain hadn't done enough in this last debate to cut into Obama's lead shown in most national polls.
"I wanted to see him come out with both guns blazing and take him down, but he didn't," said Basham.
Political experts agreed that this debate, like the previous two, had failed to change the dynamics of the campaign - that these debates had not altered the race the way the historic first nationally televised debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960 had.
"There haven't been many game-changers in the history of presidential debates," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. "For there to be a game-changer, somebody needs to hit a home run or commit a balk and neither candidate has done that.
"Everyone talks about JFK-Nixon and that's the mainstay of American politics. Kennedy got it right on the first debate. And even though Nixon did well in the next two debates, nobody remembers them.
"What they remember is a picture of Kennedy straight, unflinching, stoic and in command of issues. Nobody remembers what he said. They remember Nixon looking tired, unshaven with a five o'clock shadow and wearing a gray suit that didn't make him look good."
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