interview with the vampire

I did not watch the presidential debate tonight.

I didn't watch the first one either.

Nor do I expect to watch the last one.

There are a couple reasons. For starters, I caught some five minutes of each of the debates so far. That was enough time for me to remember that I can't really stand to listen to either candidate speak. I find McCain to be grating and condescending; Obama to be lethargic and boring. (This was not the case with the Veep debate, which I found to be quite entertaining. Hell, I could even listen to Palin. That might have to do with my anticipation of how Fey would interpret her a couple nights later, but still . . . )

The primary reason, though, is because of my disgust with the notion that this is even a presidential candidate debate. Aside from the fact that the candidates seldom do more than recite talking points, it only includes two parties. According to Wikipedia, there are four more candidates who appear on enough ballots to garner enough electoral votes and conceivably win the presidency.* Yes, at this point in time, these third-party candidates won't make enough headway to actually win, but I think the media does the nation a disservice by not presenting these candidates' voices as well.

So I'll read through the transcript in the next couple days and continue to do my research on the positions of all the candidates as I try to educate myself prior to the election.


*Independent Party: Nader/Gonzalez
Libertarian: Barr/Root
Constitution: Baldwin/Castle
Green: McKinney/Clemente