Below are a few of the candidate's embroidered meanderings and slip-ups from the town hall-style debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.
- Responding to a question about what the recent $700 billion bailout package will do to help ordinary Americans, McCain boasted about his résumé and the suspension of his campaign to deal with drafting the bill, while citing Obama as "the second highest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money in history." Yeah, and in case you didn't hear him the first time, the contributions were the biggest, in, underscore, "... history." Too bad McCain made such a fuss over this alligation because, according to Free Republic, a grassroots, independent organization, Obama was not the second largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributions, but the third.
- Addressing the hot-button topic of energy use, Obama advocated for new sources of oil and alternative energy, meanwhile he got stuck on the number. "I believe in the need for increased oil production," Obama said. "We're going to have to explore new ways to get more oil, and that includes offshore drilling. It includes telling the oil companies, that currently have 68 million acres that they're not using, that either you use them or you lose them." According Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan website devoted to politcal fact-checking, however. "those 68 million leased acres are not producing oil, but they are not necessarily untouch ... In 2006, the last year for which figures are available, there were more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished, according to the Bureau of Land Management ... these acres of land that these holes sit on are not counted as being 'producing,' but they are far from untouched."
- We heard both the candidates talk themselves silly when it comes to earmarks and the role they play in terms of the federal budget. In the midst of all the facts and figures the candidates cited, some were, thankfully, correct, while others were just taken out of context.
Obama, explaining how he would get the U.S. out of debt, said we would need to look at the country's spending and revenue. He mentioned McCain's concern when it comes to earmarks, which Obama said account for $18 billion of the national budget. When it comes to how much we're spending on earmarks, Obama was indeed correct, according to an article on Forbes.com.
The Washington Post criticized McCain's continuous remarks on its fact checker. "McCain continues to make an issue out of earmarks, which are only a small part of the overall federal budget," Glenn Kessler wrote. "Earmarks are just $16 billion out of a more than a $2 trillion budget," indicating that McCain gave the issue of earmarks unnecessary attention.
- Politicians seem to have a knack for creating technology; first Al Gore created the Internet, McCain was the brain the BlackBerry and, now, Obama is crediting the government for creating the computer as a way to communicate. Speaking about American innovation, the Democratic presidential nominee said, "The computer was originally invented by a bunch of government scientists who were trying to figure out, for defense purposes, how to communicate." What Obama probably meant was the Internet. Communication had nothing to do with the first computers, which had nothing to do with making contact — in fact, they were a way for academics to isolate themselves further in their studies. And neither did the government: Apple and IBM were the pioneering companies when it came to the production of PC's, according to Wikipedia.
A litany of other fact checkers will pop up in the days and hours following the debates, so be sure to check them out.
The third and final presidential debate will take place Oct. 15 at Hofstra University.
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