This being my first year able to vote, I decided to pay close attention to the election race going on between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Part of the responsibility of a US citizen is to vote, and I only decided to vote if I considered myself an informed citizen. That being said, part of being an informed citizen is following the election process and paying attention to the conventions and, of course, the debates. This debate was a good one in which I learned a lot about the candidates. First of all, I think the clear winner was Mitt Romney. Throughout the entire debate, I could tell that Romney seemed more on the offensive end, while Barack Obama stuck to defending his views and how they played out over the last four years. That being said, I think this was a great situation for Romney to attack Obama because the numbers did not improve much, if at all, during his four years in office. Going into this debate, many people thought that Obama was going to win solely because he was considered a “better debater”. However, in my own view, I knew it would be difficult for him to win because Romney had so many points to attack on. And coming from the other side, Obama had very few places to attack Romney because he has not had quite as much leadership experience as Obama, and he has not faced all of the economic hardships that Obama has in the past few years. This was a recipe for failure for Obama because all he could really do was stand up there and defend his beliefs while Romney cited countless amounts of instances that showed failure.
In addition, I think body language played a part in this election. While watching the debate, I couldn’t help but notice eye contact. Whenever Romney was speaking, it was like he was speaking directly to Obama. He would turn his entire body towards Obama, and he would look him in the eye while he insulted him. Obama on the other hand, continued to put his head down while being attacked, and rarely spoke directly to Romney. In my opinion, this showed weakness on the part of Obama in that he couldn’t face Romney and the criticism he was providing. I think expectations also played a