1st Presidential debate

Friday night was the first debate between Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. While the debate focused mainly on national security and economics, the candidates did manage to touch on some topics of interest to scientists, primarily energy, nuclear proliferation, and science and math education.

PHYSICS TODAY invites you to share your opinion of Friday’s debate. Simply write down your reactions, no matter how short, to the science policy issues discussed (or not discussed), in the comment section below. Or send them to us at pt@aip.org with the subject line “Campaign 2008.” Please include your name and affiliation. If you would rather that your posting be anonymous, let us know. All comments are moderated; the best comments will be listed at the top of the page.

With the economy so much in the news, and foreign affairs the announced subject of the debate, I didn’t expect to have much to say here.

I was wrong.

Science and technology issues are big parts of both candidates’ programs, as enunciated in the debate. Additionally, Obama released his S&T policy (http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/FactSheetScience.pdf) on Thursday, but you might have missed it among all the other news.

Jim Lehrer’s second question, “What are you going to have to give up as a result of the financial rescue plan?” set off the S&T discussion. Obama listed four priority areas: energy independence, health care, education, and infrastructure. All involve S&T, and he explicitly mentioned science and math as an important part of education, broadband expansion as part of infrastructure. He sees beefing up the S&T base as a big part of increasing US competitiveness.

McCain also spoke of the importance of energy policy, emphasizing offshore drilling and nuclear power. He said that 45 new nuclear plants over a couple of decades will provide 700,000 new jobs. He returned to nuclear power again during the debate, mentioning reprocessing twice. My sense has been that “recycling” is the more popular word in government these days. He also said that he had supported the Nunn-Lugar program in the 1990s to deal with nuclear waste, but that was incorrect. The Nunn-Lugar program addresses safe storage and handling of nuclear weapons materials in Russia, not nuclear waste from US reactors.

Obama spoke of nonproliferation issues several times, making the connection to potential nuclear terrorism and mentioning the bill he introduced with Richard Lugar (R, NE) to address a number of related issues, including taking missiles off alert and continued support for Nunn-Lugar.

McCain said very little about nonproliferation. I think the increase in nuclear plants will be a hard sell unless he couples it with increased safety and protection against proliferation. He mentioned missile defense in response to Lehrer’s question about the possibility of another 9/11 attack. He said missile defense was a “major factor in bringing about the end of the Cold War.”

I was glad to see so much S&T discussion. I thought that Obama presented more facts and specific policies, but I’ve been in the tank for Obama for some time now.

Cheryl Rofer, chemist and blogger, WhirledView

I managed to catch the debate on the radio. Science got mentioned once - when Obama was talking about improving infrastructure and education. I guess that was a win.

I’ve not looked at the pundit sites yet, but here is what I thought. Ick. I really didn’t like McCain. He reminded me of one of those high school bullies. The things he wanted to do were simplistic - his “Freeze all spending!” is the poster child for this approach. Obama had a much more nuanced position. Both of them, but McCain in particular, seemed to try to distort each other’s voting record. McCain’s “you voted against our troops” attack was typical - give me a break. It was a random fictional president who said it best: “You can’t run such a great country on four words”. And half the time McCain would ignore the moderator’s request and just say whatever his favorite attack was. I spend my life trying to understand complex subjects - as do many people - and it is very very rare these days there is a “yes” or “no” answer to any of the questions I’m studying. It is the same with running our country. It felt like Obama fully recognized that difference, and McCain was all about yes/no.

McCain clearly won the sound-bite contest, however. I wasn’t very interested in voting for him before this debate, but I’m interested even less so now. Disappointed.

Gordon Watts, Professor of PhysicsUniversity of Washington Seattle