Last week was the third and the final presidential debate between the two prominent presidential candidates, President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. This year, the presidential debates were highly influential in altering citizens’ view on various topics that were discussed, and the media promoted the debates far more than those of previous debates.
Just as the final presidential debate appeared on the huge screen, students who had filled up an entire auditorium expressed their excitement to see how this debate will turn out. Crescenta Valley High School’s JSA (Junior States of America) hosted a school-wide event on Oct. 22, where students could watch the final debate, discuss about the debate afterwards and have a chance to vote if they were over 18 years of age on that day. The event was evidently voluntary, but over one hundred students attended to watch and got involved with politics.
The two-hour debate ended with both of the candidates’ closing arguments.
Obama stated that over the last four years our nation has made progress out of various former policies that eventually led to two wars, record deficits and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He added, “Gov. Romney wants to take us back to those policies, a foreign policy that’s wrong and reckless […].” Obama then showed his determination on making sure that the US has the best education system in the world, along with developing the economy through bringing manufacturing jobs back into America. As his final statement to the debate, he said he will “listen to the voices of Americans and fight to make sure that America continues to be the greatest nation on Earth.”
Romney, on the other hand, criticized Obama’s current leadership and said, “The president’s path will mean continuing declining in take-home pay. I want to make sure take-home pay turns around and starts to grow. […] I’ll get people back to work with 12 million new jobs.” He ended with stating, “We need strong leadership. I’d like to be that leader with your support. I’ll work with you. I’ll lead you in an open and honest way, and I ask for your vote.”
After the debate came to a close, the students moved to two different sides of the auditorium based on who they believed won the final debate. The democrat side had a far larger crowd compared to that of the republican side. An anonymous sophomore said she “really had no idea of which candidate was which before coming here to watch [the debate], but now I [have an idea] of what this whole thing was about.”
