debate or reality tv?

My parents have always been big fans of "Sunday Morning" on CBS and the week preceding the debate they had a special giving a little history on past debates. They went over the debates that may have had an effective role in turning around the election for one party or the other, including the famous Kennedy vs. Nixon debate, as well as the Carter vs. Reagan debate. I have never had a grand interest in politics, not having been able to vote in previous elections I didn't think that I needed to watch the debates, I listened to what my family said about the participants, and then based my opinions on that. This year however I am a registered voter and this is the first time I have an active interest in the election, but I have to say that the debate didn't go necessarily how I thought it would. After having watched the special on "Sunday Morning" I believed that there would be a clear winner, and the debate would follow all ideas I had on debating, either the ideas I got from said special, or the fictional debates I had seen in movies or in school. To my surprise this was not how this year's presidential debate went at all. I watched the debate on NBC in my basement, with my boyfriend playing on the computer inputting tidbits of his opinion every now and then. After the debate I saw the media's reaction, and recognized that they felt very strongly that Mitt Romney was the clear winner, but I didn't exactly see it that way. I recognized a tired president who is juggling many things on his plate other than just the presidential election, but mostly I could not help but notice how passive Obama was versus Romney's bowling over of the mediator. Poor Jim Lehrer really didn't even need to be in the room as the participants were clearly going to address topics that they wanted to, and had been told to push. I think that Barrack Obama simply is not a confrontational man, and I believe that is a good quality in the leader of the free world, yes there were some issues that needed he needed to be more assertive about, but all in all he he appeared to me to be holding his composure not exhausted. Maybe restating the same facts over and over again wasn't the best idea, however at least he stuck to his facts. From the platform that I have seen Mitt Romney running on to his platform sold at the debate, there seemed to be a pretty big shift in the ideas. This debate, for me, turned into one big reality tv show, where the contestants are fed a plan, and then told to stick with this plan in order to gain more viewers, or in this case voters. Next time Obama may want to change his tactics, and it will be interesting to see how the next presidential debate goes down.