I watched most of it this afternoon, until the constitutional segment - I ran out of time, but I intend to watch the rest of it later.
I thought the best part was where Massa had his extra 30 seconds that was given to each candidate due to the absence of Scioli and he basically said that Scioli is disrespecting everyone with his absence and that Scioli's silence was mocking society and the best way to answer that was with his own silence. He sat there for 16 seconds and stared at the camera. I loved it. Unfortunately, Scioli probably doesn't give a rat's ass and it won't make any difference in the election, but I loved that one of the candidates at least addressed that, instead of just via the moderators who noted that the candidates had a 30 second freebie due to Scioli's absence (not to mention a couple of other calm, yet perhaps meant to be slightly acerbic when taken overall, comments from the moderators here and there).
I thought the debate (the 3/4 I saw anyway) was well-run and the candidates did a good job of staying within the agreements of time usage and not cutting down the others too much. Although, I could see what seemed to be Caño's fire toward Macri struggling to free itself - the "worker's representative" of the Left Front against the "demon businessman" - though he kept it pretty much in check.
But all-in-all, I didn't see a whole lot of specifics from any of the candidates, though there was some, mostly from Massa and Stolbizer and some from Caño, but even they didn't say exactly how they were going to accomplish the things, fiscally at least, that they talked about. But then again, I don't think one ever expects that from any political debate anywhere.
Hats off to Argentina and their first presidential debate.
But on a more serious note, I talked with our girls, one of my nephews and one of the friends of one of our girls just a few minutes ago. No one had any idea 1) what a debate was in general (!!!!), 2) that there was a presidential debate last night and 3) when the election was (and only two really any idea what the election meant). I think that's a terrible thing, that in school over the last couple of weeks at least, there wasn't apparently any discussion of this event, what it is for, and what such public showings of the candidates together could mean. There were no homework assignments to watch the debate and draw conclusions and present the students' thoughts, etc. It could conceivably be simply the school where these kids attend, but I doubt it. I think the majority of schools probably treated this as such, maybe a few of the high-level schools (like Lincoln, for example) had something, I don't know. Of course, I must say, what I've seen of school here related to the students reporting on something consists of searching on the internet and printing it out to take to class. They don't even know what the information says most of the time. And the professors not only don't seem to mind - it is their instructions!
For those of you with kids in school out there, it would be interesting to me to see what your kids' schools did about this.
And I have to admit that I, as a "tutor" who is at least half responsible for the education of the girls under our care, have been remiss in some of my responsibilities as a "parent". We talk politics in our house, the girls are properly bored (they are, after all adolescents), but I realized this afternoon that not even I had thought to talk about the coming debate and sit down with everyone and watch it.
But if there was, as seems to me, such an absolute dearth of using this event as a teaching point for the participation of citizens in a democracy in school (while requiring the reading of books like Las Venas Abiertas de Latina America, misrepresentations of the truths about the Falklands, and all the hero worship that is taught about Peron y Evita), particularly with the first ever presidential debate in Argentina, I think that is very telling about how far at least educators here need to go still to properly inculcate the responsibilities of self-governance into its kids.
And I must say, I doubt many schools in the US still do this either - when I was a kid I can remember having to do a report on the debate between Reagan and Carter in social sciences. I doubt many schools do this in the US any more either (I have to admit to this being conjecture and based on what I saw as differences in school between when I was young, and the experiences we had with our kids in the States going to school), and in my opinion, if true, would help to show how deteriorated the concept of actual republicanism (not the party, the concept of a republic) and democracy has become there as well, in these days.
