Breaking Down the Debates

October 25, 2012

Ambassador Pamela Spratlen and AUCA President Andrew Wachtel sat down with 100 university students on Wednesday afternoon to breakdown the final presidential debate between Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.  The two Americans shed light not only on important foreign policy issues, but also on the motivations of the candidates, the audiences they were addressing, and the hubris required to become commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world.

Ambassador Spratlen opened the meeting by remarking that despite dire and destabilizing events in US history, the American people have voted every four years for president, without fail, since the country was founded over 200 years ago.  The Ambassador also urged students to see the debate not as an outline of future American foreign policy, but rather as two candidates trying to convince the last set of undecided American voters to vote for them.

Students from AUCA, Manas University, Kyrgyz National University, Russian Slavonic University, and the the Academy of Management under the President of the Kyrgyz Republic attended the event.  Several student questions revolved around how a change in leadership would affect American foreign policy.  President Wachtel commented on the ridiculousness of the candidates’ positions, saying that it is impossible to believe that a simple change in leadership in the United States could possibly lead, for example, to a peaceful and prosperous Middle East in four years.  Ambassador Spratlen agreed, but also reminded the audience that somebody running for President of the United States does so because they believe they are in a unique position to change the world for the better.

An exchange student from France asked why there was no mention of broader global issues such as poverty and disease.  Ambassador Spratlen agreed that those issues are important both in the United States as well as around the world.  She also said that, despite their importance, the debate over the past year has been framed around the economic success of the middle class and the US deficit.  President Wachtel was blunter, saying that it is good that these issues are important to French students, but that French students cannot vote in US elections.

The event lasted an hour, the majority of the time devoted to answering student questions.  Questions were prompted through showing small clips from the debate itself, but the main focus of the event was to frame the debate and the process of the debate for a non-American audience.  There are currently two weeks until the election in the United States, and people who are interested in finding more information about the elections and how they work can visit the US Embassy website at http://bishkek.usembassy.gov/.

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