What does a presidential debate has to do with a fire alarm? I’ll tell you.

So, last Thursday was the first Presidential Debate, and the topic was foreign policy. Who would ever guess that the vast majority of the debate would be about the war in Iraq? :-)

However, the day began with the Wall Street Journal, which I, as a good business school student, read every day - of course. In it was a box called “Rules of Engagement”, and rarely do I have so much fun reading a newspaper, as I had when I read this box, which contained the rules of the debate (yes, they have rules!).

1. The debate is 90 minutes
2. The winner of a coin toss can decide between getting the first question or making the first closing statement.
3. One has two minutes to answer a question; then the opponent has a 90-second respond. Hereafter, if the moderator deems necessary, he can add one minute to the debate, 30 seconds to each.
4. The families sit in the front row, in the line of sight of the respective candidate.
5. The media sits on the two rows in the back of the room.
6. The audience may neither cheer nor boo.
7. Each of the candidates is entitled minimum eight rooms backstage, and these rooms cannot be smaller than 3.5 meters by 3.5 meters.
8. The podium is 125 cm tall.
9. The candidates may not move away from their podium, and they may not stand on anything that adds height.
10. The candidates cannot ask each other questions.

So, much different than what we are used to in Denmark.

Who came out of the debate as a winner? Most newspapers agree that Kerry was stronger in the debate, and in my opinion it seemed that way (not revealing my political orientation, though, God forbid). But let us see what the polls tells us, and from what I can read in the Danish newspapers you must be pretty updated on this.

But of course……before the debate had ended, yet another fire alarm went off, and I had to evacuate for the fourth time. Get real.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 3rd, 2004 at 10:58 pm and is filed under New York City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.