Did you find the presidential debates as boring as I did?  

well when its mccain and obama did a debate its kinda boring than the vice presidential debate.

and why i am watching it because i want to know their agenda and what they have to say for questions that are given to them by the people who are there to ask question.

Yes the debates are very controlled and I know there were quite a lot of people expressing their fustration at rigidly enforced debate format, particularly during the second presidential debate.

I think the Commission is to blame though I suspect the parties are as well since they place many requirements on the commission as they are both vying to ensure that their candidate is not disadvantaged.

I think there is also a major problem in that it looks like the moderator is not allowed to ask searching follow-up questions and I think it is both parties and candidates that are to blame for that, since they both seem to be frightened of the follow-up question.

That said, at least the US has debates where there is an opportunity for people to look at both candidates debating toe to toe. It isn't perfect and should be improved on, particularly the point about the moderator being able to ask followup questions.

Both candidates want it that way. This makes it possible to make it more likely they both can avoid the tough issues.

Did balancing the budget come up? Gun control? Whether or not to attack Iran? The debates are constructed so as to make it more feasible to only discuss pap.

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Clrumfelt,

IMO the debates are as useless as t!ts on a boar hog! The moderators even have an agenda and it shows by the questions they ask. I'm not even sure the townhall venue wasn't scripted. The candidates are never pinned down on true issues and their answers are usually so canned you could have gone to their website and read them word for word.

I was lucky. I did not watch the debates, but I find that if you have the candidates control them, then you just seem to get a series of arguments and news conference speeches. They should be run by a non-partisan committee instead of by Obama and McCain. Then when I went here to find the reaction, I got the Obama was better by the Obamanites and the reverse by the McCain supporters, so I figured it depended on who you were supporting as to who won.

You know what I found interesting was watching the body language of the audience. There was one lady that I found especially expressive because she had her arms folded and her legs crossed. It was like she was exerting all of the control of her body and restraining her reactions as much as she could. I found myself shouting and jumping up a couple of times and I thought that the tightly constrained rules that the audience members were participating under would have given me an aneurysm. Also, you are correct in stating that the feel of the whole thing was phoney bologna. It had a plastic and structured feel. I think the debates would be much more interesting if they were permitted to be more flowing and organic. You know, let the audience shout it out. Let the candidates respond like real people. That would surely show us how the candidates operate under pressure, very important for a U.S. president. Don't you think so?

Yo man, disscussion are the most lame and boring things to have happend, like why can't we just chill with some cool debates for once, I mean come on, I am 100% sure no one can absoloutly stand by and watch and ENJOY a presidential debate.

I cannot watch the debates, on one hand you have Obama a man who talks about killing what made America great, and on the other McCain a man who talks about killing what made the GOP great. To me it is not the format but the men on the stage that make the debates for me unwatchable.

I think really that they needed to change the format of the debate, the last one that they had between Mcain and Obama was terrible, they were not allowed to fight back at each other and were not allowed to interupt and share the counter arguments.