60 Minutes

I watched the 60 Minutes that interviewed both of the candidates. It was very interesting. I was definitely impressed in the way that Obama was interviewed, given that he was actually pressed a few times for answers *gasp*. It was kinda funny in the way that he seemed surprised. "Don't you know who i am?" his face proclaimed. "I'm Barack Obama! You're supposed to fawn over me!" And that interview of McCain was a lot different from Gibson's interview of Palin. I'm kinda disappointed in that. I was hoping to see the same sort of condescention that "Charlie" displayed, because McCain, like Palin, wouldn't have any of it.

McCain really comes across well in the interviews. When asked about wanting to fire the chairman of the SEC, and who he would replace him with, he picked Andrew Cuomo, who was Clinton's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Not exactly the pick of someone who's meetings contain "the old boys network." Old boys of the Clinton White House. Researching Cuomo, I'm quite impressed with him, especially given some of the circles that he's traveled in :-P. It's a perfect example of how McCain is quite different from the Bush organization, in some very important ways. He's quite willing to, when he finds someone apropriate for a position, he recruits them for it, regardless of whether there is an (R) or a (D) next to his name.

I heard an interesting view on the topic of racial voting, which was brought up in the part of the interview with Barack Obama. The statement from the interviewer was:"I know, for a fact, that there are a lot of people out there, there are a lot of people right here in Elko, who won't vote for you because you're black." I myself was quite surprised that this was brought up. The point of not being racist is that race is not a factor. If I were to say, "You know, Senator McCain, there are people out there who will vote for you merely because you are white." there would be a global outcry. So why is it any different because Barack is half-black? This isn't the case of an elephant under the rug here. Now this is just my opinion, but the amount of people who aren't voting for Barack because he's black has to be so small as to make them irrelevant. Given that the question was asked, it begs another one. What was the purpose of asking that question? Perhaps they thought that asking that question might get him more sympathy? In the time of Gibson's look down the glasses, this isn't that big of a leap of imagination.

Off to dinner with my gf for my day birthday. I'm now 25! Yay me!