At the end of the day, why couldn't they bring out Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart once again instead of those two?

I just didn't like this environment... more discussion style less debate style.

I missed the "I voted agaisnt them" part.

Probably because I was thinking in my head "You voted for them... in fact, we wouldn't of been able to go to war in Iraq if it wasn't for you, because you were a leading democratic hawk who got just enough democratic support to push the war through!"

it is kind of hard to have a "good debate" without "good candidates."  Honestly, I mostly just end up finding more things that I dislike about both candidates than I like, so...

@drkohler

Would have been a MUCH better debate than this one

One of the Bush/Kerry debates was good on both sides... i forget which though.

I thought the "Lock box" debate was a good one for Gore/Bush even though Gore later got hammered about it.

It's funny how quickly republicans and democrats switched on that issue.  

But what's the qualification of it being good?

Talks about important issues?
THe candidate(s) do(es) really well?
The backdrop?

Mostly the second for me... but really all 3 fit.

The Candidates both did a good job of talking about their vision and articulating their plans while having disagreements over policy issues.

The Democratic Primaries for the 2004 election were like this as well.

Of the four people in the debates so far... the only one who really gave any sort of an idea about what he wanted to do with the presidency was Mitt Romney... and he was sketchy about some of the details.

I guess I see what you mean. I'm not geared toward that specific thing.

I'm guessing it's like studying cinematography. You notice types of shots, rules, balance etc. And then when you see a movie, you can really see what the director was articulating, and how it works with the movie.

I would argue that political debates in elections are rarely good because they're are part of an election ...

If Joe Biden and Paul Ryan were having a debate over the direction the country should move in and they weren't trying to get elected I think the debate would have been far better. In general the election makes the debate too scripted and prevents people from saying what they truly believe because they're not trying to inform people or win their support for an idea; they're trying to get through the election with enough votes to win a seat.