Dustin Rayford Williams (dusrwill@mars.utm.edu) from 10.100.144.55 at 10/21/04 07:51PM
comment
    Recently I attended the speech of academic speaker Michael Nelson. Dr. Nelson is a professor of political science at Rhodes College. Dr. Nelson began his speech by recounting the earliest of the presidential debates by going back to the debates of the 1960, Nixon-Kennedy Election. He discussed the winner of each of the four debates and the reasons for each win or loss. He then covered the reasons for there being no debates from 1964 to 1972. He then moved on to later presidential debates such Cater vs. Ford in 1976, Reagan vs. Mondale in 1984, Bush vs. Dukakis in 1988, and Clinton vs. Bush vs. Perot in 1992. In each of these debates Dr. Nelson discussed the key points of each one as well as the winners and the losers and the reasons for each. From here Dr. Nelson moved on to discuss the debates of the recent election in 2000 and give light to the upcoming debates between President Bush and Senator John Kerry. He then moved on the structuring of the debates, the different kinds of debates that are held and the rules for networking and broadcasting each of the debates. Dr. Nelson closed his speech showing a skit from Saturday Night Live which made a very funny mockery of the last debate between Bush and Gore in the 200o election.