The Pied Piper

Keeping in mind that the first debate tomorrow(?) is to be about foreign policy, Obama's statement about that debate is puzzling and the scientific community is united in that fact.

This is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess."

"In my mind, actually, it's more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country and where we want to take the economy as well as dealing with some of the issues of foreign policy that were initially the subject of the debate."

I haven't seen anywhere that the topic for the initial debate has changed, as a matter of fact the original debate topic proposed by the commission was to be on economic issues and the third on foreign policy — in part, people involved in the process said, because the first debate is usually the most watched, and many voters rank the economy as their top concern.

Mr. Obama successfully sought to flip the proposed topics for the first and third debates, so foreign policy is now coming first and economic and other domestic issues come last.

Mr. Obama wanted domestic issues to come last; advisers said that they believed even before the start of the financial crisis that the election was most likely to turn on the state of the economy and that he wanted the final televised exchange to focus on those concerns.