I watched the debate with my 11-year old daughter

[BarenakedLady]

I wonder if she will remember this?

She was distracted by McCain's whistling S's. She kept calling him the Chipmunk.

I don't remember being too interested in politics at her age. My mom has always been a liberal though. Do any of you remember watching debates as kids?

[sakabatou]

1. No

I thought news and politics was boring as hell.

[Oeditpus Rex]

2. I don't remember debates

But I vaguely remember election night 1960 (I fell asleep on the sofa) and the conventions in '64 — and certainly the '68 Dem convention.

Another thing I remember about '60: My sister and I went with our folks to vote, and on the way back we were arguing in the back seat of the Oldsmobile.

"Kennedy!"

"Nixon!"

"Kennedy!"

"Nixon!"

"Kennedy!"

"Nixon!"



I won. :D

[RoyGBiv]

3. Yup ...

First debates I remember were when I was 7. Grandma made sure I watched, and the way she watched it with me made sure I was interested.

[Swede]

4. Is squirrel,not chipmunk.

Moose and squirrel.

[billyskank]

5. I'll have to reinterpret your question

We don't have debates in this country. I have various memories of elections when I was young, but I guess the first election I really paid attention to was when the Conservatives won the 1992 election against expectations. The pre-election polls had shown Labour romping home, but it was theorised lots of people who told pollsters they would vote Labour couldn't quite bring themselves to make Neil Kinnock prime minister.

As it is, it was worse for the Conservatives, because they were already losing their popularity, and over the next five years they completely tanked. By 1997 they were heartily despised and got destroyed by Labour now being led by Tony Blair. If they had lost in 1992 and spent a period in opposition, they might have been able to recover themselves more easily, and return to power sooner. As it is, it is only now in 2008 that they look like forming a government again.

The first US election I paid real attention to was when Bill Clinton was first elected in 1992. I remember the BBC coverage had a map of the US in the studio which lit up each state red, blue or white to indicate the way each state was going. There was some fault which caused loads of states to light up white and it looked as if the Beeb were calling the election for Ross Perot.

My earliest election memories are of the 1987 election when Margaret Thatcher was PM. I was ten or eleven at that time, and all I remember are the cars driving around with loudspeakers on the roof, shouting at us to vote for whoever. They don't seem to do that any more. I remember the SDP/Liberal Alliance, a joining forces of the Liberal party and the Social Democratic Party, a group of centrists who broke off from Labour in the early 80s. They got annihilated in the election, and the alliance soon after fell apart. The SDP members mostly returned to the Labour party, and the Liberals renamed themselves the Liberal Democrats, who remain the (distant) third force in English politics.