So why was the first debate topic changed from domestic to foreign issues?

[WI_DEM]

the first debate is always the most watched. Here is an article on the change:

Whether it was John McCain's campaign pushing to switch the topic of the first presidential debate to foreign policy and national security or Barack Obama's campaign relishing the chance to go after McCain's perceived strength, the University of Mississippi's preparations for the Sept. 26 event received a curveball on Thursday.

For months, the Commission on Presidential Debates had assured Ole Miss that the focus of the debate at its Gertrude C. Ford Center would be on domestic issues. However, a joint announcement Thursday from the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns said negotiations on the debates had resulted in a switch.



Ole Miss officials had tailored the campus's debate-oriented activities, including forums and seminars, around domestic issues, but Andy Mullins, executive assistant to the chancellor and the university's point man on the debates, said the university was first notified of the switch at 7:45 a.m. on Thursday.

"We aren't planning on changing any of our events," Mullins said. "Too late."

Domestic issues move to the subject of the final debate, on Oct. 15, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

The second presidential debate, on Oct. 7 at Belmont University in Nashville, will be a town-hall style format with no set theme.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., lead negotiators on the debates, did not give a reason for the adjustment.

Bruce Oppenheimer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, likened the process to a negotiation to buy a car -- both sides were trying to get something they wanted without giving up too much.

"One side may have preferred it or one side may not have preferred or it's possible both of them wanted the switch," Oppenheimer said. "What I suspect is that each side in the course of the three debates got something they wanted and gave up something they didn't want."

Marcus Pohlmann of Rhodes College agreed with Oppenheimer that conventional wisdom says McCain's strength lies in foreign policy, but that Obama may have had many reasons for wanting to engage in those issues in the first debate, which is often the most watched.

Oppenheimer pointed to playing the expectations game: "The expectation will be this is a substantive area where McCain should have an advantage. But in fact that may work favorably to Obama. If he goes into that situation and looks presidential, then you might have people saying it goes back to 1960 and Kennedy and Nixon."

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/aug/21/21debateWEB/