Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain met tonight at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., in the second presidential debate of the 2008 campaign. Several OG staffers blogged their responses to the debate. Here is senior Lizzy Warner's reaction to the showdown.

So maybe I should talk a little more about the policies discussed today, but I was disappointed with more than that.

Actually I think most of the points that were made were interesting and well-spoken; I agreed with some and disagreed with others. But I was disappointed with the lack of focus.

When I watched the VP debates I criticized each running mate when he or she dodged the question, but the point was that I could count how many times that occurred. I feel like tonight the majority of the answers consisted of a lot of self-promotion. And, in essence, I guess that's what needs to happen.

On the other hand, I felt that the entire night was made up of finger-pointing and hand-wavy half answers. One candidate would say, "Well, Mr. Other Candidate agreed with this one piece of legislation and is going to do this, and that is not very good." Then the other candidate would respond, and the actual question was hardly touched upon.

I know politics doesn't allow people to say exactly what they think. They have to include a lot of long phrases and make their views seem very middle of the road, but I feel like this particular debate focused less on answering the direct questions than last week's VP debate.

I guess since this is one of the last debates, each candidate is anxious to get in some good quotable comments and work themselves up before the last time they meet. But that shouldn't be the point of these debates. I'm personally getting very tired of all this political talk. You have to be educated and critical to sift through what they're saying to get to the root of their policies and, even then, it's easy to misinterpret something someone has said.

As this debate progressed I will admit that it seemed like the candidates got slightly better at moving away from finger-pointing and toward focusing on the actual question, but even then we were stuck sorting out what they were trying to say.

Also, I personally want to hear about my future. Each candidate talked about, or at least briefly mentioned, that the students now are the future of America.

Obama brought up the struggles of affording higher education briefly in his last few words, but if we're supposed to be the future of America, why can't we hear more about that? Especially when the economy is doing so poorly, will I be able to afford college?

I can go to each candidate's Web site or I can listen to their passing comments, but this should be a more pressing matter. Of course the bad economy will influence many things, but the effect on students and parents trying to pay for college is one I have heard very little about.

And finally, I'm just going to say I didn't like the moderation by NBC's Tom Brokaw. Yes, again, I'm being a little nit-picky, but I wanted to hear what the candidates had to say, even if that meant three of four extra seconds over the allotted time given. But I guess I survived.