ROCHESTER, Minn. (AP) - Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken exchanged barbs in their first Senate debate Sunday night over the ailing economy and the war in Iraq, while a third-party challenger seat kept both on their toes.
Their 90-minute debate at the University of Minnesota's Rochester campus was the first of five over the next month before voters weigh in Nov. 4 in the closely watched race. Independent polls show a race in flux — some showing Coleman on top and others with Franken in control, but all with the Independence Party's Dean Barkley making a dent.
Coleman, seeking his second consecutive term in the Senate, presented himself as a moderate voice in a political culture beset by deep partisan divisions and questioned the temperament of former "Saturday Night Live" funnyman Franken.
"Yes I am angry, but being angry doesn't solve problems," Coleman said. "Anger for anger's sake doesn't solve anything. It doesn't solve problems."
Franken, who has tried to link Coleman to the policies of the unpopular President Bush, repeatedly depicted Coleman as too cozy with power brokers.
"The special interests in Washington are being taken care of," he said.
Coleman defended the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan, which he supported as "as simply stopping the collapse." It provides stability to an economy on edge, he said.
Franken decried it as too big and too weak when it comes to oversight of the financial industry.
"This whole thing reminded me of the rush to war in Iraq," Franken said. "It was, 'Give us $700 billion right now and (Treasury) Secretary (Henry) Paulson will take care of it.'"
Barkley said he would have reluctantly backed the bill.
At most times, the debate was every man for himself. But Barkley and Franken double-teamed Coleman when discussing the Iraq war.
Franken questioned Coleman's continued support for it. Barkley said going into Iraq made the region more unstable and has drained the U.S. budget.
"That was his first-trillion dollar mistake," Barkley said of Coleman. "The second was his failure to watch over the financial industry. That's your second-trillion dollar mistake. How many more trillion-dollar mistakes do we have to put up with?"
Coleman noted that the vote to authorize war preceded his election in 2002, and he described his visits to injured soldiers in military hospitals as a reason not to criticize the war.
"It is too bad we politicize these types of issues at least when we're talking about the lives of our soldiers," he said.
Franken has his own vulnerability on Iraq because he didn't speak out against it while on the air as a left-wing talk radio host. He said he was "generally torn" back then. Now, he says, he's come to see the Iraq war as a distraction from the effort to stop global terrorism.
"There are reasons to go to war and there are reasons not to go to war, and all the reasons to go to war turned out to be false. This was a tragic blunder of epic proportions, and Norm Coleman still thinks it was a good idea." |