Tyler, TX (KYTX) --It's easy to see from last night, the race for the White House is intensifying.
"There was some respect at the beginning. I think on some of the exchanges, we saw how frustrated both candidates are with each other," Dr. Charles Walts, UT Tyler's Debate Coach, said.
Walts watched with his team last night. "Even from the first speech, we saw this is a different Obama than we had seen in the first debate," Walts said.
He says that's partly because a Town Hall style is less formal, which means candidates have more room to attack. "We have driven these candidates to such a point that trading barbs like they did last night was almost predetermined," Walts said.
But some debaters say aggression is good, just not to where it turns off the judges. "There are elements of etiquette and how we want to approach the debate as far as an emotional aspect that are kind of similar," Dallas Flick, a UT Tyler sophomore on the debate team, said.
Flick does think they crossed the line when the conversation turned to Libya."It's suppose to be a debate, but there has to be some form of respect in the equation and I don't think Romney had it at that time," Walts said.
Some voters may not enjoy that kind of sparring."I think it might turn off a few that believe politics should be very civilized," Walts said.
But he says to expect even more passion and aggression, going into the next and final debate.
