According to most national polls and surveys, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama is the winner of Friday’s 2008 presidential debate, the first in the series of three. The Republican nominee Sen. John McCain and Obama debated foreign policy, national security and spent half the time discussing the current economic crisis.

This debate clarified three keys issues for Americans to consider in this presidential selection process.

First, the discussion revealed that McCain’s policy and thinking is rooted in the past. Conversely, it showed that Obama’s orientation is towards the future. McCain wanted the American viewers to remember his record on national security, and foreign policy and service. The problem is that Americans already know his record; that’s what his two decades in the Senate (and two presidential bids) convey. And his Vietnam P.O.W. experience is undisputed.

What McCain seemed to forget, however, is that Americans want to know what he is going to do for them in the future. Obama was smart to spend most of his two minutes detailing the components of his economic plan, a play that helped address criticisms of him being nothing more than a vague, flowery orator.

Obama: What I do is I close corporate loopholes, stop providing tax cuts to corporations that are shipping jobs overseas so that we’re giving tax breaks to companies that are investing here in the United States. I make sure that we have a health care system that allows for everyone to have basic coverage.

Instead, McCain chose to concentrate the majority of his economic conversation on his history of voting against spending bills. He also pointed out Obama’s pattern of proposing and supporting expensive legislation while promising to veto all spending bills as president. Obama delivered arguably his sharpest one-liner of the night in response to McCain’s consideration of a spending freeze, saying this was “using a hatchet where you need a scalpel.”

McCain: As president of the United States, I want to assure you, I’ve got a pen. This one’s kind of old. I’ve got a pen, and I’m going to veto every single spending bill that comes across my desk. I will make them famous. You will know their names. Now, Senator Obama, you wanted to know one of the differences. A million dollars for every day that he’s been in the United States Senate.

And surprising some viewers, Obama fired back.

Obama: And when you look at your tax policies that are directed primarily at those who are doing well, and you are neglecting people who are really struggling right now, I think that is a continuation of the last eight years, and we can’t afford another four.

With the current economic crisis and multiple military entanglements, people across the country are looking to the president to do significantly better than the current administration with planning and foward-thinking.

This leads to the next critical issue. In terms of foreign policy, military decisions and national security, the key word here is judgment. Whose do you trust? And whose judgment seems like the best strategic thinking for the country? Although there was a scuttle around the words: strategy and tactics, Obama nailed home the key point that judgment was needed on the decision whether to go to war in the first place. McCain fell back on his then-unpopular decision to support last year’s troop surge. Obama attempted to turn the tables on what has been a cornerstone of McCain’s platform by saying his counterpart talked about the Iraq War like it began with the surge in 2007.

The third key point raised during the debate was whether an American president should talk with leaders of countries that may be hostile or aggressive toward the U.S. without preconditions.

McCain reminded Americans of Obama’s earlier statement about sitting down with leaders of nations like Iran and North Korea without preconditions.

McCain: Senator Obama twice said in debates he would sit down with Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Raul Castro without precondition. Without precondition. Here is Ahmadinenene [mispronunciation], Ahmadinejad, who is, Ahmadinejad, who is now in New York…

Obama tried to explain his stance on preconditions and preparation.

Obama: Now, understand what this means “without preconditions.” It doesn’t mean that you invite them over for tea one day. What it means is that we don’t do what we’ve been doing, which is to say, “Until you agree to do exactly what we say, we won’t have direct contacts with you.”

McCain continued to hammer home the connection between meeting without preconditions and Obama’s foreign policy naivëte. In terms of international diplomacy and negotiation, Obama is open to dialogue. McCain prefers a bullish, Bush-like negotiation style of setting conditions for even the most basic level of conversations and diplomatic meetings. The crux of his argument being that meeting without these hallowed preconditions will legitimize an extremist world leader such as Ahmadinejad, who he said has referred to Israel as a “stinking corpse.” This portion effectively centered on whether talking with our enemies is better than giving them the silent treatment.

In Obama’s own words: “I reserve the right, as president of the United States to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it’s going to keep America safe.”

I’ll just end my observations with this one final (humorous) thought. McCain, a whiz at using the personal anecdote, decided to share a story of a concerned mother of a U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq. She asked McCain to wear a bracelet in memory of her son’s situation and perhaps their “middle-class” concerns. (A massive voting bloc McCain never addressed directly in the midst of economic panic). McCain told this story to exemplify his concern about American soldiers in Iraq, but missed the boat on showing his concern for the stateside, regular guy’s pockets. And to McCain’s surprise, Obama had his own bracelet U.S. soldier in Iraq story. Alas, if only the conversation on foreign policy, national security and the economy was as simple as wearing a bracelet.