President Barack Obama and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney argued over the economy, healthcare and education in the first presidential debate held at the University of Denver last Wednesday night.

Despite the lack of authority in moderator Jim Lehrer, priorities in the debate were made very clear: Romney’s main focus in the election was jobs and “restoring the vitality of America.” Obama made it known that he intended to work on improving and expanding the middle class.

From the get-go, both Romney and Obama were pushing their respective views on jobs and how to bring them back to the country.

Romney said he believed in a “five step plan” that included becoming “energy independent,” improving schooling and putting more focus on small businesses. Romney expressly stated that he wishes to get jobs out of China and back into the United States so the people can get back to work.

Obama on the other hand pointed out that the United States is making a comeback into the auto industry and that in turn was creating jobs for the public.

Obama also reveald new plans to give tax breaks to companies that keep their factory jobs in the United States. Obama said he is “working for the middle-class” and made the claim that “we [The United States] do best when the middle class is doing well.”

Healthcare was also a major discussion topic. Obama was pushing his national healthcare bill (Obamacare), while Romney showed interest in making healthcare a state-by-state business.

There was massive debate over which was the better of the two, Obama saying that Romney’s plan to move healthcare to state authority is essentially the “Obamacare plan on a smaller scale.”

Romney refuted this by saying that Obama’s healthcare plan will only result in less healthcare coverage for the people. Romney said he had a simple litmus test to choose government programs: “Is the program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I’ll get rid of it. Obamacare’s on my list.”

Then there was the object of education. Both candidates agreed that the educational system needed to be improved and that tuition costs needed to be lowered so more Americans can go to college.

Obama promoted the idea of improving America’s standing as a high-tech leader by hiring more math and science teachers. “Let’s hire another 100,000 math and science teachers to make sure we maintain our technological lead and our people are skilled and able to succeed,” he said.

Romney on the other hand said he believed the key to bettering school systems was to begin grading them on their performance and to have the federal money follow the student rather than the district.

“How do we get schools to be more competitive? Let’s grade them. I propose we grade our schools so parents know which schools are succeeding and failing, so they can take their child to a — to a school that he’s being more successful,”he said.

Overall, the debate felt rather rushed as both candidates tried to get all of their ideas out on the table and constantly talked over Lehrer to do so. Romney clearly got more in about the general gist of his plans, but faced criticism later about how vague he was in detailing how to put said plans into action.

Obama, although speaking slightly longer than Romney (approximately 4 minutes and 16 seconds according to A Smart Politics analysis), didn’t convey his message of what he truly wanted for the country as well as he probably could have.

The next formal debate will be the vice-presidential debate. It will be held at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky on Thursday, Oct. 11. Obama and Romney will face off again on Tuesday, Oct. 16 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY.