Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/debate-performances-reflect-candidates-style-rhetoric Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Presidential hopefuls focused their words on aiding America's middle class in their final debate while maintaining very different temperaments. Experts look at how the candidates' rhetoric and approach foreshadow what's ahead in the final weeks of the campaign. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. RAY SUAREZ: Last night's debate highlighted how the presidential candidates have sought to portray themselves and respond to each other throughout this general election. Here's that "Joe the plumber" exchange.SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), Arizona: A couple days ago, Sen. Obama was out in Ohio, and he had an encounter with a guy who's a plumber. His name is Joe Wurzelburger.Joe wants to buy the business that he's been in for all these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day. And he wanted to buy the business, but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes.What you want to do to Joe the plumber and millions more like him is have their taxes increased and not be able to realize the American dream of owning their own business. BOB SCHIEFFER, Debate Moderator: Is that what you want to do? SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: That's what Joe believes.SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), Illinois: He's been watching some ads of Sen. McCain's. Let me tell you what I'm actually going to do.I think tax policy is a major difference between Sen. McCain and myself. And we both want to cut taxes; the difference is who we want to cut taxes for.Now, Sen. McCain, the centerpiece of his economic proposal is to provide $200 billion in additional tax breaks to some of the wealthiest corporations in America. ExxonMobil and other oil companies, for example, would get an additional $4 billion in tax breaks. RAY SUAREZ: With me now to discuss what more we learned about how the candidates present themselves and their views is Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She's written over a dozen political science books, including some focusing on debates and rhetoric.And Kathleen Kendall is a research professor at the University of Maryland. She focuses on American presidential campaign communication.