The Presidential Debate: Romney Smack-Down

Who looks interested, and who looks like he'd rather be somewhere else?

Wow.  I figured there wouldn't be much news from the debate last night.  I mean, the craft of televised presidential debating has been advanced quite a bit over the years.  The candidates are usually so well prepared that they're never really surprised.  They know that the way to deal with an embarassing question is just to change the subject, and most politicians are pretty good at that.  If I had any concern, it was that a gaffe might be created by the right wing machine out of an innocent comment- I'd been reading about how, for example, Al Gore's "sighs" were basically an invention of the national media, even though flash-polls of regular voters never noticed them.  Once the media gets a narrative, they don't usually let go, and that can be hard to predict or control.

But instead what we got was a no-show by the President.  The depths of my rage about this are surprising to me.  This morning I was driving to work and listening to a clip of Obama at the debate, and I started screaming at the radio for him to wake the F--- up, missing my exit.  Say it, Samuel L:

Anyway, I feel like I felt in 2010 when Martha Coakley lost the MA senate election to Scott Brown. In that campaign, Coakley won a very competitive primary battle to fill Ted Kennedy's seat, and apparently expected a coronation against Brown.  Her whole strategy was negative and hostile, she was a lackluster compaigner, and Brown turned out to be a very talented politician.  He snuck up and won the election, and I saved all my anger for Coakley.  The stakes are really high here, and the politicians who run for election shouldn't care about it less than the activists who support them.

That doesn't mean I blame every Democrat for losing elections.  This year in Massachusetts, for example, Brown is running against Elizabeth Warren.  Now he's the incumbent, and he's proven to be a great retail politician who connects well with voters.  He's not crazy like many of his fellow Republicans around the country.  Warren has a good chance to beat him, but Brown has a great chance to hold the seat.  But at least Warren is bringing it with everything she's got- she's campaigning hard, she's putting out the right message, but it's a tough race and I won't be mad at her if she loses.

But the President is another matter; Obama was a competent debater in 2008, both in the primaries and in the general election.  It's not like Romney is some kind of Master up there- he's good, but he left plenty of openings.  Most notably, Romney really pulled his Etch-A-Sketch last night- every time Obama brought up an unpopular position of the GOP, Romney claimed not to hold it, in opposition to his party's platform and everything he's said on the stump and while campaigning.  All the President had to do was call him on it, and he just didn't!

So there are two more presidential debates, and Obama needs to be a lot more combative.  I'm not goign to psychoanalyze the guy from afar, but he needs to figure out why he seemed so disinterested and passive last night.  If he doesn't improve on that performance, then he deserves to lose the election. 

But that doesn't mean the rest of us deserve to be stuck with Mitt Romney and the Crazies as President.  Wake the F--- Up, Mr. President, Wake the F--- up!