Tonight's Presidential Candidate Debate...

@Robert Gentel,

Well yes, that is it, not-with-standing your sarcasm.

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I predicted half of this debate. I thought that Obama was going to come into this debate with a cautious, "do no harm", "don't make mistakes" strategy and trust that Romney would hurt himself swinging wildly. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that this was not a good idea.

I didn't predict that Romney would do so damn well. Mitt clearly came ready to play his best game.

I still am confident that Obama will win. And one good thing about doing poorly in the first debate is that it sets up the obvious comeback story line.

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@maxdancona,

It's nice to see that you can find victory in the bowels of defeat. I like postive minded people.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Come on now. Don't you think "Bowels of defeat" is a little excessive for one debate performance? It was a solid performance not a knock-out blow. Winning debates isn't the goal here, you don't even know if this will have a significant effect where it matters.

Your guy did well in the debate. My guy didn't do so well. Let's see what happens.

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@maxdancona,

agreed. Tonight's was the worst Obama has done since ever. Romney was in control, but to me, he came off as big jerk. I doubt he gets much of a bump for his win.

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Fact Checking the Presidential Debate in Denver

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Nobody serious thinks Obama won tonight. They aren't going to come that unprepared the next time.

Sadly, I don't think Obama was badly prepared. After all, he knew what he was talking about. His facts were basically correct, with only minor spin on top. (Romney, by contrast, utterly lied about the heart of both his tax plan and his health care plan.) No, the weakness in Obama's debating performance wasn't preparation, it was temperament. Obama's temperament is to avoid confrontation, and this instinctive conflict avoidance bars him from driving his points home.

And that is sad. If the problem was preparation, Obama could improve next time by preparing better. But since the problem is Obama's temperament, we cannot expect such improvement.

All that said, I disagree with the near-consensus in the commentariat that Obama did terrible. I still think this is a case of Romney exceeding expectations because they were incredibly low, and Obama disappointing because the expectations were incredibly high.

1 Reply

An interesting but tongue in cheek and fingers in ears take on the debate.

It kind of sums up the feelings of the majority of Americans

Quote:

But the big question, of course, is what will happen in the following two debates. What color ties will the candidates wear then?

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@Thomas,

He wasn't prepared for the Romney that showed up at all. He was ready to attack a candidate much more to the right and didn't know how to respond to a Romney that embraced the same talking points he had.

Obama should have gone for incredulity at mr 47% suddenly recasting himself as Mr middle class. He should have attacked it as phony. Instead he was dumbfounded by how Romney shed all his talking points and flatly denied any negative details about his plans. The only time Obama went after him for his prevarication was the "never mind" quip and he should have been doing that much more forcefully.

This was not an academic debate, almost none of the answers were intellectually honest (or even bothered to answer the questions asked of them). In the context of what it was it was as big of a disaster as I can imagine for Obama. But given the nature of these things that's not saying much. These debates only convince the most undecided, most easily-influenced voters.

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@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

These debates only convince the most undecided, most easily-influenced voters.

And those voters were watching the last DWTS that they had previously recorded to watch at this time.

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@Robert Gentel,

Obama could've hit back harder, but I think he's playing it safe.

"Gotcha" moments at debates can cause a mixed result. Witness Lloyd Bentson's "you're no Jack Kennedy" comment to Dan Quayle. Some people loved it, and some people thought he came off as being mean.

Romney needs a game changer. He needs to come out swinging and go for the knockout, because he's behind.

Obama's just got to avoid being knocked out.

1 Reply

I agree that a different Romney than expected showed up and Obama did not call him on it. Obama's demeanor wasn't good either. A little enthusiasm would be good. Disappointing. I hope next time Obama is better prepared, and for the right stuff. Romney shifting to the center has been predicted here, it should have been expected.

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Obama should have gone for incredulity at mr 47% suddenly recasting himself as Mr middle class. He should have attacked it as phony.

He tried.

Near the beginning, of the debate, Obama wrote:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, for 18 months he’s been running on this tax plan. And now, five weeks before the election, he’s saying that his big, bold idea is “never mind.”

Source

But then Obama immediately pivoted to what he does best --- open discussion with honest grownups --- and framed Romney's problem as a mistake in arithmetic. I'm sure he knew how dishonest Romney had been just a minute before. But he didn't want to go there. Rather than kicking him in the nuts about it, Obama continued to treat Romney as a fellow member of the Harvard aristocracy, where attacks take the shape of genteel digs, so subtle nobody outside the aristocracy can notice. While I admit I can't read the mind of the candidates, this looked like a personality limitation to me, not a lack of preparation. Obama just doesn't have the instinct to go for the kill.

I guess the next debate will tell us who's right, now that Obama knows which Romney to prepare for. If he improves, that confirms your theory. If he doesn't, that confirms mine. I hope Obama will end up confirming your theory.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

Obama could've hit back harder, but I think he's playing it safe.

His problem was that he kept trying to hit at the candidate he prepared for, and because Romney had completely ditched his previous talking points it let Romney try to make him look like Obama was putting words in his mouth.

He never recovered from that. He should have pivoted instead he kept trying to pin Romney's previous positions on a Romney that was boldly disavowing all possible negatives from his previous positions.

Romney has adopted Obama's populist tone. Obama kept trying to knock over straw men that more closely resembled the Romney campaign the day before the debate.

By not really standing for anything specific he managed to make Obama's attacks look petty and unfounded, and the fact that he has suspended his use of arithmetic for this part of the campaign was something Obama was not able to articulate clearly enough.

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@Thomas,

I said earlier that that was his only real attempt at it. And it fell flat. He needed to do so more forcefully. He also made the mistake of keeping up the attacks on the Romney he planned for a bit too long, and let the first impression be set by him repeatedly claiming Romney stood for things that Romney simply turned around and flatly denied.

Right after the first question he should have been reexamining his strategy, instead he kept going for the first 15 minutes trying, to pin positions on Romney that Romney is now disavowing.

By ceding the beginning of the debate to Romney he never really recovered. I'm not saying from an intellectual standpoint Romney won. This was an intellect-free debate, like all of them. I'm just saying from a dog-and-pony show that it is standpoint, Romney knocked it out of the park and did much better than I imagined he could. And was much bolder than he has ever shown an inclination to be.

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@Robert Gentel,

It was very annoying to me to watch Obama pass up on some very obvious retorts to Romney's constant lies about the plans he's proposed.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Yeah, me too.

As far as I could tell he was trying to find a way NOT to say "Dude, are you shitting me? You can lie like that with a straight face?" And never quite figured it out.

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Romney is exploiting something which is known as the big lie. In 1925, Hitler wrote:

Quote:

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

This not merely triggering Godwin's Law. I'm not comparing Romney to Hitler. This technique is well known to propagandists. In Mein Kampf he was accusing the Jews of employing the big lie, while he was, himself, exploiting a centuries old set of big lies about the Jews. He was to use it later, as were many other politicians. General Mola in the Spanish Civil War firmly believed this BS about the Jews, and he convinced many Spaniards that they were fighting for the very survival of christian civilization. Stalin employed it to blame the Jews and captialists in general in order to create a siege mentality in the Soviet Union. Tailgunner Joe McCarthy used it on the Senate Investigative Committee in the 1950s, and Nixon took a page from his book while he was involved with HUAC.

Obama's people need to get the message ouf relentlessly that Romney is lying, and have the information to back it up. It will still be a difficult tactic to fight.

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

As far as I could tell he was trying to find a way NOT to say "Dude, are you shitting me? You can lie like that with a straight face?" And never quite figured it out.

Totally agree, he was disgusted and it showed. And I think he should have ******* said that. He instead just looked like he was constipated.

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@Robert Gentel,

The only time he was really assertive was when he bowled over the moderator for more time, he should have directed that kind of thing at Romney, not the moderator.

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