Last week I thought President Barack Obama won the town hall
debate over his Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
The president was energetic and aggressive, he engaged the
participants thus allowing him the opportunity to employ his trademark soaring
rhetoric and smoothly got out his talking points. The downside on Obama’s end was that he came off as snide in tone
and rude with his constant interruptions.
In contrast, the ex-Massachusetts governor was overly deferential
to President Obama and unwisely chose to engage the president rather than the
audience (and by extension millions of television viewers), inviting Obama to
bogart his speaking time.
The upshot for Romney in the town hall debate was that he
masterfully took apart the president’s record on domestic affairs, particularly
concerning unemployment and the declining quality of life many Americans have
endured over the past four years.
What happened on Monday night looked like a reenactment of
last Tuesday’s debate, just with an emphasis on foreign policy issues and with
a better debate moderator.
Credit CBS’ Bob Schieffer for “letting the boys play”, being
even-handed and avoided drawing attention to himself.
The president was once again the aggressor swinging away at
Romney, who for the most part played rope-a-dope though the ex-governor managed
to connect with a few uppercuts.
And once again the CNN insta-poll gave Obama the win on
points by eight points, only one more than the president’s insta-poll win in
the townhall debate.
Liberals, who mocked Republican complaints about
oversampling Democrats in battleground and national polls, have vociferously
derided the GOP-heavy CNN insta-poll, though the network maintains that ithe poll is constructed to measure actual viewers and not necessarily the nation or likely
electorate.
But the polls that matter going into November 6th
are those taken in the swing states and though I sincerely felt Obama triumphed
over Romney last week, the surveys taken in the days after the town hall debate
reflected a growing Romney lead where he was in a deadlock and contracting poll
deficits where the Republican trailed the president badly.
Which begs a few questions about presidential debates two
and three.
Is it a case where Americans only cared about the first one,
which would mirror what happened in 1960 when Richard Nixon failed to overcome
bombing the first debate against John F. Kennedy with strong performances in
the remaining debates?
Are the debates being drowned out by paid media and the
polls reflecting the impact of increased spending and better advertising by the Romney camp?
Or as I speculated previously when trying to figure out why
the president didn’t receive a bounce in the polls after his round two debate
victory, that his win in the war of words was negated by his decidedly
unpresidential mannerisms?
If the latter then President Obama did not help his
re-election cause on Monday evening, where he came off as petulant. And while his “bayonets” line might have led
to hearty cheers at debate watching parties in union halls in deep blue states,
his demeaning tone and obvious flub about these war instruments being
anachronistic (they’re not) will follow him, particularly in the snarky savage
world of social media.
Expect to see a lot of marines to have some fun at their
commander-in-chief’s expense with tweeted bayonet pics.
As for Romney, in my opinion, he left too much in the
playbook and not enough on the field.
Perhaps in a bit of good humor hangover from the Al Smith dinner,
Romney was ridiculously deferential to the president decided not to pursue the
Benghazi matter, which is this White House’s greatest foreign policy failure
and a visible symptom of the systematic problems of the administration’s global
outlook.
Romney did manage to call the president out on the “apology
tour” and he delivered the strongest line of the night where he eloquently
stated that the United States does not dictate to the world but has “freed
other nations from dictators”. Romney
was also solid on Israel, challenging President Obama with being less
supportive of the Jewish State than candidate Obama was in 2008.
Romney shrewdly managed to steer the debate back to the
economy and amazingly President Obama testily jumped right down that rabbit
hole after him, allowing the Republican to fight on more familiar turf and less
advantageous ground for the president.
The Republican presidential nominee’s courtesies to the
president concerning the killing of Osama bin Laden drove Donald Trump to furiously
tweet his displeasure. Trump opined
that his candidate should “stop congratulating Obama for killing Bin
Laden. The Navy Seals (sic) killed Bin
Laden.”
Trump was right and Romney passed on a golden opportunity to
correct the president for stealing thunder that he authorized but did not
make.
Which leaves me to wonder whether Romney intentionally
assumed a passive posture in the debate so as not to commit any errors in order
to protect a lead. Politicians that
adopt a zone defense strategy tend to be ahead.
Whether the final president debate moved votes in any
direction will not be known until Thursday.
My guess is that the third debate itself won’t matter much with
the last two confirming what people saw in the first (Nixon-Kennedy '60).
Romney came off as competent, knowledgeable and presidential
in all three debates while the president looked like a desperate politician
unable to defend his record yet not unwilling to get personal.
After six years of soaring rhetoric, controlled speaking
environments, screened audiences, a fourth estate that has acted as his
political secret service and a podium flanked by teleprompters, the debates
have allowed Americans to peer behind the purple curtain to see that they’ve had
a state senator for a president all along.
With the debates concluded and two weeks to go before election
day, all that’s left are more advertising, candidate scrambles to purple
states, get out the vote operations and the late October/early November
surprise the most cynical amongst us assume the White House is cooking up and
ready to serve at a politically optimal time.
No comments:
Post a Comment