Political observers and wishful liberals have been waiting
for the president to receive that surge in the polls that’s due to hit any time
now.
After all, we’ve been told he won not one, but TWO debates
over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
The post-debate instapolls said one thing yet the national
and battleground polls are indicating something else.
Four days removed from the final presidential debate of the
election cycle, an event where the president managed to work in an attack on
his Republican opponent almost every time he had the microphone, Obama is still
trailing in most of the benchmark national polls.
Romney leads President Obama by five points in the Gallup
poll and three points in the Rasmussen poll.
The Republican candidate for president also has a one-point lead in an
ABC News/Washington Post survey.
The battleground state polls don’t paint a much better
picture for President Obama. Romney
leads in two Florida polls (+5 in Sunshine State News and +2 in Rasmussen) and
enjoys a lead in two North Carolina surveys (+8 in Gravis Marketing and +1 in
Civitas).
Rasmussen has Romney and Obama tied in Wisconsin, a state
where the Republican nominee had been trailing the president in recent polls,
and a group called Purple Strategies has the race a tie in Virginia. Polls conducted by Fox News and Rasmussen
each gave Romney a two-point lead in the Old Dominion on Thursday.
The news on the poll front is not all bad for President
Obama, who has leads in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio and Colorado
surveys conducted by various polling entities, though the president does not
exceed 50% in any of the polls.
After winning (according to the instapolls) a debate
centered on what was billed at the Democratic ticket’s strength (foreign
policy), why hasn’t President Obama experienced his own surge in the polls the
way Romney vaulted over the incumbent after the Republican’s strong showing in
the first debate?
Pitted against Monday Night Football and the seventh game in
the National League Championship Series, 8 million fewer people tuned in to the
third debate though the final match-up between President Obama and his GOP
challenger still attracted 59.2 million viewers.
Furthermore the president’s aggressiveness and his zingers
made headlines and were recycled through the media for a few days, so the
public received secondary exposure to the last debate.
The debate did not take place in a vacuum so the lack of
presidential leap isn’t attributable to an absence of audience.
That Romney has maintained most of his first debate gains
might be indicative that many Americans made up there minds after the initial
square off with the remaining debates being political theatre for the mostly
decided.
As I pointed out in a previously column, Richard Nixon
performed strong in the second, third and fourth televised presidential debates
of 1960 but John Kennedy won the debate that counted most, the first.
There are other explanations for President Obama’s
relatively static poll numbers.
First, dissatisfaction with the economy cannot be mitigated
with pithy one-liners. Bad times can’t
be spun. There’s only so much damage
control any politician can do in a televised debate when the economic reality
of the times is there to greet people in the morning.
Secondly, the festering matter of Libya has eroded President
Obama’s foreign policy credentials.
The Obama Administration’s “Who’s On First?” routine
concerning Benghazi would almost be amusing if an American ambassador and three
others had not been killed.
Though Romney punted on Libya in the debate’s opening and
the media has worked to sweep it under the rug, the issue is still there as are
some very important unanswered questions that the White House continues to
dodge.
Third, the president once again failed to offer a compelling
defense for the high unemployment rate that has been part of his first
term. Though the final debate was
supposed to be focused on foreign policy, the economy made a cameo appearance
in the debate thanks to Romney’s linking it to national security. And the president whiffed it again.
Finally, Obama’s third debate “smack talk”, while music to
the ears of his hardcore supporters, came off as unpresidential. The president may have impaled himself with
his own rhetorical bayonet, appearing less worthy of the office he occupies.
Just as only one person at the table had the title, only one
person exhibited presidential dignity.
And they were sitting in different chairs.
Scoring points doesn’t help your cause when you’re losing
badly on style.
The post-debate polls don’t reflect two victories for
President Obama, but a staggering loss in the first and two straight
incompletes.
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