If you are a Republican and if you’ve been looking, desperately, to the debates, hoping against hope that they will provide some kind of life preserver for you’re here-to-fore, bumbling, inept candidate, your prayers have been answered.
I have a friend named Arch Lustberg, who is one of the foremost teachers of public speaking in the country. I’m glad I was not sitting near Arch last night during the debate, because I’m sure it would have been a dangerous place to be. I am equally sure that as soon as the debate was over Arch shot off a brochure on Debating for Beginners to President Barak Obama. If I were a fight referee I would suspend the purse to that match and if I were a gambler I would suspect that the fix was in.
Faced with an opportunity to throw a knockout punch to a staggering opponent, Obama handed out marshmallows. He walked out onto the stage and immediately gave the impression of someone who wanted to be anyplace else in the world. This wouldn’t have been so frustrating if Romney hadn’t kept handing him openings through which he could have landed haymakers.
I don’t know why Obama acted the way he did, but it was definitely a mistake. Romney gave him so many openings that it got to be a joke, but every time, Obama just let it all slide. Did someone kidnap his kids?
People are saying that Romney lied and Obama told the truth and therefore Obama won but they are missing the point. Informed people, those who actually know what is going on and have spent some time learning the facts behind the different aspects of the campaign know that Romney lied every time he opened his mouth but those people didn’t need the debate to know who they were voting for. The debates are for those people, the vast majority, who don’t know enough about the real issues to make an informed decision and only tune in when their favorite sit-com has been pre-empted for something as mundane as a Presidential debate. Those people don’t know that Romney has been lying throughout the campaign. They need someone, like maybe his opponent, to tell them that.
Romney started off by denying that he was going to cut taxes on the rich. It’s been the basis of his platform ever since he learned to speak. Obama let it ride, but why? Did he think that this change on Romney’s part was because Mitt finally realized that he is actually paying a lower tax rate than most of the rest of us?
Romney doubles down on the big $716 billion lie about financing the ACA with money from Medicare and instead of stomping on his head, Obama looked at him like a long lost child.
The list of lies and less than half-truths goes on and on. He claims that an Obama win would see drastic cuts in the military. He’s referring, of course to the Sequester, which Paul Ryan not Obama supports. Obama opposes military cuts.
He railed about a supposed $90 billion in tax breaks to green energy. He didn’t mention that $23 billion went to clean up problems caused by the coal industry, which he loves and supports. He also failed to mention that most of the rest, paid out over seven years was for cleaning up the electric grid and old nuclear waste sites. I guess Romney would let the grid fall apart and leave the nuclear waste sites to just fester. He said that half the green firms that received government money had failed. Actually the number is 3 out of 26 recipients of 1705 loan guarantees. The lies about the ACA are too numerous and too complicated to get into but to none of this did Obama reply.
Igor Volsky of the Think Progress/News Report lists over twenty of these occurrences, all of which Obama let slide.
Obama is a charming and eloquent speaker but he doesn’t display the instant wit and taste for blood that identifies the great debater. Neither does Romney for that matter. He didn’t come primed for a debate either. What he came with was a series of memorized facts that he applied to almost every situation, whether or not they were apropos. His approach appeared to be very much like that of Michele Bachman sans the stupidity.
It wasn’t even that Romney’s arguments were difficult to refute. I sat there, doing just that, as one after the other, the lies, misstatements, half-truths and flip-flops were elucidated by he challenger. Then I got ticked off as the President just ignored them, and watched incredulously as he allowed Romney to use this monstrous pile of verbal excrement to make him look like a fool.
Being restrained and thoughtful when big decisions have to be made is a definite attribute for a president but no decisions were being made last night. Last night was a fight for the hearts and minds of the American public. The idea was to win the debate, not charm us or impress us with the thoughtfulness or restraint of the speaker. Romney, as ill equipped as he was for intellectual combat, understood that he was in a fight and he, at least, dove into the fight with all he had.
Obama didn’t seem to get what was going on. An old phrase, oft repeated by, I don’t know how many coaches that I played under, comes to mind. “What counts, is not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” Well, our dog didn’t have much fight in him last night. If he keeps approaching the battle that way, the electorate is going to put him to sleep.