A few quick thoughts on last night’s debate
First, the obvious: the unquestionable winner of the night was Romney. If by chance you didn’t watch the debate and you’re wondering, did Romney win or did the President lose, the answer is “yes.”
My other thoughts:
The moderator: I’ve read quite a bit of criticism of the moderating this morning, and it was a topic on last night’s LeagueCast. But I had little problem with it. I have no problem with candidates pushing for more time on big topics than the anemic amount normally allotted by this style of debate. At the end of the day, the difference between 20-minute bursts on five topics vs. 15-minute bursts on six topics is a bit of a wash for me – especially for a format that encourages little but stump speech rehash.
The President’s performance: I’m not sure what the issue was with President last night, and I don’t want to speculate. No, tell a lie – I would love to speculate, but I’m having a hard time coming up with an explanation for his looked-annoyed-to-be-there snoozefest that doesn’t sound ridiculous. On a dare, he chugged his entire 20th anniversary bottle of champagne backstage before walking out? His Muslim Brotherhood overlords kept him up to all hours the night before, carefully making sure he understood his role in The Next Phase? Karl Rove was holding Sasha and Malia in some undisclosed location, and would only release them only if Obama’s performance was sufficiently terrible?
Beats me, but it was pretty awful.
Romney’s Performance: If I had to sum it up in two words: Alpha Dog. He was smooth, confident and comfortable, and he looked presidential. It harkened back to the way Romney utterly eviscerated Perry back in the primaries. Mitt is clearly as powerful on a debate stage as he is awkward talking to interviewers one-on-one. More importantly, his performance solidified for me my long-held belief that Romney could make a very good president. (This makes me the only single person in the United States that thinks that either Obama or Romney would be a fine choice for the next four years.)
What this means for Romney’s chances: Nothing. As I noted two days ago, in the modern Internet and cable TV era the only people that watch these debates are political junkies, and they watch them primarily to root for their guy. A lot of Obama supporters were disappointed with the President’s performance last night; none of them are reassessing their votes this morning.
Romney should expect some juice, however. He will probably see a temporary small uptick in the polls, and will undoubtedly see more donations come his way this morning than would have come if he had bombed. But count me among those that say that, in terms of electability, he missed an opportunity.
Romney’s problem, both with his base and independents, is that they don’t like him; they don’t like him because they don’t trust him. Deserved or not, he comes across as being inauthentic. His claiming firm, deep values that then shift depending upon whatever populace he’s trying to get to vote for him is the public persona that currently defines him. If he had a game-changing obstacle to climb last night, it wasn’t telling people what they wanted to hear – it was convincing people that he was willing to stand for something, even at the expense of their vote. I have a sense that people are waiting to see this from him, that they are wanting him to give them a reason to trust, and consequently like, the real Mitt Romney. But last night Romney again pretended that that obstacle didn’t exist, and instead went once again for the copier salesman approach.
During the debate Romney acted the part of Santa Clause, promising lands of milk and honey at no cost to the American people. He claimed that he would eliminate the deficit painlessly – with smaller payments over a smaller amount of time, without cutting the spending you love. The most comparable analogy I can think of would be if your credit card company called you out of the blue and said that if you just lowered your monthly payments and kept buying things you couldn’t afford, they would forgive your balance. I you get that call in the middle of the night, you tend to assume it’s a scam – you don’t give the caller your social security number and PIN number for customer verification. He promised to make it all possible by eliminating loopholes – but only the secret ones that are unfair. (And by unspoken agreement, not the loopholes you use, because those loopholes are totally fair – amiright?)
He said that he would be courageous in eliminating programs that added to the deficit, but only those that weren’t worth borrowing for. His only two examples? A healthcare program that doesn’t even go into effect for another two years and PBS. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a formula for not touching any of the expensive entitlements you want plus increasing military spending by $2 trillion, and offsetting it by eliminating a currently non-existent cost and a $300 million dollar arts grant that makes up .00000001875% of our national debt.
He promised to do away with pesky government regulation, while keeping great government regulation. This message is actually music to my ears, since I have long been a proponent of treating regulation as neither Good nor Evil and instead focusing on improving it. It also should have been the easiest well for Mitt to have drawn water that was both potable and substantial. Instead, he gave a weak-sauce testimony that he would eliminate Dodd-Frank, but only the bad parts – you want to keep the good parts! – without giving a hint of what he thought was good or bad.
Similarly, he promised to eliminate Obamacare and replace it with something nebulous that kept all of Obamacare’s popular (and, btw, expensive) parts, while eliminating all of it’s unpopular (and, btw, cost-saving) parts. And by doing so he promised it would be less expensive, and leave no one without coverage or facing pre-existing condition coverage holes. How would he do this? He wouldn’t say, but trust him, it will be totally awesome. He also promised, oddly, that he would get bipartisan consensus and support for all of this.
All of the above made for a very feel-good performance from the challenger, but in the long run I suspect it will only add fuel to the fires of American’s belief that he’s a used-car salesman. Romney surely had no idea going in the President would be so vacant and lethargic, but I still find it disappointing that his team decided to go the route of playing into the negative stereotype that seems to dominate his public image. If the election were tomorrow, maybe I like the strategy more. As it is, however, there’s far too much time for the Obama camp to shine a flashlight in the very empty (but pretty!) vision Romney spun.
It would have been better in the long run that he lost a few popular sound bites last night, in exchange for building some credibility – which is what he is most going to need in between now and November.
Follow Tod on Twitter, view his archive, or email him.
Instead of disagreeing with you over the moderator (I think the issue wasn’t time managment, so much as not seeking to clarifying things the candidates were lying about), I’ll agree that if the Romney who was talking last night, and who was Governor of Massachusettes is the same one who would show up to the Oval office, I agree that both would be fine choices.
If you’re someone who believes that the President is the ruler-of-everything-ever, than maybe not so much, but as one part of a three pillar system? Definitely.Report
Love this. We can’t win if we don’t have the mainstream media as our unpaid surrogates.Report
I heard Romney say that he would lower tax rates for everyone, but that his plan would be “revenue neutral” because it would eliminate various unspecified deductions. He also said that the proportion of taxes paid by the wealthy wouldn’t decrease.
I hope that this isn’t a stupid question, but I can’t see the point in this, even from Romney’s perspective. What’s it supposed to accomplish, if it (a) doesn’t really change how much people pay in taxes, and (b) doesn’t increase revenue to the government?Report
Apparently, the lower rates will encourage job creation by small businesses because business owners won’t notice that what relief they see through lower tax rates is negated (and maybe then some) by fewer deductions.
I kept waiting for Obama to point out that this approach makes no sense but, alas, he didn’t. So maybe I’m missing something that you need the special Republican job creator glasses to see because I surely don’t get it.Report
Interestingly the cut deductions approach is exactly what was used in the 1986 tax reform where a whole bunch of deductions were abolished and rates cut to a max of 28% on all income no capital gains treatment. Romney recognizes that going after any specific deduction is a loosing proposition as the lobbyists would attach. Interestingly it also follows to some extent what was in place before the Bush tax cuts, where above a limit deductions were cut (as indeed personal exemptions where cut before Bush). It does appear that Romney might want to be more agressive on this score than the prior law. (Phase out starts with the place where the second from the top bracket starts).Report
My take on the issue was that he was just telling us what he thought we wanted to hear. Cool beans! Lower rates for me and we get to cut someone else’s ill begotten deductions.
I will say I thought Romney lied much more convoncingly than the other guy, and that counts for a lot in my book.Report
Libertarianism, I guess?Report
Good post, Tod.
During the debate Romney acted the part of Santa Clause, promising lands of milk and honey at no cost to the American people. He claimed that he would eliminate the deficit painlessly – with smaller payments over a smaller amount of time, without cutting the spending you love.
Exactly! This approach worked for Reagan, and since Romney was actively channeling Reagan last night, he probably saw no reason why it wouldn’t work for him as well, especially since nobody bothered to call him on it. Never mind that Reagan tripled the national debt. Hey, we got tax cuts and an end to the evil empire. Bush II appropriated this approach and managed to double the national debt while lowering taxes and putting two wars on the national credit card. The growth of federal spending has actually slowed dramatically under Obama, which must be why Romney figures we can afford another tax cuts, details on how we’ll pay for it to come later.
So yeah, Romney came off like a well-dressed used car salesman but a good used-car salesman can sell seemingly unsellable cars. If Obama doesn’t bring his A game to the next two debates, Romney may well be able to sell the supply-side clunker one more time.Report
Michelle, You’ve made (up) this claim about the growth in gov’t spending slowing under Obama before. But you’re neglecting the reality that the growth only slowed under the divided House. Here’s my math, where is yours?
Even you’d like it even more wonkish I give you this source
I say put up or shut up.Report
???
Ward, you seem to be saying that Michelle’s claim is not true, while simultaneously giving an explanation for why it is true.
What exactly are you challenging?Report
Mostly I’m challenging her assertion, which she makes repeatedly that it is the evil Republicans and not the saintly Democrats who are always raising the deficit. I’ve given evidence that directly refutes that, the Democrats and ESPECIALLY OBAMA raised the debt the most and directly refuting her assertion AT THE FASTEST PACE. The only grain of truth left in her statement is that once the Rep’s took the house, the Dem’s were unable to spend quite as heavily as before so in the past year the rate (of increase) has actually slowed. Set the original bar high enough and anything less gets to count as a reduction. Even the screaming and yelling about Ryan “cuts” are not cuts at all, but less growth in expense than the Dem’s originally wanted. Federal spending is a ratchet mechanism unfortunately. Someone will need to fix that before the music stops.
To use the CC analogy, Michelle added 10K new debt per month for two years on her card and now is /only/ adding 9K so clearly she’s reducing her /debt/. Clearly.Report
which she makes repeatedly that it is the evil Republicans and not the saintly Democrats who are always raising the deficit
That’s not exactly what she claimed, and you two are tossing disparate facts at each other.
I can cut spending and still increase the deficit, if I reduce revenues more than I reduce expenses.
I can raise spending and still decrease the deficit, if I increase revenues more than I increase expenses.
The trend that Michelle is showing is that Obama has decreased spending, in comparison to, say, Reagan.
Reagan may have also ballooned the debt, sure.
Whether or not Obama bears any culpability for the 2008 budget is a point that is reasonable to debate.
But if you’re going to debate that, you’re going to have to drop all the shenanigans and pretenses about who does or doesn’t spend more in a snapshot of time and establish a positive correlation between party presence in the two Houses and the Presidency, going back through time.
In which case you’re going to drive into a mess.Report
P.S. -> Ward, if the super trump card in your analysis is Congress, and Congress being able to “stop” a President from doing something, the “Sky is falling because of Obama” attitude just fell apart.
He does not have a unified Congress, and he’s not going to get one in November, either. In fact, one could argue that it’s more likely that if Mitt wins, Mitt would have a unified Congress.Report
Patrick, read what I already linked to Michelle and get back to me after you’re done. Michelle has NOT shown that Obama has decreased spending, in fact she has quoted someone who is such a flake that everyone (with a brain) in the world has called him out on it. Saying that Obama spent less than Reagan is such a bald faced lie that he doesn’t even attempt it. Instead he tries legerdemain to claim that the /rate/ of spending /increase/ is lower than elsewhere, but it still can’t even stand on its own fallacious merits as my other links have proven.
The contention Michelle and others continuously make is that the REPUBLICANS are the profligate spenders and I have demolished that assertion time and again. Apparently not enough to satisfy you. She quotes Forbes but I can quote someone more knowledgeable ALSO on Forbes
Also realize that Bush enacted an emergency measure called TARP to save the banking system. EVERY PENNY THAT WENT TO THE BANKS HAS BEEN REPAID WITH INTEREST. That repayment happened during the Obama administration, which means Obama has spent even MORE than the budget numbers indicate (since he spent the money being repaid IN ADDITION to his own increases). The problem of course is that sans budget, much of this is occurring in the dark, we are not operating from a budget (illegally I might add). Therefore information needs to be inferred and extrapolated, which is just the way Obama wants it. The government is not operating from an Obama budget, but adding and subtracting from the last legitimate budget, which was George W. Bush’s from his last year in office. This is a disgrace.
Yes it is Congress that controls the purse strings but the President has a role in setting the tone and the tenor of that spending. Every president that is except Obama. Look at it this way, pretend you’re the CEO of Megacorp and you’re preparing for the coming year. You go to your board of directors with spending plans (a budget). The board (Congress) approves or disapproves of your budget. That’s the way it works in the business world, that’s the way it works at your employer and that’s the way it’s /supposed/ to work with the Federal Gov’t.Report
So then maybe your actual complaint ought to be that Congress should pass an actual budget?
I mean, come on, Ward, are we going to start blaming problems in the judiciary on the executive, now, as well?
Let’s cut to brass tacks: why haven’t they passed a budget? Well, that answer is obvious.
Because the duly elected representatives of this country know that any budget they pass is going to violate the promises they’ve all made to their constituents, and they all would like to keep their jobs. A minority of those representatives would rather use procedural baloney to avoid doing their jobs than actually do their jobs and be held accountable.
Screw ’em.
You can lay a lot at Obama’s feet, Ward, but this is clearly Congress’s collective lollygagging.Report
“Let’s cut to brass tacks: why haven’t they passed a budget? Well, that answer is obvious.”
Really? Congress has managed to pass budget resolutions well enough before the Obama Administrations. I guess those Congressmen and Senators didn’t care about being reelected then.
No, the answer is simple. The Demo Senate hasn’t passed a budget because the lib base and other Demo voters are going to enable them until the consequences become so enormous that we can’t ignore them any more. The cause of the problem is libs. Get rid of the libs, get rid of the problem.Report
I read both pieces and found them to be partisan hackery. They clearly had a political axe to grind and we’re looking to defend Bush. Well bush and the Republicans were spending like drunken sailors long before 2006. Two wars off budget and paid for by credit.
Spare me the faux hand-wringing. It’s hypocritical to attack Obama for big spending when you refuse to hold a mirror to Reagan and Bush.Report
“Two wars off budget…”
That’s the heart of it right there. Obama put the wars in the budget so the costs wouldn’t be hidden and voila Obama is the Biggest Government Spender in History.
In short, bullshit.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/161/end-the-abuse-of-supplemental-budgets-for-war/Report
Here you go Ward. From that hotbed of leftist journalism, Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/24/who-is-the-smallest-government-spender-since-eisenhower-would-you-believe-its-barack-obama/Report
And here:
http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-05-22/commentary/31802270_1_spending-federal-budget-drunken-sailorReport
Let’s see, does this count as a double play?Report
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/may/23/facebook-posts/viral-facebook-post-says-barack-obama-has-lowest-s/
We can exchange cites ad infinitude, but if spending under Obama were growing at the same rate as it did under Bush, the national debt would be much higher by now.Report
Sorry about not putting in a couple of sites. I’m not an Apple person and I’ve yet to figures out how to open multiple tabs in the iPad. I’ll eventually get there.
It annoys me that conservatives take as an article of faith that Democratic presidents always accelerate the growth of government, whereas Republicans keep it in check. In the post-Eisenhower era that simply isn’t true. Government jobs at all levels have declined since Obama took office. If they were stable or increasing, unemployment would be a good percentage point lower.
This is why I take Romney’s plan with a huge grain of salt. He’s selling the same snake oil Reagan and W sold. It doesn’t add up.Report
I’m just glad to see people actually arguing over facts. Hats off to both of you.Report
iPad? James, is that you?Report
Hum.
I could have summed it all up as:
What does this do for Romney’s chances? Nothing. Everyone has their candidate picked out. It wouldn’t matter if Romney laid out his entire plan on a big whiteboard behind him complete with sources and rock-solid numbers while Obama came out with a big Muslim Brotherhood pin and announced his plans to sign our nation over to China. Romney is still going to lose. At this point in our election, the debates are really just a tradition that mark time until the Nov 5th election.Report
Tweet of the night–Chris Rock: Obama is waiting for the right moment to pull out Bin Laden’s skull from behind the podium. Wait for it. Wait for it…Report
I mostly agree with your take, but disagree on the moderator. Lehrer sucked, solely because he a) didn’t ask about climate change and b) did ask about the impossibly vague and broad topic of “the role of government”. I mean, he could at least try to get to them to discuss something specific rather than circling back to the toxic mixture of platitudes, talking points and lies that constitutes debate discourse.
I can’t handle actual political rhetoric.Report
I didn’t watch but what I’m gathering is:
Lie, lie, LIE == WIN!!!!!!Report
this.Report
I am inclined to disagree that he would have been better off by “standing for something” or demonstrating the capacity to do so. I think the main goal here was to announce “No, I’m not this right-wing lunatic that I have been portrayed as.” Now, his inability to articulate where he would govern from does hurt him somewhat with me, but I think his biggest liability was that he would be stand-in/rightwing Republican. Combatting that was, I believe, the right approach.
That being said, I don’t think this changes the dynamic of the race unless he can capitalize on it. He’s not going to get by indefinitely without a little more in the way of specifics that high-ingo people will understand (to pass on to the lower-info people). I think the pivot was important as its own thing. But the campaign does need to change, and it’s (a) uncertain whether it really can and (b) very uncertain whether that will be sufficient.
I also find this indicative that he is not particularly worried about his base anymore. At least, not economic conservatives. Or rather, I think his campaign has determined that they have more to fear from being a candidate who can’t win than they do a candidate that’s going to please them across-the-board. While I think (a) and (b) might keep him out of the oval office, I don’t think problems with his base are particularly going to.
The big question mark is religious conservatives. He didn’t say much to get on the wrong (or not-right) side of them during the debate. If social issues come up in the town hall, he’s going to have some touch decisions to make. We’ll call that problem (c).Report
“I am inclined to disagree that he would have been better off by “standing for something” or demonstrating the capacity to do so. I think the main goal here was to announce “No, I’m not this right-wing lunatic that I have been portrayed as.” Now, his inability to articulate where he would govern from does hurt him somewhat with me, but I think his biggest liability was that he would be stand-in/rightwing Republican. “
Do you believe that the caricature that haunts Mitt Romney is that he’s an ultra-conservative whacko, or that he says whatever he thinks will get him elected? Because my impression is that no one thinks the former (including ultra-conservative whackos), and most people think the latter.Report
Ultra-conservative whackos do not believe it. In the process of trying to win them over, I believe he has made himself a bed of liability. I think getting out of that bed is the most important thing. He’s Mr. Generic Republican at a time when generic Republicans are viewed as extreme.
I think the “flip-flopper” meme hurt Kerry so badly because GWB was seen as “steady course” in a contrast that I don’t Obama can particularly provide. I think it’s less of a liability with Romney except to the extent that it hems in what he can say (he has to dampen his criticisms of PPACA, for example).Report
I get what you’re saying, but still respectfully disagree. I don’t think you spend time correcting a terrible image of yourself that no one has, no matter how bad that image is. You spend time trying to counter the poor image that people do have.
I agree that getting into bed with ultra-nuts was a bad idea, but the image he has been left with for having done that isn’t that he is a nut, it’s that he tells anybody whatever they want to hear.Report
he tells anybody whatever they want to hear.
Bingo.
And I liked Obama’s “Sometimes I have to say, ‘No,’ as contrast.Report
Tod, you in retrospect, you might enjoy this.Report
I think you’re both correct.
Mitt has a new problem and he has an old problem.
His old problem (stretching back for years) was that he was perceived as being “weathervane Mitt” who’d say anything to get elected; essentially the Kerry Massachusetts flip-flop problem writ Republican. To deal with this problem he went hard right in the primaries and continued doing so right up to roughly ten minutes into the debate last night.
His new problem (stretching back about four months) was that in curing his old problem he has acquired the patina of an extreme right winger who’s far too scary to vote for. To deal with his new problem he reversed himself on pretty much everything he’s said up to this point, flip flopped like crazy and looked reassuring and authoritative while doing it.
So Mitt is too much of a crazy right wing believer to possibly be an unreliable flip-flopper but he’s too much of a flip-flopper to be a crazy right wing believer. Somewhere in the midst of that tail devouring snake tangle Mitt is betting there is a tiny eye of the narrative storm he can inhabit and follow through to the oval office. He’s trying to be a sort of Schrödinger’s quantum politician, simultaneously a right wing believer and a craven weathervane at the same time.
I don’t know what depresses me more; that this brazen strategy has at least the potential to fly with the electorate or that Obama was too inept in the debate to puncture it. Maybe the President was just gob smacked by it.Report
I expect Obama to do much better in the next debate.Report
I think response within the debate is less important than it used to be with the growth of internet analysis and social media. The state of the race has been remarkably stable to date and the thing that has moved the needle the most so far wasn’t either convention or other public event, but a video released by Mother Jones. Plenty of fodder for advertising came out of last night for both sides, so now it comes down to who uses it most effectively.Report
He’s trying to be a sort of Schrödinger’s quantum politician, simultaneously a right wing believer and a craven weathervane at the same time.
Nice. On another blog today, I described him as an infinite probability machine.
Popping out new realities for whomever looks in the box.Report
Flipflopper is an authoritarian rallying cry. It’s a direct hit on Romney, because authoritarians areright now mostly republicans.Report
I think that lessens the liability, though. At least, at this stage of the game. I don’t think he needs to worry too much about his 45% right now. Trying to prove to them that he’s not a flip-flopper is counterproductive, I think.
Having looked over at conservative sites today, the general response does not appear to be that of having been backstabbed or flipflopped against, but rather how good he looked. I think his biggest liability with his own people is the notion that he’s a lost cause. This may not have helped much, but it didn’t hurt in the same way that sticking to his previous guns would have.Report
yeah, if the “team” is cheering — by which we mean Limbaugh and Beck et alia…Report
Just anecdotally — the few people I’ve asked a similar question all feel he’s the “say anything to get elected” sort.
Which leads them to believe he’ll happily DO anything once he’s elected to get re-elected, as long as it doesn’t violate his core principles, which includes whatever the ultra-conservative whackjobs want.
Since the only core principles Romney has let the public know are that he really wants to cut his own taxes and to get re-elected, the fact that he’s not a nutjob is not very comforting. Because it’s just as likely he’ll do nutjob things as not.Report
I think the argument that he’ll “say anything” and that he will necessarily dance with the one that brung’im (the conservative base) was a much better argument last week (and may be an argument next week) than it is this week. Or at least right now. If he tacks away from the right, and that were to help him win I think there is more of a basis that he will govern in a manner different than “what the ultra-conservative nutjobs want” than if he saw the path to victory as one that was primarily reliant on conservatives.
The question for me at this point is whether (a) he can stick with it and (b) how he walks that particularly line – if he does – with foreign policy and other domestic issues. Now, even if he can and does it well, I still doubt that’s enough. But this is still a much better route than “I am going to stick with the guns that have been alienating everybody outside my 45%” which I think is the requirement to do what Tod thought he should have done.Report
Exactly. What scares me about Romney isn’t that he’s a wacko, it’s that the stuff he doesn’t care much about (e.g. foreign policy, as far as I can tell) will get delegated to the wackos. I’m thinking about our previous MBA president, who wanted to de-emphasize foreign policy in favor of domestic (tax-cutting, reducing regulations, making social programs faith-based, etc.) When events made that impossible, the wackos he’d put in charge (Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney) had free rein.Report
McCain was about to let the good banks go belly up.
These are not conservative folk. They do not write conservative
ideas. They are simply reactionaries.Report
Yes. This is the best post-mortem I’ve read yet.
Obama lost, no doubt. (To me he looked tired – maybe w/ Turkey and Syria trying to start WWIII he might have been not so well rested? Still not a great excuse for being so lame…)
Romney, however, did absolutely nothing to convince me to change my vote and for precisely the reasons you outline. My immediate reaction to his abrupt pivot was that he was saying whatever he thought people wanted to hear. As that continued (Tax cuts + reduced deficits! And if you order now, every American will get a free set of Ginsu knives!), it just got worse.
Maybe it’s just me – an engineer’s natural negative reaction to a marketing type on overdrive – but I actually trust Romney less now than before the debate.Report
yeah, that was the read I got. Obama busy thinking about Turkey and Syria.
Worry about imminent invasion.
Romney’s only skillset is talking money out of fools.Report
No, tell a lie – I would love to speculate, but I’m having a hard time coming up with an explanation for his looked-annoyed-to-be-there snoozefest that doesn’t sound ridiculous.
Given that incumbents almost always seem to do worse in this type of debate, I have often wondered if the bottom-line reason is simply that the incumbent is holding down a 60-hour-per-week job that puts gray in the hair of everyone who holds it, and the other person is generally unemployed or at least can put their current job on hold. Maybe yesterday morning’s security briefing included bad stuff about Iran; or he had to chew out the Joint Chiefs for not preparing properly if we go over the “fiscal cliff”; or any number of other things that go with being President.Report
Syria and Turkey (a NATO ally) going into open conflict with bombs and missiles might have something to do with it. It got buried quite cleverly by this debate, but Turkey has retaliated against Syria.Report
This is an argument for the single 6-year term rather than 2 4-year. I’m not sold on the concept, but this would be an argument in favor.Report
Mexico has a single 6-yr term. Seems to me they’re lame ducks the day after the election. While it’s true the US has had lousy luck with second terms, the threat of one might be the only thing that empowers the first term.Report
I wondered about this, too. It’s also belied by the president at the National Correspondents dinner and the Bin Laden raid. But there is a difference, I think, between a raid that might go sour and an ally starting a war you’re doing your best to avoid.Report
Turkey has been bombing Kurds in Iraq periodically for a while now http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18570036 (and for that matter Turkey too http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/world/middleeast/turkish-airstrikes-kill-35-along-smuggling-route.html) Throwing some ordinance into Syria against is not quite as big of a deal as it seems at first blush. (iow, this would go into the ‘Important/Not Urgent’ pile).Report
All I could think was “which of these guys would I be willing to buy a used car from.”
No question, it was Obama.
Romney never stopped smiling, which is really strange, and he blinked a lot.Report
It wasn’t just the used car salesman thing. I know it’s an odd analogy given that he’s a straight-laced Mormon, but Romney reminded me of every jerk who’s ever tried to pick me up in a bar – smiling too much, bragging, talking about how much he cares about {fill in topic he thinks I care about} – basically saying whatever he thought would get a ‘yes’.
I never went home with guys like that. I won’t vote for one either.Report
I’m surprised that Tod is still asserting that Wednesday’s debate will have no effect on the election, I think it’s absolutely pivotal.
The idea that nobody was going to watch the debate is ridiculous. According to media reports of the ratings, there were 60 or 70 million live viewers, let alone whoever sees it in replay or watches clips. Other debates in other campaigns may have ended up being more or less irrelevant: but for most or all of them, there was at least some plausbility that the surrogates could argue that their guy won. Mr. Obama’s performance was so listless and so unenergetic, the media and the Obama campaign staff can’t work that angle. I think this performance by the President was about on par with the worst of Rick Perry’s during the primary campaign, and I think it’s plausible for the Romney campaign to hope that this debate will move the polls by as much as 5 points in his favor.
Romney didn’t have to do nearly as well as he did to be competitive in the race but the events as they unfolded are really better than they could have hoped for. Forget all the crap about undecideds and purple states, this was the sort of thing to move Obama voters to Romney voters.
More specifically, Romney banked two key advantages as the result of yesterday’s win. One of them is about how it affected the Republican base. The GOP base is very motivated, and wants to win. It wasn’t watching the debate for policy. The danger of the Romney campaign was that the GOP base would lose confidence in Romney and not do the logistical and turnout work at the end of the campaign. I think that possibility has completely evaporated at this point. A week ago, the GOP based wish they could win, now they hope to win, a week from now they will expect to win, and that’s going to make a difference.
#2, Romney’s favorable’s are already up, according to Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/us-usa-campaign-poll-idUSBRE8931E420121004
The reason Romney got in such sorry shape in the first place is because the establishment media and opinionmakers have been such horrible hacks. The debate, especially yesterday’s format, gave the voters the opportunity to cut out the middleman and see for themselves who they like, who they believe, who they believe is capable of handling the challenges of American governance for the next four years.Report
Actually the reason his unfavorables were so high is that he spent the last 18 months saying things that the general public doesn’t like but that his primary voters liked just enough. Now that he’s completely reversed everything (when the general public is really, really watching) is it so surprising that people like him more–that is to say, that saying popular things has a way of making people like you.Report
I completely disagree. Romney was (and to some extent is) victim of a bad combination of fatalism and sensationalism by the media and the punditocracy, choking out any substantive discourse of how to get out from under this rock of Demo unemployment.Report
I thought Romney looked utterly unconvincing because he refused to provide any specifics as to how his fantasy budget would add up – and simply denied the plan he’s been touting for a year at this point. His vision of repeal and replace with Obamacare was equally ludicrous – he wants to replace Obamacare with Obamacare, minus the bits that make it workable.
These are not the qualities of a good president, much less a responsible citizen.
Whether any of this matters to Republicans, I doubt. They are, after all, conservatives who conserve only fantasies of a mythical America.Report
Any specifics Obama offered in 2008 went right in the trash can, chief among them “hope” and “change”, and Romney had to be poised for the counter-attack. Obama tried to go after the $5 trillion, but even CNN and Obama spokesmen are now saying that there never was a $5 trillion in Romney’s plan, and that part was just conjured up.
The bits that make Obamacare workable were already struck down by the Supreme Court, and the court opened the door to further challenges last week, so the most that can be done with it is to try and salvage what seems sensible and reasonable.Report
Neither “hope” nor “change” are specifics to begin with. Much of his agenda has been enacted–mostly in watered-down form. What exactly is the color of your sky, again?Report
Oof… and now the new unemployment numbers roll out and squash the debate performance chatter. Poor Mittster can’t catch a break.Report
I’m not sure it says nothing for his chances. I’m one of those people who couldn’t be bothered to watch the debates and haven’t made much attempt to read up on them, but I know that Obama “lost” because I keep hearing it everywhere. People who vote in the US probably have heard the same thing and it might give them pause. Americans aren’t big on losers.Report