First, an admission. I got one thing wrong in my blog last week. I had said that “In my opinion, no matter who wins the debate, most mainstream political pundits will opine that Obama’s the winner.”
Romney so dominated the debate; it was so one-sided; Obama was so clearly out-classed; that even the usually reliable Obama-loving sycophants who make up so much of today’s political press corps, couldn’t put lipstick on this pig. MSNBC Chris Matthews’ rant was particularly entertaining. Obama had clearly let down his most ardent supporters. And they were mad.
But why did it happen? Why did Barack Obama look so bad when he finally got in the ring with Mitt Romney? The same Mitt Romney that many political commentators were already beginning to write off, and declare the race was already over, six weeks before Election Day.
Well, it wasn’t the altitude in Denver. It wasn’t that “Mitt Romney lied so much that poor Barack Obama was so shocked by the multitude of lies, that he didn’t know what to say.” And it wasn’t that moderator Jim Lehrer let Romney push him around so much that the ever-polite Barack Obama couldn’t get a word in edgewise (Obama after all spoke for four more minutes than Romney did.)
Here’s what I think it was. Barack Obama’s record as President is so lousy, that it’s virtually impossible to defend.
Sure, if you have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, you can run an awful lot of 30 second commercials trashing your opponent, and favorably spinning your own record. And if you are even reasonably articulate, it’s not that hard to read from a teleprompter – speeches that have been written by somebody else. If you give away a lot of free stuff (Obamaphones), with other people’s money, some people are going to vote for you no matter what. And if you keep tough questions from the press at bay, by holding virtually no press conferences, and making yourself available to only challenging inquisitions on – The View and David Letterman, you’ll probably come to believe all that stuff about being “the ONE we’ve been waiting for” who can “slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.” If you can do that, debating a stiff like Mitt Romney should be a cakewalk, right?
But unlike all the yes-people Obama surrounds himself with, Mitt Romney was prepared, respectful but not awed, and relentless. And he ate Barack Obama’s lunch.
Obama had no one to turn to. John Kerry, his debate partner, wasn’t on the stage with him. David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Maher, and Whoopi Goldberg were nowhere to be found.
He was alone. With a four year record of – not very much.
And he lost, big time. And everybody knew it. And his Presidency may well be over.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There are two more Presidential debates. And a Vice Presidential debate tomorrow evening (that should be a hoot.) And anything can still happen. Perhaps Obama can improve his debate performance from disastrous to merely bad, or maybe even mediocre. In that case, look for his supporters in the press to once again declare him the winner. (Maybe I’ll be right about that next time.)
Anyway, Go Reds! Go Bengals! And God Bless America!