The big news is that Mitt was wonderfully prepared, full of specifics, eloquent in a plainspoken way, and struck exactly the right confidently yet calmly aggressive tone. Many Americans might have said, for the first time: You know, that guy would be a really good president. He certainly seemed to know the issues better than the president.
Obama, the bigger news is, was almost incredibly weak: Inarticulate, didn’t play the Bain or 47% cards, and pretty much seemed distracted and ticked off that someone would talk to him like that–nobody had talked to him like that for four years. Seemed like he really does need the teleprompter to speak in clear paragraphs. Even his final statement was flat and empty.
Romney was weakest on ObamaCare, but Obama didn’t exploit the RomneyCare similarity with any effectiveness.
Romney could easily have been better but was still good on entitlements, the Declaration/Constitution, and the point of cutting tax rates. He still needs to be schooled by Pete, but he was reliably impressive in his own way. The job creation thing worked for him, because he finally had pithy explanations.
Obama didn’t have the guts even to try to answer Romney on wasting $90 billion on Green Energy “losers.”
Obvious spin: Romney much better than his campaign. Obama much worse.
Another possible spin: Romney was shrewd to save his best for the campaign’s last month.
All we pomocons apologize, of course, for misunderestimating Mitt. I exempt Mr. Ceaser here, of course.
Downer point being pushed by CNN: The electoral college challenge remains between daunting and hopeless for Romney.
Encouraging news: This is the first actual victory for a Republican candidate in a debate since Reagan over Carter in 1980.
Best joke so far–from Dennis Miller: Obama better hope his kicked ass is covered under ObamaCare.
Telling comment from focus group: Up until tonight, the Obama campaign defined Romney. Tonight, Romney defined himself.
October 3rd, 2012 | 10:31 pm
Obama was pretty bad–passionless, rambling, not flowing, turning to tired catch phrases when at sea, giving us laundry lists of minor accomplishments. Shockingly, even the closing statement was this way.
Gracious interpretation: “woke up wrong side of the bed,” “Mama said they’ll be days like this,” etc. Fatigue.
Ungracious interpretation #1: he didn’t treat his prep seriously.
Ungracious interpretation #2: this is the way he is…
…i.e., Tonight wasn’t a fluke. It was those nights four years ago against McCain that, when without a script, he delivered, that was the fluke. A fluke explained by his infinite belief in himself prior to actually having to do the job, which allowed his sentences to flow. But normally, a script is completely necessary. What that implies about his thinking processes in general is not comforting.
October 3rd, 2012 | 10:39 pm
obama and his handlers are unlikely to let this happen again, but romney could still give himself a decent shot by continuing in this vein and by making certain to send his campaign staff a memo containing tonight’s talking points. one or even three strong debates in the midst of a fledgling campaign obviously won’t tip the balance in va, mo, oh, etc.
“trickle-down government” should have some staying power.
October 3rd, 2012 | 10:41 pm
“Romney was weakest on ObamaCare, but Obama didn’t exploit the RomneyCare similarity with any effectiveness.”
I think Romney appropriately forestalled Obama’s ability to do so. Romney mentioned clearly, several times, that RomneyCare was a state-specific solution, crafted at the ground level. I think he made the point well that any similarity between the plans is irrelevant, as the real point was whether the federal government should (or even has the constitutional authority as he suggested) to unilaterally adopt a plan for every state.
October 3rd, 2012 | 11:34 pm
Obama was pretty bad–passionless, rambling, not flowing, turning to tired catch phrases when at sea, giving us laundry lists of minor accomplishments.
Whenever he’s disconnected from his teleprompter-he’s all this and more-tedium and pompous come to mind-except when he’s really revved up-which is when he scurries into the phone-booth to change into his Redistribution man get up.
October 4th, 2012 | 12:35 am
Actually went pretty much as I expected. Obama couldn’t credibly take the post-partisan pose anymore, and Romney effectively rubbed his nose in his own shoddy record. If I’m surprised at anything it’s that it seems like even Obama himself has started to doubt his own narrative.
October 4th, 2012 | 6:03 am
Here’s what I have been wondering all night. What was prep like for Obama? Did someone stand opposed and raise the points that Romney would? Either that person failed the president by underestimating Romney’s responses or that person made the president see the failure of the his administration and he had no effective defense. That had to be depressing.
October 4th, 2012 | 7:28 am
As I’ve been saying, “Romney in a landslide.” The downside is that Romney’s a RINO and not likely to restore or recapture anything related to founding principles. With that said, there is that little voice that’s starting to whisper that Mitt might actually…..no, I won’t say it, not yet.
October 4th, 2012 | 7:29 am
It was a good night for Romney, and a bad one for Obama. I was surprised it was so lopsided, as Romney was better and Obama worse than I thought would have happened.
So now political science has a recent marker to measure whether debates have any influence on the electorate.
I don’t expect Obama to be as bad in future debates, and let’s hope Romney can keep this up and not make any gaffes in the meantime.
The electoral college map is still troubling, but I’m in a better mood this morning about the campaign.
October 4th, 2012 | 8:12 am
The historical comparison, as Pete has pointed out: Kerry was about 6 down to Bush before the first debate, about 2 soon after. Romney is about 3-4 down yesterday, I predict within the margin of error in every poll within four days. But not better than that. Given that Ohio is impossible at this point, that gives him a chance to sweep all the other close states and win. It stands to reason that future debates will be more inconclusive. If Romney continues to project that confident mood, Obama won’t be able to take him out. But Obama will be better.
October 4th, 2012 | 8:17 am
Kate, interesting possibility–that in essence, the FORMAT of debate, which Obama had never seriously encountered until recently, finally broke through his various mental barriers to reveal HOW bad his administration could look, and that this occurred prior to last night. But had this really broken through, he would have had a better response, a better angle, right?
October 4th, 2012 | 8:55 am
I’ve said so many times here that Mitt’s a terrible, terrible candidate. He’s worthless, and Obama’s terrible.
But I thought Mitt did pretty darn good last night.
I wish he’d brought up the mandate, and talked about a few other things that he can’t because he’s Mitt, but he did all in all not too shabby.
PS. Writing off Ohio as “impossible at this point” is beyond silly.
October 4th, 2012 | 9:18 am
Brian, I hope you’re right on Ohio. And isn’t it time to cut back to only one terrible?
October 4th, 2012 | 9:27 am
@ Kate
I heard John Kerry was Obama’s sparring partner when he was training for this debate. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Kerry didn’t do the best job.
@ Pseudoplotinus
I like the theme Romney stressed about his ability to compromise with Democrats while serving as Massachusetts governor. He also threw it back on Obama by mentioning that 0 Repbulicans voted for Obamacare. I would have been tempted to go even further to assert that Obama has never helped a real political compromise in his life. “Post-partisan” indeed.
October 4th, 2012 | 11:23 am
Curious that even the leftist media says Obama lost. I wonder if we are being set up for a “come back kid” story after round two. And we have not had an October surprise yet really. I hope Mitt has one in his back pocket also.
October 4th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
Kate, ‘compromising’ with Dems is never a good idea.
BTW, I’m with Algore: Obama lost his head to altitude sickness!
October 4th, 2012 | 1:22 pm
Either Obama lost his head or he is just lost.
Why could this make Romney the ultimate winner of the election? He looked plausibly like a president while the president didn’t.
October 4th, 2012 | 1:54 pm
BTW, I’m with Algore: Obama lost his head to altitude sickness!
Actually, given his demeanor, it might have been attitude sickness.
October 4th, 2012 | 2:08 pm
Before writing O off, we got another 2 acts. Maybe the reason O was a bit stale was that he lost his focus because if the Syrian Turkish situation. I am sure that O was in the middle of this thing.
I think that R’s performance was pretty good but he did have to walk away from some of his earlier statements in the primaries especially in the area of taxes. Whatever R gained at the expense of O in defining himself as a centrist, he lost at his right wing.
October 4th, 2012 | 5:31 pm
Well, this should make Pete feel warm and fuzzy:
“The goal was to overwhelm the president with liveliness and information, to force him to confront the messy details of his economic and fiscal record. The strategy, sources say, clicked with Romney for two reasons: He did not want to spend hours tinkering with his mannerisms, and he wanted to focus on internalizing data. He’d take advice on his voice, his posture, and the rest, but he wanted his prep time to be a policy workshop.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/329465/romney-s-playbook-robert-costa
October 4th, 2012 | 6:56 pm
Pseudoplotinus, I just saw the first hour of the debate and if you don’t think Romney practiced his look of incredulous pity whenever Obama was talking…
But yeah (mostly.) My thoughts should be up soon.
October 4th, 2012 | 7:27 pm
Looking forward to it.
October 4th, 2012 | 7:33 pm
Dr. Kesler over at NRO made this point, which I (poorly) I attempted to make with my “compromise” comment. I think he’s right:
“it was remarkable how adroitly Romney revived Romneycare’s reputation by turning it into evidence of bipartisanship, thus liberating his credentials as a successful governor of Massachusetts. He didn’t need to lean on Bain Capital so much because he could refer to his political career, previously kept bound and gagged in the basement of his Belmont mansion.
But that career has its drawbacks. He boasted of his cordial cooperation with the state legislature, then 87 percent Democratic. Fine, but that hardly sounds like the opening notes of a soaring chorus in favor of a Republican Senate in 2012. If he wins on this basis, he may find more opportunities for bipartisanship than conservatives will like.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/329443/view-harvard-club-charles-kesler
October 4th, 2012 | 7:37 pm
CJ, Romney is preferable to Obama of course, but if Romney is elected, he is very likely to give us reason to grind our teeth down to the gums (this over-and-above the inevitable compromises that are part of the political environment Romney will face.)
October 5th, 2012 | 3:33 am
If a good chunk of politics is negotiation, there is no guarantee that the spot you end up getting Obama at is really further to the left, than the spot you end up getting Romney at is to the right.
Debates might make a difference, and they might even make a difference even if they do not end up being materially definative. (It is possible that Romney/Ryan could win all 3 and still lose). But such is the nature of Copyright.
While I am a deficit owl, I tend to priveledge my old negotiations professor over my tax professor. Obama was close to giving up quite a bit to Boehner, and probably would have done so if Boehner didn’t push his negotiation leverage a bit to far, and sucumb to the bad timming of a bipartisan commission that reached a different equilibrium, and made Obama’s acceptance of Obama’s own offer (which Boehner over-quibbled on), much further to the “right” and thus not dooable/actionable.
Grinding your teeth down to your gums might be an interesting negotiation tactic…but given Obama’s general weakeness how much further to the “right” do you think you can shove the equilibrium?
If Obama is this weak, doesn’t the right want to re-elect him?
If Romney is so centrist, don’t progressives want to elect him?
Let Romney and Ryan win, the Ryan deficit hawk position will create all sorts of problems for actually handling real macroeconomic issues. (i.e. a non-partisan need for increased stimulus). It will either hang the administration with very real problems, or will simply subsist as a sort of servicemark for those endeared to rhetoric.
Given that Romney and Obama are somewhat similar moderates, it seems a lot better for progressives to paint Romney as a radical, let him overturn ObamaCare/and or own it via admin/law notice+comment corporatism, and then push for Single payer.
I don’t know if Occupy Wall Street can survive another 4 years of Obama, and the generally unvigorous defense of liberalism that accompanies it. Obama could very easily be too far to the right, or without a vigourous grounded sense of what progressivism can realistically attain at the bargaining table.
So the small-ball Obama is demoralized because he is a man of ideals, and realizes that he is bad for the effectuation his own ideals. Mitt Romney is putting things on the table as a show of centrism, that Obama would agree to if he believed he could get them passed. So Obama (and a lot of other folks) realize that the main accomplishments of an Obama administration could have been done on Romney’s watch, and there is no telling that a quite similar “RomneyCare” (the brand changes) couldn’t have scooped republican votes and picked up votes from democrats, leaning it further to the left!
Weak Obama/Strong Mitt sets up all sorts of Phyrric victory situations..
“Obama didn’t have the guts even to try to answer Romney on wasting $90 billion on Green Energy “losers.”
You see, Obama didn’t waste that money… that was an easy softball that Obama could have covered! Of all ironies the money was mostly spent/developed under Bush.
Also the failure rate is closer to 10% than 50%, in addition/arguably if the failure rate was closer to 50% there would be even more of a policy argument for spending the money. The idea being, developing new technologies/patent is very expensive. (at 50% it would be a market failure, and thus a legitimate use of government funds). That he missed this shows that Obama is not a truely commited Constitutional Progressive (i.e. Article I section 8, clause 8). At a 10% failure rate the private sector could carry some of this burden. In addition a true progressive would never admit that green energy is a failure. This was money spent on developing technology, which means real wealth, unlike trademark (the reputational aspects of not living in sin, being close to building real wealth in the kingdom of heaven). But essentially there exists a hypothetical progressivism that looks at ecology, and takes green energy seriously. That is psuedo-Malthus Paul Ryan can shove it, ($90 billion is just packets of zeros and ones, bouncing around on the internet.) So both the internet, and creating energy from sunlight, that is true progressivism.
Given the 10% failure rate, a true progressive would be jumping on the “half bankrupt” narrative and throwing a fit! We should be more ambitious, and because we can’t say how ambitious we should be, we should picking ourselves up off the ground more often! Spend 900 billion aiming for a 50% failure rate!
In other words if you actually are looking for differences in philosophy, and differences in political economy, it certainly isn’t clear that you are getting it, and it certainly isn’t clear that Obama is pushing anything ambitious.
I am not saying it is wise, but this isn’t a Keynesian on Coke! (which really probably would have been some sort of Marshall Plan for Germany following world war I, instead of the treaty of Versailles). But look, how you think about real wealth matters!
Seriously, blaming Bush for Katrina, thus engaging in trademark/servicemark is not nearly as good as reaching to patent and implementing salters sink. (more shrimp, fewer hurricanes!) Much better off in my opinion than parsing copyright (a presidential debate) for servicemark fluctuations!
In order to be progressive Obama has to actually come out with a view of what real wealth means for America..
I suggest that Obama own both his “You didn’t build that” comment, and Romney’s suggestion that he believes in “Trickle Down Government”, and then actually develop an explanation of true wealth and true progressivism that of necessity implicates knowledge built upon previous knowledge systems. Now “trickle down government” is a stupid copyright cliche, which Romney with a barely a modicum of creativity managed to fix in a tangible medium of expression. (If it was Patent, or the school marmish plagerism standards of universities then a you didn’t build that argument might have merit….) But given that the only credible trickle down economics is based in Patent, and given that government spending (even under Bush) plays a considerable role (as Toqueville failled to predict, or believed would be a weakness)… I mean it isn’t rocket science to find some examples: The Internet stands out. All of UC Berkley, MIT…hotbeds of true progressivism/research science! This is trickle down government, albeit in reality the trickle down is to continuously more sophisticated phosita! But the wealth at least trickles down in the form of products.
So while it might piss off some folks, I think it is time to clarify what progressivism means as political economy.
Step 1) Aknowledge that you didn’t build that, but can learn to build upon it.
Step 2) Trickle Down Government: understand that true wealth comes from understanding step 1, and that government is often times the answer to the funding question, vis a vis all the things that you didn’t build.
October 5th, 2012 | 7:24 am
“Also the failure rate is closer to 10% than 50%, in addition/arguably if the failure rate was closer to 50% there would be even more of a policy argument for spending the money. The idea being, developing new technologies/patent is very expensive. (at 50% it would be a market failure, and thus a legitimate use of government funds) ….. At a 10% failure rate the private sector could carry some of this burden. In addition a true progressive would never admit that green energy is a failure.”
Apparently the point of contention here from the Romney campaign is that it takes time for bankrupty’s to materialize when businesses are given 10′s to 100′ of millions of dollars in loans. And so the %50 figure was based on the first seven recipients of the $90 billion in loans that went to green energy businesses, 3 of which went bankrupt and a 4th which is on its way according to Politico:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82031.html
So the actual failure rate of the green energy programs is really a question of how representative will that sample of the first 7 recipients be of all the businesses benefiting from the loans in the long run. In other words: if it ain’t %50 it definitely won’t be %10 either.
I think the spirit of your words quoted above reflects a rather creepy sanguinity regarding what is and isn’t an acceptable waste of taxpayer funds, and is and isn’t an acceptable burden on an economy that’s already struggling enough thank you very much.
I think these sorts of investments in immature technologies with questionable markets, makes more sense for a country that has the money to take such risks, we don’t, and an economy that is fully benefiting from its economic capacity and resources, and it is not – thanks to this administration’s metastasizing regulatory burdens and stringent constraints on conventional energy opportunities.
In my opinion Romney’s sharpest zinger was when he accused Obama of not fighting for jobs but rather fighting for Obamacare. The fact is jobs and the economy were even lower on Obama’s list of priorities than even this comment suggested.
This administration not only has burdened the economy with a behemoth of a health care bill the contents and fiscal implications of which even its creators, such as Nancy Pelosi, admit they did not entirely know. But have piled on regulations having significant but unpredictable effects on business costs such that companies large and small are unable to make rational business projections with any confidence as well as pushed a green energy agenda that simultaneously threw up obstacles to economically viable domestic resources while wastefully subsidizing alternative energy sources that were not ready for prime-time, all of which presented an additional drain on an economy already in distress.
Whatever motivations progressives may have for spending valuable public time and resources on investments of questionable value in a time of economic distress such as ours, it’s about time they started doing it with their own money.
October 5th, 2012 | 8:25 am
The “green energy” money spent by the Obama Dept if Energy was NOT for research and development if NEW technology, but just financing of technologues that are not financially feasible on their own, that would create a perpetual demand for taxpayer subsidies. The only way to make those technologies independently profitable is to make fossil fuels more expensive. Thus we get “kill the XL Pipeline” and the EPA “kill all coal power” and “kill fracking” programs. Obama made his contribution to “kill nuclear power” by illegally shutting down the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository and refusing to go forward with the more rational alternative of fuel reprocessing that would.get.more energy from pulling plutonium from the waste fuel, tech that was part of the design.of the very first power generating reactor in the world, EBR-1. Idiots in BP helped Obama “kill ocean drilling”, but shutting down responsible wells was totally unjustified. You can see why Pres Chavez of Venezuela has endorsed.Obama.
The premise of “green” energy is to decrease CO2 levels, but the production of wind farms uses lots of diesel and coal to make and erect the towers and transmission lines, to the extent that it INCREASES CO2 levels for decades, and gets no net decrease in CO 2 until 2050 at the earliest. So it increases warming for 40 years! If instead we let the tech mature another generation, it could be ready to actually take over real parts of the energy supply.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact