It turns out Mitt was right, but he probably won’t carry the media day. Bobby Jindal is trying with great force to correct the record on CNN right now. Republicans need to fight hard on the spin circuit on this.
In general, Obama was between energetic and angry, as opposed to listless and distracted.
Neither candidate said anything that was unexpectedly telling or even interesting. Romney wasn’t as in command, although he remained the can-do guy who might well be a fine president. Obama did get a good 47% riff in his closing statement, but that was, of course, expected.
Romney was especially weak on the contraceptive mandate.
I assume the polls will give the president a narrow victory. Obama is back, the narrative is.
October 16th, 2012 | 10:29 pm
Good call on the contraception mandate.
But I’d say that while the old “we did this, we need to do that” Obama was back, held his own, and was not obviously bad, it was still a Romney victory. He didn’t let any of Obama’s charges stand (oh, maybe there was one or two), whereas there were many things he put out there that Obama just didn’t respond to. He looked and sounded generally more in command, a man with a plan, whereas Obama, at least on his own record, just gave us the same old gobbledy-gook.
And the Romney answer to one “Mr. Jones,” the black fellow who said was less enthusiastic and had been affected by hard economic times, was DEVASTATING. A long litany of policy failures and broken promises.
The Las Vegas remark also left a mark, and Obama being all “offended” didn’t erase it.
I would like a more aggressive strategy, but his apparent main goal to repeat “it’s the economy, stupid, and I can fix it” is a plausible strategy for independents.
So closer to a tie, but I say still a Romney win.
October 16th, 2012 | 10:32 pm
I also thought the audience did America credit, and Candy was fine…if anything, tougher on Obama.
October 16th, 2012 | 10:35 pm
CNN scientific flash poll of registered voters has 46% to 39% in favor of Obama.
October 16th, 2012 | 10:40 pm
Romney pointed out he wanted to represent 100% of Americans, I took this as a preemptive reference to the 47% issue.
October 16th, 2012 | 10:40 pm
So it’s a testimony to my great skill as a social scientist that my prediction (for once) was exactly right. Obama got a huge margin on the better-than-expected meter. That’s how down people were on him.
October 16th, 2012 | 10:45 pm
With regards to Romney’s lack of response to the contraceptive mandate, Candy Crowley seemed too eager to prevent Romney from responding to Obama’s faux “War on Women” rhetoric.
October 16th, 2012 | 11:20 pm
He should have been more agressive, because it was a big opportunity.
October 16th, 2012 | 11:53 pm
I agree that Romney should have been more aggressive on the issue as well. I’ve actually been surprised by how little both Romney and Ryan have addressed the contraceptive mandate’s threat to religious liberty throughout their debates. Had the mandate been brought up, we could have potentially seen an awkward and bumbling response from Obama and Biden. With that said, I was still struck by how Crowley didn’t even let Romney respond to Obama’s dishonest charges. Such “moderating” was particularly bothersome because Crowley seemed like she was trying to protect the Democratic talking points rather than have them face any serious scrutiny.
October 16th, 2012 | 11:56 pm
Peter, I just read the direct quotation of Obama in Commentary, and, frankly, neither you nor Alana Goodman can read straight.
It is perfectly clear throughout the entire speech that Obama was talking about the attack on Benghazi and nothing else. If “acts of terror” didn’t refer to that attack what the devil do you think it referred to?
This sort of disingenuous quibble about the lack of a definite article in an oral statement to the press and public makes a demand for absolute purity and clarity of English that I have seen in no post or comment here that I have read, including my own.
If Mitt Romney chose to make a debating point about this matter because he had actually read the transcript, why was he not ready with evidence in and argument from the transcript to refute Crowley?
October 17th, 2012 | 12:10 am
Actually, Peter, you’re wrong; so is Mittens, and I guess Bobby J, if he is denying the facts, too. The President did in fact speak of the attack on the Benghazi consulate as an act of terror, in the Rose Garden, on 9/12/12.
“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America.”
It is also a fact that the request for greater security in Libya was asked for the embassy in Tripoli, and not for the consulate in Benghazi. And what’s more important is that House republicans voted twice to cut funding for embassy security from what the State department requested, since taking control in 2010. In 2011, they cut it by $128m, and in 2012 (this year) they cut it a staggering $331m. That severly cripples the ability of the State Department to grant the very requests for additional security that the House republicans now criticize for having been denied. How can you not get that, or is this all news to you?
It’s OK to google on your own. Bobby J probably doesn’t have better internet than any of the rest of us. (However, if he’s in Europe or East Asia right now, he’s getting much faster internet at a much lower price because iternet providers aren’t allowed to have monopolies like here in the US.) The transcript is online. The mention of “acts of terror” is in the fourth paragraph from the end.
October 17th, 2012 | 12:14 am
In my opinion, the question is how will Post-post partisan Obama play among independant voters, because that’s what we got today. Here’s a promising indication that the answer is not very well:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/16/luntz_focus_group_of_mostly_former_obama_voters_switch_to_romney.html
October 17th, 2012 | 12:33 am
From the start of the town hall debate Romney was predestined to come up short… It was Barack and Candy Vs Mitt. Romney was interrupted by Obama many times (poor manners and a lack of respect!) and cut off by the moderator who was supposed to be neutral.
October 17th, 2012 | 12:39 am
Romney didn’t lack for a response on contraception. Candy Crowley didn’t interupt him and prevent his response. Or may be Matthew Schmitz’s Mitt Romney quote from tonight, at First Thoughts, is not actually a quote from Robme.
No, he did respond. He just responded as the Mitt Romney of yester-year and conservatives seem to go deft these days when the Romney of old re-appears at these debates.
Obamacare doesn’t require coverage to include abortions, but Romneycare does. Why again do evangelicals like this guy so much?
October 17th, 2012 | 6:07 am
Romneycare was a bipartisan effort. We still don’t know that Obamacare is not going to require coverage for abortions. I hear it will if Obama is elected again with a Congress he can work with. God help us.
In addition, Daniel Eason, read that transcript of Obama’s Rose Garden speech. Just because the president used the word terror in the speech doesn’t mean it was a reference to Al Qaeda storming the embassy in Benghazi. In context, it was not and in the context of what he and his spokespeople on the topic said, it was clearly not more than a general reference to terrorism.
Try this from Candy Crowley.
October 17th, 2012 | 6:36 am
Here is the Commentary piece that Joseph Marshall is talking about.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/09/30/no-obama-didnt-call-benghazi-act-of-terror-in-speech/
The president’s specific remarks on the Benghazi attack are qualified, but the context is terrorism generally. Still, the president seems to be hedging his speech in the Rose Garden. Why doesn’t he want to state baldly that it was a terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11?
The president’s lawyer-like caution is beside the point because for 14 days afterward, the administration’s line was that the “Innocence of Muslims” video had led to protests which a few extremist bad apples used as a pretext to attack the consulate and kill the ambassador on 9/11.
This position was stated in Clinton’s speech at the ceremony receiving the killed Americans, and in Obama’s UN speech, and on the View, on Univision, on Letterman.
This line continued even though there is testimony that it was evident the day after that Benghazi was a deliberate attack by a large group of armed terrorists, and not a protest that turned to mob violence which a few extremists capitalized on.
October 17th, 2012 | 6:48 am
Ah I see that Peter posted to that Commentary link. I got lost in the comments box!
October 17th, 2012 | 8:32 am
Somewhere in the last week or so I said that the town hall format would mean that Obama couldn’t go the full Biden (the anger and aggression part, not the overtly insane part) and make it work well, and it seems like the polls are bearing that out.
Of course, what wasn’t talked about it the most telling, but the biggest did-he-really-just-say-that moment for me was when Obama said that gas prices are so high because the economy is so awesome. Um, yeah, that’s really going to resonate, dude…
October 17th, 2012 | 11:37 am
Kate, I did read the transcript. The quotation marks encompass the President’s remarks, in the Rose Garden, from the transcript. There is no plausible denial that the President (and Candy Crowley) were right. Peter has referenced a blog, not a transcript. Since when did a blogger become a source of reference, except as a beginning point in a query and not the end?
Of course the President spoke of terrorism in a general way the day following the attack. He was dealing with two attacks. He was right not to shoot from the hip. Maybe some people still remember “Mission Accomplished” and so much shoot-from-the-hip rhetoric about WMDs that turned out not to exist. Call me silly, but I like when a President has the good sense not to get caught up in the emotions of the moment and make remarks that aren’t yet substantiated.
Imagine the spike of anger in the Muslim world, the fuel that would have been given al-Qaeda, had the President been in error in blaming them. His comments were appropriate, both for the American people and for our Muslim allies. Americans were victims in the attacks. His comments did not cloud that fact in the minds of Muslims.
Brian, the President didn’t say the economy was “awesome.” He pointed out that gas prices were low when he took office because economies around the world were contracting severly. That’s absolutely true. Demand for fuel always closely follows the health of major economies, just like many other commodities do. And demand for fuel determines, more than any other factor, what we pay at the pump for gas. That demand drops during recessions and goes back up when times are better. Opec nations determine what markets can bear and base prices accordingly. Costs of production have little to do with the price of fuel. The President certainly has nothing to do with those prices, except in his general economic success. A lack of unemployment rates below 7% has little influence on gas prices (likely none). An economy that is not in contraction (recession) has everything to do with the price of gas. If paying less for gas is really that important to you, you should pray for another recession. Or, you could help stimulate the economy and save your gas money by buying a Chevy Volt.
October 17th, 2012 | 11:57 am
“I assume the polls will give the president a narrow victory. Obama is back, the narrative is.”
In debate one, Romney showed up as a whole new candidate, because, as a man without principles, he will appear however he needs to appear to win. Obama, shocked, did not know how to respond.
In debate two, Romney could not shape shift again: too transparent. Obama was prepared this time, and won.
This simple narrative is pretty obviously correct.
October 17th, 2012 | 12:07 pm
I only saw the first 35 minutes or so, but it looked like Obama missed several opportunities to call out various ridiculous assertions by Romney. Particularly sweet was Romney’s claim to have come up through small business, and thus be just the dude to instantly revitalize your local downtown. Why did Obama let this go?
Let’s see, Romney’s dad was the head of American Motors, that well-known garage-level small business. Mitt went right into management consulting out of school with the aim of becoming some sort of CEO, doubtless the CEO of something small like a mail-order birdhouse parts supplier, say. While at Bain, before the spinoff into Private Equity looting, he consulted for such tiny storefront operations as Monsanto and Corning. Then, of course, everybody knows that what the Private Equity business is renowned for, and especially Bain, is increasing the indebtedness of and then “restructuring” such mom-and-pop businesses as, you know, my neighborhood hot yoga franchise and suchlike. That’s how they make those big bucks.
Clearly Mitt’s natural constituency is 3-employee businesses that net less than 200K per annum for their owners. I get it now.
October 17th, 2012 | 1:00 pm
As for Romney’s notion that he would make North America energy independent (I guess he’s running to be president of the continent), insomuch as we became a net exporter of oil within the last two years, we already are energy independent.
That is to say that were all the oil produced in the US to remain in the US and consumed by us, even without the oil we purchase from Canada (from whom we get our largest imported supply) and Mexico, we would need no other supply. The trouble with that is that more oil is exported out of the US than is imported because oil companies make far greater profit in over-seas markets, even after the costs incurred in shipping.
Romney cannot possibly change that without either encouraging such high domestic prices that oil companies would profit just as much by selling US oil here, or by interfering with the free market of oil. Nobody seems to question how he would make us energy independent. He certainly doesn’t offer an explanation; even less than he does for his tax or Medicare schemes.
October 17th, 2012 | 5:54 pm
Well, if we weren’t there already we’ve now officially arrived at the point where everyone has their own version of political reality, with narry an overlap or point of contact with which to meet on common ground.
It’s fascinating how it has now become unusal to at least acknowledge that there may be good reasons for an opposing point of view, however unconvinced we may choose to be by those reasons. No room for deviation is allowed! Either you agree with my version or your a partisan hack!
So here we are arguing that the President proclaimed Benghazi an act of terror the day after the attack.
But did he say anything resembling the clear declarative statement: “What happened in Benghazi was an act of terror!”
No.
Did he talk about Benghazi then immediately afterward declare it an act of terror?
No.
He talked about Benghazi, then talked about 9/11, then talked about how we will not tolerate terrorism. Then his administration spent the following week referring to Benghazi as anything BUT an act of terror.
So fine. One side believes the statement regarding terrorism was intended to refer to Benghazi. And that certainly is one of a number of possible interpretations.
But, if the Obama administration chose to avoid making a clear declarative statement on something so critical, and then chose to spend the next week characterizing the events as something entirely different than terrorism, then it seems to me there is ample support to view the administration’s actions above as a deliberate choice to avoid characterizing these events as terrorism.
So while one can certainly force an interpretation that Obama said it was terror all along, the idea that after considering all the contextual facts above, one could insist that there are no grounds for any other interpretation than that of the Obama Administration’s version is by any objective measure, if objectivity has any meaning anymore, disengenuous at best.
Or perhaps our state of affairs has reached such a state of myopia that we are now occupants of very different and opposing interpretive universes in which case, it will be very interesting if and when Romney becomes president to see how his administration will govern when a third to a half of the country’s voters are willfully viewing reality one way, and the other third to a half another.
As a rule hermaneutical factionalism rarely ends very well.
October 17th, 2012 | 8:05 pm
Pseudo, that was really neat the way you sandwiched your delivery of your version of facts and objectivity between two slices of opining the days and worth of acknowledging the opinions of others. Odd that this comes up only after a rare (and real) different set of arguments is expressed on a blog that is usually filled with mere variances of the same arguments.
You’re right. The President didn’t come right out and quote what you and others now ,
October 17th, 2012 | 8:06 pm
Pseudo, that was really neat the way you sandwiched your delivery of your version of facts and objectivity between two slices of opining the days and worth of acknowledging the opinions of others. Odd that this comes up only after a rare (and real) different set of arguments is expressed on a blog that is usually filled with mere variances of the same arguments.
You’re right. The President didn’t come right out and quote what you and others now
October 17th, 2012 | 8:11 pm
I cannot believe that people are suggesting Romney was correct and Candy Crowley was wrong when she suggested that Obama DID refer to the Libyan incident as terrorism. SO he used the phrase “act of terror”, instead of saying explicitly, “This is terrorism.” If he did not think this incident was terrorism why would he use the first phrase at all?
I mean what the heck do these folks think he was referring to? I am sorry, but I know they are losing when they quibble and split hairs in this manner. Of course he was referring to Libya. He meant what he said it was, an act of terror ,i.e. it was terrorism. I mean it is pretty clear folks.
October 17th, 2012 | 8:15 pm
Pseudo, that was really neat the way you sandwiched your delivery of your version of contextual facts and objectivity between two slices of opining the days and worth of acknowledging the opinions of others. Odd that this comes up only after a rare (and real) different set of arguments is expressed on a blog that is usually filled with mere variances of the same arguments.
You’re right. The President didn’t come right out and quote you and others in the Rose Garden. That was wise. However, he did use the phrase “acts of terror” in conjunction with his other comments concerning that attack. It seems you’re opining something you’ve lost.
October 17th, 2012 | 9:37 pm
Daniel,
Thanks so much for your kind words, but lets give credit where credit is due. Your interpretive gloss managed to ignore the two subsequent weeks of the president’s administration essentially denying it was terror. Context is everything as they say except, it seems, when it isn’t convenient.
Regardless, my point ultimately was that the next so many presidential terms promise to be interesting in light of the ever diverging frames of reference that the two predominant political camps are moving in.
Be that as it may, I look forward to your obligatory rejoinder.
October 17th, 2012 | 11:25 pm
Pseudo, of course I’ll respond to that. There was no gloss of anything which was being discussed. Indeed, let’s do put it into context.
The question was “Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?”
The President should have answered that it was the State Department, for who.
In answering why, he should have explained to the American people that it was because the House republicans cut embassy security funding by $128m in one year and by $331m the next.
That’s keeping it in context.
But since the context of the debate took a turn, let’s go there, as well. Romney said “I think it interesting that the president just said something which – which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.” He then challenged the assertion by wanting to make sure it got on the record.
Romney made a mistake. He goofed. He didn’t know what the president had said. He was ill-prepared. And he came off as looking like a baffune.
Candy Crowley did attempt to throw him a bone by saying he was right that it took about two weeks before the administration again callled the attack an actofterrorism. But Romney playedssed a bad hand too far, and it
October 17th, 2012 | 11:28 pm
Pseudo, of course I’ll respond to that. There was no gloss of anything which was being discussed. Indeed, let’s do put it into context.
The question was “Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?”
The President should have answered that it was the State Department, for who.
In answering why, he should have explained to the American people that it was because the House republicans cut embassy security funding by $128m in one year and by $331m the next.
That’s keeping it in context.
But since the context of the debate took a turn, let’s go there, as well. Romney said “I think it interesting that the president just said something which – which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.” He then challenged the assertion by wanting to make sure it got on the record.
Romney made a mistake. He goofed. He didn’t know what the president had said. He was ill-prepared. And he came off as looking like a baffune.
Candy Crowley did attempt to throw him a bone by saying he was right that it took about two weeks before the administration again called the attack an act of terrorism. But Romney played a bad hand too far. actofterrorism. But Romney playedssed a bad hand too far, and it
October 17th, 2012 | 11:49 pm
Sorry. Submitted by mistake.
Nothing has been glossed over except the absence of mention of funding cuts. Context is important. Right-wing shock jocks have been taking words out of context for many years. Think of Lamebaughls perpetual $1m bet that no obe could prove he was lying about words he attributed to Clinton. He used Clinton’s words, just out of context.
You’re right. It is sad that there seems to be less and less middle ground. Most of us are not to the far right or left, but media and politicians seem bent on over-dramatizing differences.
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