1. Mitt Romney convincingly portrayed a sympathetic human being.
It was clear to him that he needed to project empathy, and a genuine concern for the “middle class,” and he did so relentlessly.
2. The frantic “all the pressure’s on Mitt!” narrative was complete bullshit.
Romney had acquired such an awful reputation by Wednesday night that most viewers half expected him to pull an impoverished infant from beneath his podium and consume it onstage. He was supposed to be awkward, disingenuous, and snide. This made his performance striking: he played against type. Give Romney credit, here: he recognized that the “debate” was a piece of theater. He knew that his target audience was independent, low-information voters and he presented himself to them as an earnest moderate who just wanted to rouse the country from its torpor.
3. The absence of moral and factual oversight benefits the guy with the smaller conscience.
To come off as moderate, Romney had to lie. He had to say that his tax plan doesn’t cut taxes for rich guys and doesn’t cost five-trillion dollars. He had to promise that he’ll keep the Affordable Care Act’s most popular provisions, and that he’ll eliminate only the bad regulations on Wall Street. These claims are demonstrably false.
But because there is no mechanism in place to punish candidates for lying—a moderator empowered to correct them, say, or a Fourth Estate willing to treat veracity the central measure of an argument’s merit—he got away with it.
4. Obama was not inept; he was just himself.
Within a minute of the debate’s conclusion, the Arbitron zombies on CNN had managed to describe Obama as “listless” and “angry.” He didn’t want to be there. Blah-blah-blah.
But Obama played to type. He’s a ruminative guy who can summon rhetorical grandeur when he has time to prepare a speech. But he lacks the ability, or willingness, to speak with moral force in live settings. His intellect hasn’t been honed into bullet points by a thousand business presentations. He’s not especially articulate, or forceful. He refuses to call someone who is lying to his face a liar.
To put it in literary terms: he’s a lousy narrator. He can’t spontaneously locate heroism or villainy. He’s a text book, not a novel.
5. The voters don’t want a text book this year.
Last time around, the economy was hemorrhaging. (Or at least the press was hemorrhaging about the economy, which may be the same thing.) Obama’s thoughtful reserve was seen as a virtue, especially weighed against the doddering histrionics of John McCain and his soap opera co-star. As a fiscal strategy, the GOP playbook of soaking the rich and deregulating industry was failing before the public’s eyes.
But four years is a long time in a nation as distracted as America. The recovery has been slow. The systematic economic inequalities initiated by Ronald Reagan and enthusiastically supported by every Republican since (aside from Mitt Romney, who is, as of last night, a compassionate conservative, just like George W. Bush) has left most Americans in a state of impatient grievance.
6. Reality is harder to defend than fantasy.
Obama isn’t just running for office. He’s in office. He has to make decisions, not just promises. He has a record. Whatever problems the country has—whether he caused them or not—they officially belong to him. It doesn’t matter that he took over an economy in free fall, or that Republicans have obstructed him at every turn. To the voters just tuning in, Romney only has to make the case that America is still sick, and that he has the right medicine.
So how’s that for irony? Mitt Romney: the hope and change candidate.
7. Obama will lose if he doesn’t step up.
There’s an old saying in poker: lose early, win late. The GOP ticket has mostly lost thus far. They have been mocked and dismissed and excoriated. This makes Romney’s reinvention that much more compelling: it’s an unexpected wrinkle, a comeback story. The media will spend far more time focused on this notion than whether Romney was telling the truth, because these races are, in the end, major products launches for them. A dirty race is desirable, in fact, just so long as it’s close.
But hey, newsflash: this thing is close. And it’s going to get closer.
The President can no longer afford to sit back and let Team Romney trip over its wingtips. He’s going to have to sharpen his rhetoric. He’s going to have to become a more compelling narrator.
Mitt Romney is no dope. He’s got half a billion dollars to make his case, and some of the most despicable ad men in the business.
Obama knows what he’s up against now.
Do you?
34 responses
Nailed it, Stephen. The question in my mind is, Can Obama step into an FDR mode? He needs to. I was screaming at the screen. I’m hopeful as Andy Borowitz says, Obama’s people are going to help him get his mojo.
I think people are giving this one debate too much credit, and aren’t looking at history.
All debates really do is charge up or worry those that already support you, it doesn’t really change minds.
Every average voter doesn’t respond to the debates in the way that writers and pundits do.
I.e. will poll numbers change? Probably not, just look at history.
You hated to write it, and I hated to read it, but it’s the truth, if that’s worth anything any longer. Something’s gotta give.
Steve:
I don’t recall much of a “frantic ‘all the pressure’s on Mitt’” narrative. Both campaigns, as well as the media, downplayed expectations. Obama himself stepped on any expectations by telling an audience Romney “is a good debater… I’m just OK.”
The media strained to remind us that Romney is fresh off the debate circuit (he debated as recently as seven months ago…), and that Obama hasn’t debated anyone in four years, so “let’s not read to much into this debate.”
We can talk about “lies” from both sides, if we keep in mind “Damn lies… statistics,” and a serious shortage of “one-armed economists.” Obama did his share, trying to tell us that health care premiums are going down – and rising health care premiums prove that.
This is the first I’ve heard that Obama is not “especially articulate.” Since he showed up on the national stage eight years ago, all we’ve heard is that he is a “Master Orator,” As the always-helpful Joe Biden said, Obama is an “African-American who is articulate and bright and clean.” Yes we know, Joe – “Storybook, man.”
The media also acts as though an incumbent president facing a fresh challenger is unprecedented. They’re right, if you don’t count the majority of election cycles America has experienced throughout our entire history.
The reality is that Obama has a record this time, something he didn’t have last time round. He declared that this election “is not [about] where we’ve been, but where we’re going.” That’s quite a presumption, I’d say.
Something else Obama lacks this time is novelty. In 2008, we elected the first black president. Somehow, the opportunity to RE-elect the first black president, and making him the first black president to serve two terms is less likely to light up the Twitterverse.
But fear not – Romney may sweep the debates, but Obama will win re-election, as I have prognosticated for you in private. (Um, that sounded less perverted in my head.)
Regards,
Jack Blair
I wish Obama supporters would get half as upset as they are today every time the U.S. target bombs mourners at Pakistani funerals of drone attacks, or innocent women and children, and rescuers flocking to help victims of earlier bombings. Just sayin’…
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/world/asia/19pstan.html?_r=2&ref=world&
We can talk about “lies†from both sides,
This is utter nonsense. If you scroll through the fact checks of last night’s debate, yes, Obama got dinged a couple of times for exaggerations, but virtually every point Romney made was hit, and many of them hard. There is no equivalence here between the two sides.
This is the first I’ve heard that Obama is not “especially articulate.â€
I believe Steve said that Obama isn’t especially articulate in the context of talking about a debate setting. He’s an amazing orator. He’s a fair debater. Those actions require two different skill sets.
Brian:
I find the fact-checkers to be heavily weighted against Romney. “Did Romney REALLY have oatmeal for breakfast today, as he claims?” Verdict: “PANTS ON FIRE – he SKIPPED breakfast today.”
Yes, he has been revealed as a “fair” debater NOW. But in 2008, he was somehow a “great” debater.
Cheers,
Jack Blair
It was frustrating to listen to Romney put out the same distortions he has done all along and not have the President call him on it, but I have to hope that was intentional on the President’s part, seeking some high road approach. But there was a really weird moment where Romney seemed to be equating the President to a child who tells lies, specifically like his owns sons, that was totally out of context and I still don’t know what it reveals, except nothing good about Romney.
I’m still struggling to understand how completely changing your policies and platforms and arguing that this is what you’ve stood on along is considered “winning.”
Beyond that, it is incredibly frustrating to watch Obama cast his eyes downward and stumble through his responses instead of calling this guy on his bullshit. Think of how effective the Bush campaign was in ’04 of casting Kerry as a “flip-flopper” and never letting anyone forget it. Obama appears to be ok with letting Romney reinvent himself at will and pretend like this is who he has always been. The high road mentality is admirable, but when the other side is prone to wild eyed postulating and situation shaped facts, sometimes you have to be willing to punch back.
Steve,
The one thing on this list I won’t concede is that Obama needs to do better in these debates to win. My memories of the ’04 debates are of Bush making stumbling remarks about how Kerry “forgot Poland” and Kerry, though at times seeming somewhat condescending (although if you ask me, so too did Romney, at times, last night), putting in a really good rhetorical performance — especially for someone widely viewed as robotic and generally aloof (cough, cough). Salon had a good article on the subject recently http://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/the_danger_of_writing_off_mitt/. It doesn’t dismiss the debates as unimportant, or their potential impact for Romney, quite the contrary, but I do think Bush was in a similar situation to that of Obama at debate time and his performance was not an epic feat rhetorically by Bush. Bush was merely adequate. Obama was adequate last night. I like to think he’ll be more than adequate as the debates go on, but even if he isn’t, I’m not sure this is the serious game changer people are thinking of it as.
Steve: To me, Obama’s big problem boils down to two words: ‘writer type’. Introverted, intellectual and as you point out a brooder. Yes, as you say too, a great orator. But I found myself wondering last night if his crucial other political skills are below what his supporters like me have believed. James Carville pointed out that Mitt seemed happy (if at times manic) to be there and Obama did not. Which reminded me of Bill Clinton saying he enjoyed every day of being President, even the bad ones. And you know he did. And you just know Obama doesn’t. He gives off a writer vibe to me of Who are all these pesky people and when can I be alone again with my thoughts? Not what I want to feel from my president. Last time around, of course, he was debating McCain and fighting back hard against a cranky old man would have looked mean. Plus it wasn’t needed. The dynamic is way different this time. Hopefully Michelle is right now reading Barack the riot act. Or better yet, reading him your screed here, Steve.
Obama appeared to have disdain for Romney, or more likely, what he stands for, which is outright lies and manipulations of Romney’s own positions. The rich white man candidate comes out of a plutocracy, and wants to set America further down the road to more wealth for the wealthy. Yeah, we’re all angry about this potential disaster, and we’re giving money to Obama’s campaign, which is funded $100 million more than Romney’s, but not by the Super PAC’s. By the people. Obama has to do his part now, and represent us, and our donations. He has to get over his feelings about all of this BS passing as policy making, and speak with OUR moral force.
I don’t know. From what I’ve read, it looks like the polls have Romney winning the debate, but not very much movement in actual support. I can’t imagine many independents watched that thing and then decided to vote for Romney. And I can’t imagine ANY Obama supporters switched sides over the last couple of days.
My own feeling is that this is more a media feeding frenzy than anything else. Obama was running away with it and now it’s a “horserace,” as they say, a narrative which, of course, benefits the media. I thought Obama did fine. He projected security, confidence, competence. But apparently I am in the minority.
Elizabeth, I agree with you here and also want to acknowledge that the President is actively running the country and taking time to have these debates. I wouldn’t expect the man I admire and respect (Obama, just to be clear) to feel happy about debating the likes of Mitt, especially after dealing with four years of unimaginable stress.(Let’s face it, none of us really knows what is happening behind the scenes.)
Obama is a respectful, considered guy and I don’t him to change that. It’s what makes him so different from so many people, elevates him to the position he now holds. At the same time, I did wish he would get in there and show Mitt who’s boss. With a few days to digest, I see that he did just that. He is consistent. Isn’t that what we all want? If he had showed this aggressive, accusatory side, somehow I feel that my respect for him would have wavered a bit. I would have been personally happy to see it, but I trust Obama because of who he has shown himself to be and if he changed that just to please other people then he wouldn’t be the same man I trust.
And Steve, you are such a fabulous writer. I can always count on you to make me laugh even as I want to cry while still making me think about big and important issues. You are a blessing!
So sad. So true.
Excellent synopsis and call for Obama to man up.
One question or quibble. You said the GOP stratagem was “soaking the rich.” I think you need a different verb. Maybe coddling?
You are too kind to our president who failed to stand up to Romney…he just wasn’t there. He missed so many opportunities to respond to Romney’s lies and appeared to be thinking that just being The President was enough. His lack of engagement, his constant looking down, his failure to look at the audience or his opponent were just unacceptable! Maybe he does need the teleprompter as some have suggested. I had hoped that someone on his staff might offer a reason for his poor performance. He could have wrapped it up with this debate and the lower unemployment figures today, but he didn’t. I only hope the old Obama appears in the next debate, because if he doesn’t, it may be over….maybe he just doesn’t want to stay in Washington and would like to return to Chicago????
My heart goes out to you folks. You are all grasping for some kind of explanation for Obama’s implosion on Wednesday night. So he is an intellectual, an introvert, a writer-type. He is so cerebral that he doesn’t possess the degraded skill set of a competent debater. He is so basically good and truthful that he was completely overwhelmed by the lies and duplicity of Romney.
On the other hand, if we were to employ Occam’s Razor, we could easily conclude that Obama SUCKED on Wednesday night.
But of course, that is engaging in the “low-effort thinking of conservatives,†like a ballerina relinquishing her dignity at the Inaugural Nebraska Hoedown of the Low-Sloping Foreheads (with acknowledgements to David “Crackpipe†Carr).
Let’s back up a bit. Recall 2004, when Obama gave the keynote address at the DNC convention. That was the coming out of the golden child, the moment that we all knew he would be our nation’s first black president. He was anointed. Thus commenced the media construction of Obama.
I’d call it the Obama Myth, but the word “myth†usually conveys something noble, and contains a truth (if embellished). America, for example, has its national myths – we are all familiar with Horatio Greenough’s sculpture of a toga-clad George Washington as Zeus on Olympus. It tells a story about who we are, and what is important to us. It may be fanciful, but it is a salutatory type of fancy.
With Obama I detect fancy, but of a pernicious type. It is a perversion of myth, a fiction foisted on us by a muddle-headed media and their accomplices on the academic Left. This is where propaganda is employed when the creation of a useful and noble myth is impossible to justify.
It is the type of perversion of the national story, a forced national myth that we see in Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. We saw it in the mid-twentieth century in the USSR and Nazi Germany.
What shall we call it? Not the Obama Myth. The Obama Lie seems to obvious. I’ll call it the Obama Perversion.
A lot of adjectives could be applied to the man, but “introverted†has never been one of them. A common claim is that Obama is an “intellectual.†Tell me what exactly what it is that he has contributed to any field of inquiry? I am aware of no instance when he has competed successfully (if at all) in the arena of ideas. I have heard of no groundbreaking or seminal contributions to legal theory or political philosophy produced by the man. His time as editor of the Harvard Law Review is curiously bereft of actual literary output. He wrote two memoirs, I believe, but these are no more that the obligatory bathroom reading that anyone who aspires to high office is expected to produce.
He has the weight of the country’s problems on his shoulders? If indeed he has been lately burdened by the state of the nation, he had a funny way of showing it. In the period immediately following the assassination of our diplomats at Benghazi, the President jaunted off to party with Jay-Z and Beyonce, and made appearances hosted by David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, the ladies of the View, and DJ Pimp with a Limp.
If we are to locate Obama even remotely within the orbit of intellectual life, perhaps we should place him alongside Warhol. Maybe we just don’t get him. By making the rounds of the pop-culture circuit, he has issued a sardonic rebuke of realpolitik that is so profound that it will take decades, maybe centuries for historians and cultural critics to unpack. He is the performance artist president – in fact presiding over the political equivalent of a happening. Yeah, baby. Dig it.
But if we re-elect him, it will be worse than Warhol. It will be out of pity. Just as Hunter Thompson was kept frozen in amber behind the International Affairs Desk at Rolling Stone long past his sell-date, so a re-elected Obama will remain a living relic, a curiosity representing that early 21st–century perversion of a myth that we once knew as Hope and Change.
Our real hope now, as the Oracle of Wasilla prophesied in the year 2008 C.E., is that those styro-doric columns that have flanked Barack Obama these past four years will finally be shrink-wrapped for permanent storage.
“You are all grasping for some kind of explanation for Obama’s implosion on Wednesday night.”
No, not really. By most accounts it’s pretty clear what happened. But beyond that, you really appear to have a knack for constructing elaborate, condescending straw men; and basically making shit up in general. It was far from shocking to see the typical Nazi, Soviet, Castro and Chavez references, but I’m disappointed that you missed the opportunity to include Jimmy Carter to really seal the deal.
ps–It was really nice of you to throw in Occam’s Razor toward the beginning of your essay, as a tip off to the avalanche of bullshit and utter nonsense that followed. Your efforts might be able to impress folks over in two-digit IQ land, aka “the kiddie pool”; but I don’t really know. I wouldn’t want to be caught assuming anything like that.
Uncomfortable Truth # 8 : Those Reagan era policies which Almond so accurately identified in Uncomfortable Truth # 5 have escalated the current gap of inequity in our nations caste structure have pretty much been supported and propagated by the Democratic presidents since that time as well. Yes, including Obama. Which is why the labeling of Obama isn’t corporate “Double-speak” but it’s much more frightening sibling “Newspeak.”
Blake:
I shouldn’t have used the word “all,” then. Specifically, I was referring to the posts from ElizabethS and Jill – but since no one disagreed with them, I felt it was safe to believe that their sentiments are generally shared by the others here.
My explanation isn’t that “elaborate.” It was clear staring on or about July 27, 2004 that we were in for years of Obama hagiography.
I guess my post should encourage those hoping for a rehabilitation of Jimmy Carter. Honestly, he didn’t even cross my mind while I was thinking about this. As bad a president as Carter was, I don’t remember anyone speaking about him in Messianic terms, the way Obama is portrayed. There was no grand narrative constructed around him. Carter was just an administrator, and a bad one at that.
Regards, Jack
I think the most unpopular truth about the debate, for Mr. Almond’s side at least, is that Mitt Romney took Barack Obama to the wood shed and whipped his ass.
If winning a debate means being the more aggressive liar, then Romney certainly won on Wednesday night. And it is true that Obama seemed not to want to engage and not to want to call Romney on his many false claims. One problem, of course, is that unraveling many of them takes time and requires patience for complexity. As Churchill famously said, a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth even has its pants on. He also said, famously, victory is never final and failure is never fatal. People who think Romney won the debate need to admit that their concept of winning a debate is entirely based on perceived performance. Not to get all philosophical on y’all, but I can’t help but think about Plato’s Socratic dialogues, specifically The Gorgias. In The Gorgias, Socrates contrasts oratorical sophistry and the knack of rhetoric with philosophy (which means, after all, the love of wisdom). Gorgias was a guy who came to Athens to teach rich men, mostly politicians, the art of verbal performance. Socrates argues, using logic, reason and his talent for getting at the truth through targeted questioning, that this practice leads not to truth but to its opposite. It has been a long time since I read The Gorgias, which was part of the intro to philosophy curriculum when I was a grad student and TA in philosophy. It was always an eye opener for students. If Socrates were here today, he would be shocked at the absence of genuine political dialogue in America and appalled to see the extent to which money is used to promote sophistry.
Jack Blair: you find the fact-checkers biased against Romney? Is that because his name appears more often in the context of rhetorical and actual falsehoods? Or because you have gone undercover and discovered the source of the bias? In any case, where is your evidence? Do you also believe that pollsters are biased and that the Bureau of Labor Statistics cooked the numbers?
BLS – Bureau of Lying Sacks did in fact cook the numbers. Real unemployment is not less than 15%.
I can’t wait for the next debate to see Romney whip Obama’s ass again. Get the popcorn ready.
Steve Almond: a warm and astute surveyor of the literary world. And when it comes to politics, a sad little attempt at a writer for Slate. Please stop this. Recognize your strengths.
Margaret:
The “lies” of Romney are based on a very sensitive parsing of words. The “fact-checkers” rarely use the same standard with Obama.
One of the more egregious offenses was the Obama campaign’s claim that Romney wants to cut $5 trillion dollars in tax cuts “for the rich.” Of course, that is the narrative that the Obama-loving media has shoveled out to us, and Obama seems to have picked the talking point up from msnbc rather than what Romney’s actual proposal is.
So when Romney disputed the claim, he was “lying” in the sense that he was contradicting what the media was saying about it – and how DARE he make Obama look bad? How DARE he confuse our Dear Leader like that in front of 67 million viewers?
CNN’s Erin Burnett thankfully gave Steffie Cutter a sound thrashing over the $5 trillion claim. I haven’t checked, but I would be surprised if PolitiFact hasn’t thoroughly dissected Ms. Burnett’s “lies” by now.
The fact-checkers work from the assumption that everything Romney says is a lie, and that everything Obama says is the truth. Therefore, they don’t even bother with half as many statements that Obama makes as they do with the statements of Romney.
All that said, I would agree that calling many of Obama’s statements actual “lies” would be inappropriate. That would be insulting to our intelligence; it would assume that Obama knows what the hell he’s talking about.
The Obama campaign is out there saying that Romney wants “all that money going to the super-wealthy.” We hear it in other forms – he wants to “give money to the rich,” “take money form the poor,” etc.
If I were to use PolitiFact’s standard for their assessment of Romney, I would give the Obama campaign a solid “Pants on Fire.” Cutting taxes neither gives money to, nor takes money from ANYONE. But that’s a technicality that does not fit the media’s story.
Some things Obama says are beyond mere lies or truths. He referred to what happened in Egypt and Libya a few weeks ago as a “bump in the road.” Sorry, to me the assassination of our diplomats is not a bump in any road.
His statement wasn’t a lie – it was reprehensible and appalling. There is no way to “fact-check” something like that.
We can talk about “Romney’s Lies” all day – but, as I have ably demonstrated, Obama himself IS a lie. The whole story we have been given about him is a fairy-tale, from start to finish. He is “Barack, the Good.” Anything that contradicts that is by definition a “lie.”
Hey Jack Blair — you forgot to sign off with your “Cheers” nicety. What’s wrong ? You are trying to spin so many points at once that you have turned into an out of control top ! In fact, you may be a Warholian reflection of your poster boy, Mittens !
Cheers,
Harry
Better than “cheers”: HUGO CHAVEZ WINS! Congrats to msnbc, HuffPo, and white Liberals everywhere!
Goodness, Jack, it was not hard to smoke you out. So I guess you have no response to my questions, just more smoke ad mirrors. Like your great white hope, Romney, you are a consummate bullshitter. That’s actually worse than being a liar. I recommend the book On Bullshit. It, you and Romney are what will ruin us all. Ugh!
Very sensitive parsing of words, Jack? Really? Now that is bullshit at its very finest.
Sitting together on a train were President Obama, Mitt Romney,
a little old lady, and a young blonde girl with large breasts.
The train goes into a dark tunnel and a few seconds later
There is the sound of a loud slap.
When the train emerges from the tunnel,
Obama has a bright red hand print on his cheek.
No one speaks.
The old lady thinks: Obama must have groped the
Blonde in the dark, and she slapped him.
The blonde girl thinks: Obama must have tried
To grope me in the dark, but missed and fondled
The old lady and she slapped him.
Obama thinks: Romney must have groped the blonde in the dark.
She tried to slap him but missed and got me instead.
Romney thinks: I can’t wait for another tunnel,
So I can slap the crap out of Obama again!!
Thanks Wooly. I agree with your perspective, as revealed in your “joke”, that Romney is a coward, too. You had better seek medical attention, as your right foot is bleeding quite heavily.
Cheers,
Harry
Here’s a new one, add it to the list: The New York Times reports that Obama sucked in Denver because he doesn’t like Romney all that much.
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