The Glade 4.0

I honestly hadn't planned on watching, but the wife turned it on and lured me into the den with scotch and chicken chilli nachos.

I've got to say that the debate left me more than a bit stunned.  Lehrer was unable to control the dialogue, tone, subject or tempo and as a result what had been planned as a televised farce actually wound up morphing into something resembling an actual debate.

This clearly put President Obama on his heels, as he's not used to being doggedly pursued and put on the defensive by an aggressive opponent when he can't control the environment and isn't surrounded and protected by his cadre of handlers.

President Obama looked smug in his finest moments and completely defeated in his worst, most of those coming in moments when he had to run away from his record rather than on it, which was frequently.

By the end the President wasn't even counter-punching, instead being forced to parry Mitt Romney's barage of attacks on his agenda driven partisanship.  An accusation to which he couldn't even respond.

I am absolutely stunned that this was allowed to happen.

_________________

Ezekiel 23:19-20 

It seemed Obama is finally paying the penalty of a friendly press. He is not used to being "pressed", pardon the pun. I imagine the next moderator will reduce it to a boring platform recital.

_________________
"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Performance art....

It was fun to watch on mute. Romney looked senile (does he have a palsy that makes his head shake like that when he talks?) Obama looked bitter, smug and crushed. Either way I can honestly say I didn't hear either one lie

_________________

I think we should all hope that future debates select a mild-mannered old geezer as the moderator.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't get it.

I was pleasantly surprised. I too expected nothing but talking points. I expected Obama to be snug and annoyed, but I also expected Romney to be cautious and rigid. He was not.

There was a moderator?!?

I think the "protected by his cadre of handlers" meme is ludicrous - Obama routinely demonstrates that he's intelligent and articulate all on his own. However, I agree that as President he's not used to being doggedly pursued or forced to engage in point-counterpoint anymore, and frankly, even in the 2008 race he was never particularly good at it. He's much better at one-way oration and substantive discussion than at debating. Romney's the other way around - he's awkward and wooden in speeches and discussions, but he's a very good debater.

I went into this debate expecting Obama to lose, but I have to say, I didn't expect him to get his *** so thoroughly handed to him. It was like he couldn't be bothered to make even the obvious counterpoints. And on the few occasions he did, he just kind of buried them in the weeds and then let the point slide. Very disappointing.

Two of them. They were on stage, didn't you notice?

What I perhaps should have said was that in the future, they should select a mild-mannered old geezer who occasionally moderates, instead of simply being someone to occasionally remind us that we are running out of time before the half-assed talking head analysis starts.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Obama has always been terrible off the cuff. He has relied on teleprompters and speaking points outlined for him forever. Also am I crazy or did he totally flub the first debate last time too?

_________________

I miss Clinton.

It's always been curious to me that people think that one's ability to debate has any correlation to one's ability to govern.

Frankly, I find the whole process of Presidential debates to be a complete waste of time. The idea that one can condense something as complex as the economy or defense policy down into a 2 minute blurb is laughable at best.

In addition to their differing levels of debating talent in general, I think a couple of things probably contributed to Obama's particularly flat performance last night. First, I think he was flumoxed by Romney's hard tack to the center on basically everything. The Romney agenda presented at the debate bore very little resemblance to the Romney agenda of the Republican primaries and the last few months on the campaign trail, and I'm guessing it was the latter that Obama prepped for. And second, watching the debate, I really had the impression that Obama's head was somewhere else, and it occurred to me that maybe there was something going on overseas. Turns out there was. Turkey apparently started shelling Syrian targets in retaliation for a Syrian artillery round that crossed the border and killed some Turkish civilians. I imagine Obama was getting briefings on the situation right up until he walked on stage for the debate, and his first concern after the debate finished was to get an update on Turkey, not to check the CNN insta-polls.

That's just not true, Hop. YMMV on speaking-style, I guess (lots of people find him ponderous and lecturing, but I disagree), but the teleprompter thing is just conservative mythology.


He did. He also wasn't very good in the Dem primary debates. He's just not very good at it.

Go find me video of him lecturing without 1) a teleprompter or 2) speaker notes if it is a myth.

I thought it was eerily familiar.

Still the idea that the debates influence anyone is indeed very laughable. People don't know/care what the candidates will actually do, or even listen to what they say they will do. People are voting for parties based on a self-perpetuating pack of lies about what each party stands for.

_________________

Predjudicial language of "cadre of handlers" aside, you just admitted that Obama is better when he's protected from counterpoints. In any case, every President is protected by a cadre of handlers. If he wasn't, he'd never get a word out at any event; there would always be some jackass there to try to shout him down regardless of which party he belonged to.



Somewhat. I find "awkward and wooden" to be a somewhat silly criticism that speaks to the public's concern with personal charisma. I saw an article criticizing Romney for being "rude" and "assertive" during the debate. He was. So was Obama (although I think less so on the first count and far far less so on the second). I also don't care. I want to see them push their points, not be nice to Jim Lehrer just because he's a kindly old guy from PBS.



I was surprised at what a poor showing he gave too. Romney has had more recent practice, but I think a large part of the problem is that Obama (and perhaps more importantly his advisors and staff) is just too used to running against stereotypes of Republicans in general and Bush in particular.

Obama had a very easy election in 2008 because he ran against an opponent who was not an incumbent, but who was the member of the incumbents party when that incumbent was quite unpopular. He was able to run against John McCain by campaigning against GWBs record. Now he is the incumbent, but he's still running the same campaign. The only reason he's getting away with it is because Romeny's campaign has done a poor job of hammering him on things that really matter to people. If I were running, I'd be all energy, all the time, based on gas prices. You can tie almost everything else to energy in some way. (See the Revolution thread in entertainment).

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Obama is horrible without his telepromptor. The number of gaffes Obama has had probably just as much as W had and he was crucified every time he said a word in a Texas accent.

While Romney certainly made Obama look like third grader, I'm holding judgment until all the debates are done. The MSM put out the meme that Obama would lose this debate for a few weeks prior so I can't decide whether he really is that bad and can't handle someone talking back to him, or he's doing the rope-a-dope. I think Obama is a really good speaker when he can read of his cards or promptor, and he can be very witty when their is no pressure on him...but when faced with facts and trying to defend his record, he really is just an average politician.

_________________
"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

That's not accurate. Romney hasn't been overly clear on his plan, and I did not see anything directly contradictory (there may have been something, but I didn't see it). It was very contradictory to how the democrats have presented his plan, but not his actual plan. Have you watched many of his speeches prior to last night?



Oh, come on. Turkey has made it clear that this is retaliation. It continued last night, but this incident came about Tuesday night. I don't doubt he was briefed, but I'm sure Romney was as well. This is not some sort of massive operation that was a distraction. Certainly not an acceptable excuse for his performance.

Furthermore, there's this gem from Obama in 2008:

You have got to be kidding me. That's Chris Matthews and MSNBC type spin and defense right there.

_________________
"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

This. The Democrats have been running against some amalgamation in their minds of Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann and a sprinkling of Rick Perry. There are certain aspects of that in the Republican party platform, but that isn't what Romney is really concerned with. Romney gets elected, not the Republican national committee. He tells them what the priority in terms of planks are, not the other way around. They're stuck with him. It's either him or Obama, and once he's in the White House he doesn't need them at all. They need him. If he wins, they either go with his priorities, or accept that they lose in 2016 as they try to get rid of their own incumbent.



Again, this. Turkey is quite capable of taking care of itself. It needs NATO if Russian tanks start pouring across the border, not to deal with a minor cross-border incursion because of a civil war in Syria. The only reason Turkey really needs international attention at all is political; they want to avoid looking like "Ottoman conquerors", a sentiment to which there is some sensitivity in that part of the world.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Lacking anything else to do, I watched the debate from my hotel. I really only have one strong point to make: Romney missed an opportunity for an Epic retort.

Romney attacked the president for cuts to Medicare, and Obama, as a retort, mentioned the Mayo clinic cutting costs while delivering better care and how that was a model for healthcare. Romney's response (given that he's trying to scare seniors about Obama) should have been: "...and some of Mayo's locations don't accept Medicare or Medicaid patients! That's the future under Obama-run Medicare: being excluded from the best physicians and best care in the country."

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Uh, basically every press conference where he's taken questions, every town-hall Q&A from the 2008 campaign, every random campaign stop where he talks to members of the public....


Yeah, I'm perfectly willing to admit he's not great at debating, particularly when it's a free-for-all. He seems to be much better at laying out an argument and answering questions about it than he is at responding to counterarguments in real-time.


Yeah, I've seen my share of Romney's speeches and interviews, not to mention his debates in the Republican primary. You're right that Romney has never been very clear on his plans for anything, so I suppose that makes it difficult to identify direct contradictions, but pretty much every commentator I've read today - from the left and the right - has noted the tack toward the center in emphasis and rhetoric, so it's not just my imagination. He talked a lot about prioritizing education, protecting Medicare, strengthening the safety net at the state level, etc. He said he wouldn't support any tax cut that added to the deficit. He repeatedly affirmed the need for federal regulations. And so on. Basically, it was all soft-spoken reform rather than hard pushback against government. It was Rockefeller-Republicanism, not the more stridently anti-government Tea Party Republicanism he's been trying to emulate in the campaign for the last year or so.


*shrug* I'm not saying it excuses his performance; just that I wouldn't be surprised if it was a factor.


You and Elmo should really stop referencing Chris Matthews and MSNBC as my go-to sources. As I've said before, I neither watch nor identify with either of them, and I rarely find myself in agreement with their editorial positions. If you're going to use a guilt-by-association ad hom, you should at least reference the news and commentary sources I actually follow on a daily basis - Andrew Sullivan, the Atlantic (mainly Jim Fallows, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robert Wright, Clive Crook, Conor Friedersdorf and Jeff Goldberg), the Volokh Conspiracy, Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen), Outside the Beltway and Foreign Policy. I'd suggest using Sullivan as the main whipping boy for snide remarks, since he's already a popular target for his former compatriots on the right.

Video please.

_________________