Debate Recap and What's to Come

In the debate on Wednesday Mitt Romney came with his A game and Barack Obama brought his C game.  The result was, as most viewers saw it, a definite win for Romney.  The average of flash surveys of viewers showed that about 50% saw Romney as the victor while 25% thought Obama outduelled his challenger. 

Romney was clearly the better prepared, the most animated and the most focused.  His points were sharp, and often surprising.  Time and again, he appeared to flummox Obama by asserting and sticking to outright fabrications.  A few of these included such statements as these: that his tax cuts were revenue-neutral, that his health plan covers people with pre-existing conditions, that Obama's stimulus package spent $90 billion a year on green energy, and that Obama's health plan took $716 billion away from Medicare recipients but that his own plan did not.  (The truth on these Health Plan numbers is that first, these numbers are over 10 years.  Second, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, got insurers to agree to cut that much from the cost of their services in exchange for all the extra customers they are going to get when the plan's provisions activate in 2014.  So it is pure savings for the program.  The Romney-Ryan Plan, in contrast, simply reduces Medicare by that much to the recipients as they take their vouchers out to try to buy insurance. So it is all taken from the consumers.) The President tried to rebut some of these points, though not all, and often with reasonable and factual but lengthy and complicated explanations that no doubt often confused or bored debate viewers.

I feel the Obama team planned to try to run out the clock on an opponent who has been trailing in the race and causing most of his own problems.  They did not want Obama to seem "unpresidential" by too harshly attacking his opponent.  They committed the dangerous mistake of underestimating their foe and taking the match for granted.  They did not spend nearly as much time in preparation as did Romney and his team, and it showed.  While Obama was more "cool" and delivered some humor, which Romney did little of, these small personality advantages were likely at least offset by Romney's earnestness and superior sense of engagement in the process.

For the president, the first debate represents a huge lost opportunity.  He was clearly pulling ahead and had nearly locked up an electoral vote stranglehold on the election.  Republican Party supporters were vocally berating the Romney campaign.  There were murmurings that big money donors were going to start pulling their support from a losing proposition to concentrate on down ballot candidates and issues.  With a strong debate Obama could have effectively ended the Romney candidacy.  Instead, it is now game on. 

You can expect to see a very different Barack Obama on October 16 when the two meet again in Hempstead, New York.  Expect Obama to have ready and devastating ammunition when Romney talks about his budget, health plan or how much he cares about the average American.  Expect him also to have winning defenses of the Administration's accomplishments, along the lines so successfully laid out in Bill Clinton's Convention speech.  If this doesn't happen the President will find himself in serious trouble down the stretch.  You can also expect to see this counteroffensive start with Joe Biden coming at Paul Ryan very hard this Thursday in the Vice Presidential debate in much the same way Dick Cheney blasted away at and largely flattened John Edwards in 2004 after John Kerry got the better of George W. Bush in their first debate of that year.  It should get plenty lively from here on in.