Tim Stanley
Dr Tim Stanley is a historian of the United States. His biography of Pat Buchanan is out now. His personal website is www.timothystanley.co.ukand you can follow him on Twitter @timothy_stanley.
Romney humiliated Obama in the presidential debate. This election isn't over
Last night was a good example of what happens when you take President Obama off an autocue. He falls to pieces. Obama’s performance during the first presidential debate was a mess. The subject was domestic policy – passing through economics, the debt, healthcare and the role of government. Through it all, the President looked distracted and tired, his eyes often drifting to the notes on the podium as if he might be sneakily answering texts. He directed his answers at the moderator, rather than his opponent, and only looked the camera in the eye a handful of times. Perhaps the goal was to appear statesmanlike, but the result was somewhere between bored and superior.
His debating technique was no better. The President started and finished on the defensive, refusing to hit out at Romney and preferring to deliver stuttering apologias for his four years in office. He missed at least two chances to wound Romney. On the first, he conceded that there was little difference between the two men when it came to Social Security (it’s typical for Democrats to claim that Republicans want to privatise it and use old people for firewood). On the second, he answered a question about Obamacare by outlining all its provisions – waiting until the very last line to point out that Romney implemented a similar reform in Massachusetts. Romney’s biggest weakness is his reputation for flip-flopping, yet Obama gave him the opportunity to rebut the u-turn charge and focus all the energy of the debate back onto the White House’s controversial programs.
Constantly, Obama tried to articulate a centrist message. But that message committed the greatest crime you can commit on live TV: it was boring. There was no passion, no class rhetoric and no personal stories. He seems to have had the hope and change drained from him. Obama closed by promising to fight “just as hard” in the second term as he had in the first. That translates as, “More of the same.” To anyone unemployed, under-employed or struggling to get by, that's a miserable prospect.
By contrast, Mitt Romney was a human dynamo. This is why the Republicans nominated him: he’s great at debating and he doesn’t look mad (which is also why we didn’t end up with Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann). To all the Brits who think he’s just a loudmouth Right-winger who insulted our Olympics, the footage that gets played on the UK news will come as a shock. Mitt was funny, enthusiastic, almost gleeful. His obvious delight in confronting the President head on was matched by a skilful manipulation of words. Anything worth remembering from the debate came from Romney’s lips – from “trickle down government” to “I like Big Bird.” His themes were conservative (he said that government was there to help the vulnerable but should otherwise get out of the way), but the detail was moderate. No, he would not end all regulation. Yes, he would keep education funding and Medicare payments intact. And by saying that his biggest beefs with Obamcare were the cost to the individual and the overgrowth of federal government, he was basically offering America “Obamacare without the bad bits.” You might call it, Romneycare.
On Thursday morning, liberal commentators will be searching for nice things to say about Obama’s weak performance and Team Obama will blame it on his lack of time to prepare (although the Prez found plenty of time to campaign in Las Vegas during the Middle East crisis). But there’s no escaping that this was Romney 1 and Obama 0. Conservatives will be buoyed up and looking for some movement in the polls. Nationally, they are closer than you might think, and NBC reports that the gap is shrinking in Florida and Virginia. This debate must mark a shift in the narrative, and many voters might give Romney a second look. It’s possible – just possible – that these debates will make Mitt into a contender again.
To revive the often made comparison with 1980 – perhaps Romney isn’t quite Ronald Reagan. But Barack Obama suddenly looks a lot more like Jimmy Carter.
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