By Tom Kando
The media have saturated the airwaves with their spin on the October 3 Romney-Obama debate, ad nauseam. The verdict is unanimous - Obama lost. The discussions range from sensible to ridiculous:
(1) The President was complacent. Being ahead in the polls, he just wanted to run out the clock.
(2) He was not prepped properly. He was too busy governing. Or he thought that he was so much smarter than Romney that he didn’t need to be prepped (hubris). On the other hand, Romney has been toughened up by a year of debating many other primary candidates (including several imbeciles) Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Paul, Perry, Santorum.
(3) The President is too nice (like Jimmy Carter was). He is not a gutter fighter, even when this becomes necessary. He prefers joy, humor, and lovey dovey with his wife, rather than wrestling in the mud (who doesn’t?). Therefore he approached this first debate as if it were inconsequential, a chore. Next time, he must get mean and ugly, go for Romney’s jugular.
(4) Obama has gotten used to adulation, to crowds cheering him and laughing at his jokes. The debate must have felt like a cold shower. He smiled a few times, but this only looked awkward. The silence was deadly. Dependence on adulation makes a man vulnerable.
(5) This next point is very popular among conservatives. (See for instance Charles Krauthammer’s widely syndicated column of October 5): Obama is simply not as competent as Romney. Without a Teleprompter, he is no good at debates, at speeches, at remembering facts and statistics, all things which Romney did brilliantly during the debate. What these people forget is that most of the “facts” spouted off by Romney were lies.
(6) Al Gore’s theory: The President hadn’t gotten used to Denver’s high altitude.
(7) He was tired and jet-lagged. He hadn’t had enough sleep. So he should get a lot of sleep and drink a lot of espresso before the next debate.
(8) Some people are even saying this, I’m not kidding you: As a Mormon, Romney couldn’t do coffee in order to fortify himself for the debate. So instead, he carbo-loaded and increased his glucose level by eating a lot of pasta before the debate. This enabled him to come on as a gang-buster and beat Obama.
(9) To add to the nonsense (this is my own theory): Obama is a recovering ex-smoker. Maybe he has to fall off the wagon temporarily. This is well worth it, if it helps him get re-elected.
Well, you get the picture. A lot of bs, right? All this talk of a “HUGE” Obama defeat the other night is becoming tedious. Yes, yes, the CNN/ORC poll taken immediately after the debate showed that 67% found Romney the winner, vs. 25% for Obama.
But let’s take all of this with a grain of salt. How ephemeral and superficial are public opinion swings? How much exaggeration are the media guilty of? The debate/contest was probably a lot closer than the spinmeisters tell us. And Romney’s victory, by whatever margin, is based on a foundation of superficial telegenic impressions mixed with fraudulent statements. Surely the electorate is not going to be permanently fooled?
Still, there is a danger that President Obama’s team is going to engage in Group Think. This happens when an executive and his team convince themselves that their decisions are perfect, that they must never be questioned, and that dissenting views must be suppressed.
Psychological research has shown that Group Think leads to terrible decisions. A classic example of a President who surrounded himself with yes-men who were never permitted to question the President’s decisions was Nixon. An example of the opposite was President Kennedy, who encouraged dissenting opinions among his advisers, and thereby avoided bad decisions.
I fear that people like David Plouffe (Obama campaign strategist), Michelle Obama and David Axelrod (senior campaign adviser) may tell the President that his first debate performance was good, and that he only needs to stay the course. When Axelrod was interviewed right after the debate, he seemed to be in denial, saying that Obama had done well. This was not the case.
If Romney is elected, the plutocracy gets a stranglehold on the country. The US gets on a long-term trajectory of ever-growing inequality, of reactionary policies, of middle-class decline, of military squandering, of public services atrophy. The US will increasingly resemble Latin-American countries like Brazil and Argentina, another major economy in the world straddling the First World/Third World dividing line. leave comment here
11 comments:
Interesting commentary. I am creeped out by how President Obama seems to have a comeback every time he appears to stumble. Its creepy at this point. For instance, The unemployment has fallen to 7.8%. What a coincidence that this happens two days after his debate performance. CNN kept saying that no presidential candidate has ever wone a debate that was above 8%. Whatever the lucky charm-It's fun to see the many different twists and turns of a complex political ride.
Gail
My take--Obama was not prepared to debate a sociopath.
Gail,
yes, today’s (un)employment data were uplifting. Both because more jobs are a great thing for the people of America, and because this news bolsters the President’s re-election chances. And no one can quibble about these numbers - their source is impartial and professional.
I hope that you are right about President Obama’s lucky charm.
Mindalaya:
I gather than you do not plan to vote for Romney?
Not so, according to Romney's camp. They hinted at the possibility that Obama had cooked the unemployment figures. Rommney also said that the figures are down because more people have given up looking for work! These two statements have been refuted by 'factchecker'.
Anonymous:
yes, those possibilities exist when new employment data come out, depending on their source and the fine print.
To the best of my knowledge, these two biases can be ruled out this time, because (1) the source was impartial (not the White House) and (2) the effect of those who drop out of the job market had already been discounted...
The view from here in Europe,my view, is that the media and the public eating up the plate served
by the media treat the debate as a theater performance,or worse, as a basketball game. The judgements concern PERFORMANCES, not ideas. The media and the public babble about "Obama appeared weak..hesitated...not agressive..."
You can never read that Obama,or Romney said this or that, that was true or not,no analysis of proposals. I'm no stage director,so I can't decide which actor performed better. So, we, the electors,should not be asked to decide which one of the candidates PERFORMED better,
but which one had put forth ideas that that join our own. Democracy begins there. PLEASE ALL OF YOU, READ "AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH"
Csaba
There is a simple explanation - Obama is not ready to answer the phone at 3AM (witness Libya) or to do a debate with someone well prepared.
"If Romney is elected, the plutocracy gets a stranglehold on the country. The US gets on a long-term trajectory of ever-growing inequality, of reactionary policies, of middle-class decline, of military squandering, of public services atrophy. " - so I guess that means two things - 1) you are buying the apocalyptic visions of the Governor on Prop 30 and 2) You believe that a President who believes it is more important to go to Las Vegas to raise money with millionaires and billionaires than to protect embassy personnel is not involved with the plutocracy?
Csaba: There are numerous post-debate commentaries that have discussed this same issue, not just in Europe, but here as well. For example: The First Presidential Debate, by Robert Reich. You just have to deviate somewhat from the general media to find them. We are not ALL morons here in the US of A.
That being said, maybe Romney did secretly take some performance enhancing drug.
To Csaba:
My post suggests similar things - that’s why it’s titled “sense and nonsense.”
BUT much as you, Madeleine, Robert Reich, I and dozens of millions of Americans might dislike it, the fact is that many voters ARE judging the candidates on the basis of their delivery, not content. McLuhan coined the phrase long ago: the medium is the message.
Things are even worse than that: To many people, FACTS don’t even seem to matter. We now have ubiquitous and busy fact checkers who are desperately trying to determine the truth content of what politicians say, but they have an uphill struggle.
So I just have a few caveats:
(1) we need to work in reality, not in the world we WISH we had. If good guys want to win elections, they must also work on such things as image, delivery, style, packaging. That’s too bad, but that’s how it is.
(2) Old folks like us tend to say that things are forever getting worse. But it’s not clear that politicians used to be more truthful in the past.
(3) it’s not clear that American voters are more swayed by appearance than others.
To Jonathan:
I used to subscribe to the tweedle dee-tweedle dum theory of American politics (that both major parties are equally corrupt, etc.). But, at the risk of saying the obvious, it’s quite clear that one of the two parties speaks far more for the the people’s interests, whereas the other one represents the elite’s interests. So now I subscribe to the lesser-of-two-evils theory.
It is obvious that Obama is not so good if he is not addressing college students or the takers who are getting free phones and other benefits. History will show how he has done with Putin and other leaders.
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