(I’ll again ask for leniency with typos and formatting as I’m posting again from my phone.—TK)
–Obama had to keep pushing while Romney just had to hold ground. I don’t think Obama had enough sound bite victories to make this insignificant debate significant for him. Romney continued to seen like a plausible candidate and that’s all he needed to do.
–Despite an awkward attempt at levity during his opening remarks, Romney scored first when Obama goofed on Romney’s position on troops in Iraq.
–Obama is using his inherent advantage well, staring confidently and seriously at Romney while Romney gave his answers, frequently drawing attention to the fact that he’s the only one on the stage with commander-in-chief experience.
–The two seemed to have few substantive differences on Syria yet went on and on about it.
–Schieffer’s easily the best moderator of the bunch. Commission should have just asked him for a bulk rate for all their debates.
–Why did Obama keep poking the bear on the economy? And how did we get onto education? Is he really suggesting our foes are gauging our strength by looking at SAT scores?
–Obama describes a military budget for a pre-WW2 isolationist America? Didn’t he just accuse Romney of rummaging through history of bygone eras for policy ideas?
–Compares the Navy to “horses and bayonets”? We need more submarines? Says who?
Still don’t know why Romney and Ryan let Obama and Biden get away with pointing out the lack of specificity in their budget plan with Obama’s embarrassing budget experience dangling there like low hanging fruit.
–Romney would indict Ahmedinejad? No follow up on that? That sounds like tough talk that might be dangerous, but now he’s got to do it if he wins, doesn’t he?
–Throwdown on the “apology tour.” Romney was precise in his language here making the president appear rattled. True, no “apology,” but Romney acknowledged it was his own characterization based on the content of Obama’s statements abroad. From NRO:
In France he criticized America’s past “arrogance” and its “dismissive . . . derisive” behavior. In Trinidad he lamented a “disengaged” United States that sought to “dictate . . . terms” in the hemisphere. At the National Archives he charged his predecessors with making foreign-policy decisions “based on fear rather than foresight” and “trimm[ing] facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.”
I’m ambivalent.
–Obama strong on playing up the bin Laden hit and”moving heaven and earth” to do it.
–On Afghanistan, more prolonged bloviating by both candidates on what appears to be almost complete agreement.
–On drones: Gary Johnson, here’s your new ad.
–Obama jabs again at Romney and outsourcing to China, saying Romney was against federal assistance in the General Motors bankruptcy process. But from Romney’s op-ed:
The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.
–Obama closes with “nation-building at home.” Because the Great Society worked out so well.
Technically, verbiage works the other way: the president won, but did *he* cover? Which, you’re right, would have been pretty much impossible absent some kind of major Romney self-inflicted wound that caused people to reassess whether they thought he could be C-in-C. Jamelle Bouie was right when he tweeted that Romney had passed that test quite a while ago.
Dang, you’re right. I hate getting that stuff wrong.
I never understood how that worked until, like, this year, so now I like to show it off…;)
“commander-in-chief experience” sounds like it comes from the same place as “unemployed workers need not apply”.
Even after that it doesn’t make sense as a criticism. There are only two people who A: have “commander-in-chief experience”, B: weren’t already President for two terms, and C: are still alive–George H W Bush and Jimmy Carter. Sure, it’s true that Mitt Romney has never been President of the United States, but that’s hardly unique to Mitt Romney.
“Obama jabs again at Romney and outsourcing to China”
I wish that Obama had mentioned Sensata, the auto parts plant whose workers BEGGED Romney to talk to his pals at Bain, which owns the company. As far as I know, Romney completely ignored them. I think, done right, it could sunk the bayonet deeper into Romney.
“Obama describes a military budget for a pre-WW2 isolationist America? Didn’t he just accuse Romney of rummaging through history of bygone eras for policy ideas?”
No, and you know it. Please explain how a drone program is “isolationist”, just for starters.
It was an aspirational not a descriptive comment by Obama, but i can’t remember his exact words now. Something to the effect of letting the world start taking care of itself so we can get to the work of nation building at home.
“Obama had to keep pushing while Romney just had to hold ground. I don’t think Obama had enough sound bite victories to make this insignificant debate significant for him. Romney continued to seen like a plausible candidate and that’s all he needed to do.”
I read the politics differently. Obama is still ahead per Nate Silver, and Romney didn’t (and couldn’t) draw out too many genuine policy differences. A tie is favorable to the incumbent.
The only thing that Obama hurt himself on imo is attacking Romney out of the blue one too many times towards the end, in sharp contrast with the tone Romney had just preceding him. I don’t think that unforced error was particularly big or enough though.
Good play-by-play.
Not directed at you, but this “apology tour” shit really bugs me. Underneath it there’s either the idea that the U.S. has never done wrong, or that if we’ve done wrong it was always in the cause of doing right so it doesn’t need apology, or if we’ve just plain done wrong we shouldn’t apologize anyway because it shows weakness.
Whichever of those it is, it’s pure bullshit. And there’s a real cowardliness in wanting everyone to fear you, and a confusion between fear and respect.
Imagine a neo-con having a conversation with M. Ganhdi about how to respond to the British.
” there’s a real cowardliness in wanting everyone to fear you”
World War I almost didn’t happen, because Kaiser Wilhelm II was afraid of the United States.
When Woodrow Wilson declared that the United States would never under any circumstances get involved in a European matter, the war started.