The Incredibly Shrinking President

During the late summer and fall of 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas faced off in a series of seven Senatorial election debates, one each in the seven Congressional Illinois districts of that day and held from August 21 to October 15. Douglas was the incumbent Senator and Lincoln was a publicly unknown challenger. Debate moderators were unheard of in that time. Rather, debates were a stand up affair in which each debater sought to win the audience to his argument while attacking the weaknesses in his opponent’s argument. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, each man used the academic discipline of argumentation to favorably influence the voter audience, although in 1858 Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not by popular election.

Debate format in 1858 gave 60 minutes to the first to speak, 90 minutes to the second, and then the first debater was given an additional 30 minute to respond. Lincoln and Douglas alternated in going first although Douglas began four of the seven debates.

In contrast to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the election debates of modern times are media events in which the debaters and the moderators have almost equal standing. Not infrequently the moderators control the debate so tightly that it doesn’t allow the debaters to sell themselves and their contrasting positions to the voters; instead the audience hears a series of talking point prompts put forward by the moderators to satisfy their (sometimes partisan) interests and goals. Because of these modern “debate” formats, we hear little skilled argumentation and instead hear a lot of hype and sound bites.

That happened extraordinarily less in last Wednesday’s Denver debate between Romney and Obama. It quickly became apparent that Obama was unable to think on his feet when confronted by an aggressive opponent, falling back on stump speech lines as he became increasingly frustrated and angry. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, a former PBS news anchor who likely has liberal leanings, was savaged by the media after the debate for “losing control” to two of the strongest personalities in America.

In my opinion the debate moderator should have done just as Lehrer did – ask a fairly open-ended question and then let the debaters have at it. Several times Lehrer did try to cut off debate, only to have one of the debaters overrule him in order to finish a comment or to respond to comments made by the other debater. Lehrer simply closed his eyes, and with a “what the heck” look on his face, let the debate go to the next hiccup where he was successful in getting back the moderator role and introduce the next topic. Viewers learned and saw more than would have happened if Lehrer had covered his agenda and exercised tight control.

What torqued the media and the Left in the aftermath of the debates was that the format did allow the moderator to jump in and save Obama’s bacon when Romney had him on the ropes. And on the ropes is where he spent most of the 90-minute debate. It became quickly evident that Obama didn’t understand that the debate, which was seen by 67 million people, was putting the implications of his demeanor and body language on national display.  He was subdued and professorial in his responses. He looked disgusted, scribbled notes rather than looking at Romney as he spoke, and was so clueless that at the end of the debate, he smiled and thought he’d won. His debate prep team thought otherwise. They didn’t even attend the press room gathering after the debate.

Romney, on the other hand, was upbeat and prepared as evidenced by his frequent multi-pointed answers – Point 1, Point 2, Point 3 … – showing that his responses had been thought through and were well-organized. He looked at Obama both when he was speaking and when Obama was speaking. He smiled throughout the debate and at one point said, “It’s fun, isn’t it.” Romney was the last of the two to leave his podium and the stage, giving the impression that he was dominant – the alpha male. He smiled as his family joined him on stage and he well aware that he’d won.

The polling after the debate confirmed the Romney “win.” Among Republicans, Romney was the winner by a margin of 95 points (97% versus 2%), but even Democrats conceded a Romney win by ten points (49% versus 39%.) Most importantly, Independents gave the win to Romney by a whopping 51 points (70% versus 19%), and their vote will determine the election.

A Pew poll after the debate had the Obamaphiles in tears. Before the debate, Obama was leading Romney by a 51 to 43 margin which morphed into a four-point Romney lead of 49 to 45 after the smoke cleared. With less than 30 days to go before the election, Obama’s debate performance had given Romney a 12-point turnaround from trailing by eight points to leading by four. Tall in the saddle before the debate, Obama became the incredibly shrinking man after it.

Expecting a knockout punch that again would send a tingle up his leg, the anticipated schadenfreude failed to materialize, sending Chris Matthews into a meltdown:

I don't know what he was doing out there, he had his head down, he was enduring the debate, rather than fighting it. Romney, on the other hand, came in with a campaign. He had a plan, he was going to dominate the time, he was going to be aggressive, he was going to push the moderator around, which he did effectively, he was going to relish the evening, enjoying it. What was Romney doing tonight? He was winning!

Romney was dominant, but Obama spoke four minutes longer because he couldn’t collect his thoughts while on the ropes.

Andrew Sullivan, an outspoken Obamaphile, was practically on suicide watch. After seeing the latest Pew polls, he wrote:

Seriously: has that kind of swing ever happened this late in a campaign? Has any candidate lost 18 points among women voters in one night ever? And we are told that when Obama left the stage that night, he was feeling good. That's terrifying. On every single issue, Obama has instantly plummeted into near-oblivion. He still has some personal advantages over Romney – even though they are all much diminished. Obama still has an edge on Medicare, scores much higher on relating to ordinary people, is ahead on foreign policy, and on being moderate, consistent and honest (only 14 percent of swing voters believe Romney is honest). But on the core issues of the economy and the deficit, Romney is now kicking the president's a - -.

Democrat Buzz Bissinger, a contributor to the Daily Beast blog, wrote that he was switching his vote to Romney because the Denver debate showed a tired, clueless Obama who is "no longer the chosen one. He is just too cool for school in a country desperate for the infectiousness of rejuvenation." During the debate, Bill Maher tweeted “I can't believe I'm saying this, but Obama looks like he DOES need a teleprompter. Maher, who gave $1 million to an Obama super PAC, said he believed Obama “took my million and spent it all on weed.”

Chris Cillizza who blogs for the Washington Post wrote Obama’s performance "raised a bigger question: Is he overrated as a candidate?" and Stacey Dash, a black actress told her 250,000 twitter followers that they should "Vote for Romney. The only choice for your future." She got pummeled afterward for being a traitor to her race and party.

Al Gore blamed Obama’s poor performance on the altitude of Denver. I was expecting him to blame global warming.

The thing that got all of the Obamaphiles’ panties in a wad is they seem not to really know their man. Keep in mind that before becoming President of the United States at 47 years of age, this man had accomplished nothing of significance. He immediately clamped a lid on anything that would shed light on who he was before becoming a public figure. Even his college grades and papers and those of his wife were off limits. He surrounded himself with a coterie of sycophant advisors who made him believe that, unlike King Canute, he could turn back the tide. For almost four years, the media has failed to call him or his administration to account for their actions or lack of them. Perhaps what 67 million people saw on the Denver debate stage is the real Obama. But it sure seemed like the real Romney showed up.

Obama complained that debate prep was a “drag.” Visiting a Nevada field office during a break from preparing, he couldn’t remember how many days remained before the election. George Will hit the nail on the head by recently saying Obama is not known as a martyr to the work ethic. Romney campaign coordinator, former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu called Obama “lazy” after his debate performance. On a recent talk show, the host said Obama got angry with John Kerry (who played the part of Romney in the prep) because Kerry’s jabs got under Obama’s thin skin causing him to say, “’To hell with this bull s- - - ‘and he went outside of his Nevada resort suite to shoot baskets.” (I haven’t been able to source that quotation independently so it may be shaded.)

But post-debate stories have been leaked to reporters that Obama doesn’t like debates, and that he was unhappy having to debate Romney whom he views with disdain. Apparently Obama believes he can hold on to the White House displaying no more substance than he exhibited in 2008 … except that in 2008 voters were ready for a change and their choice was between a tired old man or a hip black guy, while in 2012 he has a contender who is as smart or smarter than he.

Obama has all of the symptoms of first termer disease. After four years of living in an isolated bubble surrounded by people who rarely challenged his ragged ideas, possessing the power of the presidency with its carefully orchestrated photo ops, speeches to adoring fans, and the perks of Roman emperor, and further compounded by an exaggerated vanity which caused him to characterize himself without blushing as “eye candy” during his last appearance on The View, Obama believes his own baloney. He has lost a sense of the American mainstream, if he ever had it. He doesn’t know how to deal with opposing ideas and that showed in Denver.

I think Bill Maher was right. The man can’t function without a teleprompter. His famous grandiloquent rhetoric has always been crafted by professional writers. They never were his words. This Emperor has no clothes.

In Denver Obama spewed ideology rather than logically grounded arguments to explain his intellectual position on issues. He doesn’t know how to debate or sell ideas because his close advisors are hood ornaments, not counterweights. Whenever it was his turn to speak during the debate, he fell back on stump speech clichés and straw man arguments as he so often does when characterizing opponent views – except in this situation the opponent wouldn’t let him get away with it. Obama should have read the Lincoln-Douglas debates as preparation. He would have better understood how the craft of argumentation is practiced.

Not only has Obama surrounded himself with close advisors whose experience is confined to government, but also they don’t understand how the economy works. Thus, even if Obama were inclined to learn from them, he couldn’t. They don’t know what they don’t know, and neither does he. His understanding of the economy in the debate was so awful that at one point Romney said that he had been in business 25 years and had no idea what Obama was talking about regarding outsourcing.

When the debate topic turned to energy, Obama complained about the “$4 billion the oil industry gets in corporate welfare.” Romney corrected him and said:

The Department of Energy has said the tax break for oil companies is $2.8 billion a year. And it’s actually an accounting treatment, as you know, that’s been in place for a hundred years … this $2.8 billion goes largely to small companies, to drilling operators and so forth.

“… as you know”? Obama doesn’t know. Romney piled on the facts – and understood them. Obama has failed to grasp the facts after four years of being surrounded by them.

Obama’s bashing of “corporate welfare” gave Romney the opening he was apparently waiting for. He contrasted “corporate welfare” with Obama’s policy – the $90 billion spent on green energy projects in three years:

… don’t forget, you put $90 billion, like 50 years’ worth of [oil subsidy] breaks, into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tester and Ener1 ... I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right? … And these businesses, many of them have gone out of business … I think about half of the ones [you] have invested in have gone out of business … a number of them happened to be owned by people who were contributors to your campaigns.

Ouch! That hurt.

Romney noted that Obama wasted his first two years passing ObamaCare without a single Republican vote. He contrasted his own experience as Governor of Massachusetts, saying if he had said “it’s my way or the highway” he wouldn’t have been able to get a lot done:

First of all, I like the way we did it in Massachusetts. I like the fact that in my state, we had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together. What you did instead was to push through a plan without a single Republican vote. As a matter of fact, when Massachusetts did something quite extraordinary – elected a Republican senator to stop ObamaCare, you pushed it through anyway.

So entirely on a partisan basis, instead of bringing America together and having a discussion on this important topic, you pushed through something that you and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid thought was the best answer and drove it through. What we did in a legislature 87% Democrat, we worked together; 200 legislators in my legislature, only two voted against the plan by the time we were finished.

What were some differences? We didn’t raise taxes. You’ve raised them by $1 trillion under ObamaCare. We didn’t cut Medicare. Of course, we don’t have Medicare, but we didn’t cut Medicare by $716 billion. We didn’t put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they’re going to receive [the IPAB]. We didn’t do something that I think a number of people across this country recognize – put people in a position where they’re going to lose the insurance they had and they wanted. Right now, the CBO says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as ObamaCare goes into effect next year. And likewise, a study by McKinsey and Company of American businesses said 30% of them are anticipating dropping people from coverage.

So for those reasons – for the tax, for Medicare, for this board, and for people losing their insurance – this is why the American people don’t want ObamaCare. It’s why Republicans said, do not do this, and the Republicans had the plan. They put a plan out, a bipartisan plan. It was swept aside.

I think something this big, this important has to be done on a bipartisan basis. And we have to have a president who can reach across the aisle and fashion important legislation with the input from both parties.

When Lehrer asked Romney and Obama how each would solve a list of problems facing the country, all of Obama’s solutions were government solutions, whereas, Romney’s solutions were private sector solutions. Obama’s plan to get the economy rolling is more government spending despite the country’s mounting debt and deficits. Romney’s plan is to unshackle private industry, domestic energy production, and changes in regulations and tax policy. When Obama tried to take credit for the oil boom of the past couple of years, Romney reminded him that it had all occurred on privately-owned land and that Obama’s administration had closed down public lands.

The Lincoln-Douglas debate topics ranged over many issues but slavery dominated the debate. Likewise the Romney-Obama debate ranged over many issues but the role of government dominated the debate. What we will choose on November 6 is one of two contrasting and conflicting views on the role of government. Romney sees the federal government as necessary but facilitative. Obama sees federal government as omnipotent and regulatory. Romney sees taxes as a way to pay for government; Obama sees taxes as a way to reengineer society. Romney sees problems solved mostly by state government. Obama sees them solved in Washington. Romney views the American pursuit of profit and a better life as a social good.  Obama views individualism with suspicion, convinced that it benefits a select few.

As Romney summarized the role of government:

We believe in maintaining for individuals the right to pursue their dreams and not to have the government substitute itself for the rights of free individuals. And what we’re seeing right now is, in my view, a trickle-down government approach, which has government thinking it can do a better job than free people pursuing their dreams. And it’s not working.

After the debate, Obama tried to make the best of having been trounced by ridiculing the “very spirited fellow who showed up on the stage claiming to be Mitt Romney.” His campaign team has unleashed Big Bird on the Romney camp. The Obama war chest will shortly surpass $1 billion to elect him to a $400,000 a year job. And over the past four years, the rock star president has waved to fawning, cheering crowds in his unending election campaign, pumping his ego into believing he would eviscerate an intellectually inferior presidential misfit in the Denver debate.

Instead, Clint Eastwood’s empty chair showed up.