Presidential candidate Mitt Romney smiled and smooth talked his way to a win at the Presidential debate last Wednesday night. He looked calm and poised, like a high school quarterback ready to win, attacked President Obama every chance possible and somehow managed to turn vague statements into a political “win”.
It’s not that Obama was necessarily bad in his discussion. In fact, if you paid attention to what was being said, Obama was throwing out numbers and figures to show his progress these past four years while Romney vaguely referred to plans and managed to contradict some of his previous statements about healthcare and education. Even more fascinating about Romney’s win at the debate were some of his bolder statements, like turning his Massachusetts healthcare plan that is so obviously is a perfect example of his flip-flopping policies into his model of working with a bipartisan group. At least Obama could attack these so blatantly false statements though, right?
Wrong. Obama did not try and attack Romney, even when Romney deserved it. After a rough couple of weeks for Romney, following his secrecy about his taxes and the infamous 47% remark, liberals everywhere were planning (and hoping) that Obama would take the debate as a chance to call him out on all of his mistakes. Instead, Obama hardly attacked Romney at all.
It seemed like Romney could get away with anything Wednesday night. When he said that he wanted cut spending to PBS drawing attention to Sesame’s Street’s Big Bird, people thought it was funny or more of a pop cultural reference more than anything else. Generations of voters in this election grew up with Big Bird and have fond feelings of him, yet no one seems upset about losing him in the future.
Now, I’m not trying to take away a victory from the Romney campaign, but he wasn’t as great as everyone he thinks he was. Romney, overall, appeared more confident and ready to be president than the current president, and that was a major misstep on Obama’s part. Instead of responding to the majority of Romney’s attacks, Obama sat back and smiled – or worse, smirked – making him seem a bit scared and intimidated by his challenger. Romney stared at Obama while Obama stared at moderator Jim Lehrer. It provided uncomfortable tension and made Obama look like he wanted nothing to do with Romney.
But really, could you blame him?
As president, Obama hasn’t been challenged so directly by someone thirsting for his job. It seemed like he was tired and irritated, as if everything from the last four years had finally caught up to him and he wanted nothing more than to crawl back to the White House and take a nap. Romney capitalized on that.
It wasn’t that Romney was necessarily spectacular or amazing in the debate, but just that Obama underperformed and completely missed expectations that he’s been upholding since that infamous election night speech four years ago. Obama better catch up on sleep before the next election, because after this, it’s clear Romney is set out to do whatever it takes to bring the president down.
Kendal (Gapinski) Kloiber 