It’s funny watching, or trying not to watch, all the detailed discussions and dissection of tonight’s presidential debate. I watched it — with difficulty, because it was so boring. Conclusions: Obama was off his game. Romney was better than I expected but once again he tried to be the moderator. Lehrer had no control. Nothing new was presented. Romney “won.” End of story. … yawwwnnnn …
Yup. Obama missed so many openings. He did not do very well at all tonight. Romney pisses me off (well, just him “being” bothers me), anyway, Romney is now trying to suck up to the middle class even though he made that comment about the 47% – of which many are part of the middle class. Made me sick to my stomach.
Yes, he was all about the middle class tonight. Didn’t fool me for a second. But he sure irritated me when he started playing moderator/stage manager like he has before. There really wasn’t much “there” there to criticize. I guess the best part is that we’re now that much closer to the election.
I cannot wait. Ready to put an end to all this crap.
Debates really aren’t about winning or losing. Unless, of course, you’re on the *winning* side!
I wasn’t looking for a winner so much as just new information, explanations, understanding of the issues, etc. I should have known better.
Obama needs to stare at Romney with steely-eyed accusation. I understand the utility of taking notes, and perhaps that helps him think, but in the middle of a debate, he needs to ween himself off that habit. He looked tired, and he did not debate with passion in his voice. There was no fire.
Romney did well, be he had no passion either. Both of these politicians debated coldly. Not that I mind this, but I think a lot of the voters they’re trying to reach can be influenced with passion (as sad as that may be). I thought Romney did better than Obama, and I thought Obama made some very good points, but that these were largely swept away after he made them when he began to go into details about them using terms that probably weren’t understood by his target audience – the undecided voters.
Instead of details, he should simply say when something isn’t true, or when something is exaggerated, and then state that the facts support him. Leave it at that. Whenever he went into detail, he appeared to lose ground.
Romney, on the other hand, is the master of vague. As Obama pointed out, he hasn’t defined what things he will cut. He hasn’t defined a lot of details regarding his plans. This makes it virtually impossible to show how they will or will not work. It’s the fog of war.
When Romney said he would not cut the military and would keep them strong, Obama didn’t say anything about how Republicans voted along with him to make the cuts in military spending. He needed to point that out. If he did, I missed it. Win for Romney. When you wind down a war, you reduce the size of the military. This is completely normal. That doesn’t mean the military suddenly becomes weak. It means they go back to normal size.
When Romney accused Obama of pushing his health care reforms through without bi-partisan support, Obama should have shot back with evidence of how Republicans have historically worked to prevent the establishment of entitlement programs. And he should have noted the Republicans in Congress made it clear that it was their agenda to get him out of office rather than work with him for the benefit of the country. But if he said anything, I missed it. Instead he let Romney talk about how he worked with Democrats in his own state, making it sound like Romney is far better at bi-partisan negotiation. It’s far easier to be good at bi-partisan negotiation when you don’t have a collection of opponents agreeing to oppose you no matter what.
There were a wide variety of areas where Obama could have shown passion, could have hit Romney hard, but he held back. He looked like he was distracted and jet-lagged. Romney appeared fresh and ready, stuck to simple messages, stayed vague on details, and did an excellent job. Obama needs to rethink his strategy next time, and get some sleep before the debates.
I hope they’ll both get fired up next time. This was, as you said, a yawner.
All good points. While I appreciate Obama’s looking at the camera at times to address the TV audience, he’s debating Romney and needs to face him. I’m sure he’s trying to make Romney appear less important and not worthy of note, but when a dog, even a little one, is chewing on your ankle, you don’t ignore it.
I only believe that Obama is promising that those of us who qualify will be given other peoples money while Romney is promising those other people that he’ll insure that they get more to pay for the exact same transfers of money. Passion from these guys is relative to believability in the same way that emotion is relative to logic. NOT.
I’m going to continue recording these silly auditions, but only for the purpose of reviewing segments that people believe were indicative of something we haven’t already seen or heard a zillion times. Obviously I won’t be voting for either of these two reality show candidates.
You hit on why I watch these “auditions” (I’ve no way to record them). I want to decide for myself what’s new or important, not let the pundits tell me later. I saw little worth mentioning in this debate, but the media will probably be talking about it for several days.
I only watched the debates last night. I mean that literally– the sound was off and I looked at the screen intermittently. From my perspective it was rather predictable, so I’m rather bummed to find out today that those of you who heard it were as bored as I was with it.
Imagine how bummed you’d be if you’d had the sound on, were paying attention, and still found it boring!