Obama loses ground after debate
I am not going to spin it and say that President Obama won the debate on Wednesday night. “Winning” in politics is a dumb concept, anyway — this isn’t football, it’s selecting the leader of our country and, as a result, the future of it.
However, if I consider the goals and hurdles each candidate had going into the debate, and who best achieved and surmounted them, that candidate was Mitt Romney.
In my column last week, I talked about Romney’s image problem: he is a logical man running with an ideological party. Wednesday night, though, he upped the rhetoric — he was practiced and decisive, fired up, even. He was relentless in his focus on the policies he would put forward as president. In contrast, Obama was measured, calm, a bit tired. His main strategy was to paint Romney as lacking a clear vision, but Romney, seemingly anticipating this, did not appear as an unsure man.
Romney will gain ground in the polls because of the debate. But it doesn’t mean he’s done so honestly. He steadfastly defended his tax plan, repeatedly challenging Obama’s claim that it will cost us $5 trillion.
Obama kept questioning the numbers, but Romney refused to acknowledge that his tax plan simply will not work, mathematically, without increasing the deficit by trillions. And Romney’s refusal to yield, though it put him on the defensive, made Obama look like he was harping on it — that Obama was the one being untruthful, when in fact, the studies have been on his side. It’s too bad debates don’t have a Works Cited page.
As the dust settles post-debate, liberal pundits insist that Romney trumped Obama because of this dishonesty alone. But if Obama’s performance had been stronger, Romney wouldn’t have gotten away with it. Obama’s weakness is that he was unable to effectively call Romney out for these dishonesties as the debate was happening. He tried, but not hard enough.
With debates like this, body language and projection end up being just as important if not more important than the issues, for a couple of reasons. First of all, at this stage, policy exists in the abstract, and we know that it takes a long, long time for big ideas to come to fruition, if they ever do at all. Body language is immediate and observable. It also shows us — or appears to show us — a certain truth about a candidate. Though body language can be manipulated as easily as words, it seems to be a more authentic, less practiced presentation of the candidate.
Romney did well with eye contact and aggression, if you consider aggression a good thing. I don’t, but I’m sure plenty of voters do. I appreciated Obama’s calm, his measured responses, because it indicates someone who compromises. He was more than willing to acknowledge the places where he and Romney come together. (As an essentially moderate president, it makes sense that there are intersections between them.)
Obama nodded while Romney spoke, and rarely out-voiced moderator Jim Lehrer while Romney kept a smirky smile and often talked over Lehrer. Though these aggressive characteristics don’t appeal to me, personally, they do align him with his base and also reaches unsure Independents who are looking for a solutions-oriented candidate.
Speaking of compromise — one of Romney’s biggest whoppers of the night was when he called Obama a divisive president because he pushed through the health care bill despite near-universal Republican opposition. As if there could have ever been a bill that big and ground-breaking with which Republicans would have been on board.
Overall, Obama needs to reconsider his strategy for the next debate. Instead of measured, he should be a little more ruthless and energetic — cultivating a bit more style while playing to his strengths of substance.
Jessica Vozel is a resident of Perryopolis.