Who won? Romney, at least in the short term. The long term may prove otherwise because Romney repeatedly cited statistics and facts that, upon close and repeated scrutiny, may well prove false. Obama clearly had an off night. He spoke, by the clock, for four minutes more than Romney, yet he failed to directly challenge Romney on several points. For example, Romney claimed that his tax plan would not reduce taxes further on the wealthy, yet one of its key provisions is to abolish capital gains taxes entirely. He would have paid zero taxes by his plan last year. Jim Lehrer would not as the moderator call him on that; but Obama shouldn't have expected someone else to do it for him.
This was a debate on domestic policy yet not a word on Ryan's and other Republicans in the House's record on domestic policy, including women's reproductive rights, the 47%, Bain Capital and the export of jobs, the alleged greater efficiency of private insurance relative to Medicare. Obama was off his game, and Romney used an aggressive prosecutorial style fortified by dubious facts, e.g., 90 billion in subsidies to green energy, lowest drilling on government land ever.
Many are blaming Lehrer for not controlling the debate better. That was the intent: to let this be more like a real debate; and Obama was, quite simply, not as well-prepared as he should have been.
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Here's my quick and dirty, not-so-eloquent, interpretation of the first debate:
ReplyDeleteRomney won. It is clear that Romney beat Obama, however, this is not because Romney's performance was outstanding or anything. Romney won because Obama was terrible.
First of all, Obama appeared to be a seven-year-old kid who was being lectured by his dad. When Obama was spoken at, by Romney, he had his head down almost all the time. Instead of doing that, Obama should have looked Romney straight in the eyes and perhaps returned some facial expressions showing some discontent to what Romney argued. Again, instead of doing this, Obama looked submissive, tired, and operating on 10% of his brain. By the way, did you notice that difference in camera angles? A lot of the camera angles shown, when Romney was arguing, Obama was included but never the other way around. Interesting!
Another thing that was disappointing in this debate was Romney's lying and vagueness. Everything Romney said in this debate was in a vague form. He did not include any details on what he would cut to reduce the deficit or how he would create jobs. Once again the Republican candidate offered the "trickle-down economics" as the solution to the economy. This ideology has been proved wrong now for about four decades. While Romney has not specific plans to improve America, so to speak, Obama has many. However, it is not that Obama has many specific plans that is Obama's weakness, but it is that he goes into way much detail in his argument about these plans. Instead of going into depth of his plans he should merely put it in simple terms (like Romney), cite where one can learn more about these plans, and finally rebuke Romney by saying "Romney is saying all these things but has no specific plan" (which Obama actually did say a few times). Also, Obama should have discredited Romney's lying. Obama isn't cutting 700 or so billion dollars for medicare, or Romney's health insurance plan is almost the same as "Obamacare", or that half of Obama's green energy firms that were subsidized went bankrupt is simply an extreme exaggeration. Instead of discrediting Romney's many lies, Obama only gave them credibility by not touching them. Romney is a somewhat successful business man and some people will believe everything he says because he has some authority and merit.
In addition, a big question is in my head after I watched this debate and that is why did not Obama challenge Romney on his outrageous "47%" statement? This, to me, is unbelievable!
And lastly, the moderator, Lehrer, was absolutely rubbish. He ruined the whole format of the debate.
Hard to argue with this post-mortem. But what does it say about our politics when the universally-declared winner of a presidential debate is the one who fact checkers found to have deceived viewers at least 27 times during the total of 38 minutes of the debate in which he spoke? Obama was indeed terrible, but he was honestly so. Do we as a country prefer dishonest winners to honest losers? If so, we have no right to gripe about the inevitable ineffectiveness of those we elect!
ReplyDeleteI think the real question is why aren't the moderators and others participating in the debates calling out the false statements/arguments. I feel like the networks are playing a role to this process of making voters uninformed. The networks are fully aware of that many people switch channels after the debate has ended thinking that they have watched the most important segment, however, it turns out that the most important segment comes after the debate as all the deceiving is revealed. I also think that there's a bigger question or concern to be asked here and it has to do with lying and the trivial effect it has on Americans. Obviously there has been a lot of lying so far, why is this "okay" with the American people considering the little effect it has on the liar? It seems to me that this demonstrates the power of voters party identification.
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