Presidential Campaign

If Mitt Romney's pandering attack on public broadcasting was the latest example of the weathervane who will say anything to get elected, Barack Obama's condescending new negative ad is the latest example of a campaign that at this moment offers no coherent narrative about why the president should be given a second term. In my column on Monday, about Obama's debate mission, I tried to offer such a narrative.

President Obama’s reelection campaign is busy spinning the latest job report, showing unemployment below 8 percent for the first time in nearly four years, trying to move past his dismal debate performance and busily plotting an effective barrage for Mitt Romney when he next debates Obama on Oct. 16. Romney, having finally stopped the bleeding with a stellar debate Wednesday, tried flip-flopping on his infamous comments about not having to “worry” about 47 percent of Americans who are “entitled” moochers, stating suddenly on Thursday that those comments were “completely wrong.”

Forget the subjective political tea-leaf readings, debate assessments and pundits’ unprovable prognostications. As President Clinton told the Democratic National Convention, “Do the arithmetic.” There is some revealing data that portends good news for the Obama team. Mike Hais, author of two groundbreaking books with Morley Winograd about millennials, Millennial Makeover (2008) and Millennial Momentum (2011), recently reported some data that could be decisive in the 2012 election.

The consensus seems to be that Romney won the debate last night. I think it was a slight victory in terms of debate performance. But, in terms of significance, a slight victory is more than it sounds. Romney hasn’t had much of a chance to speak directly to the American people. He has been mediated by spin for a year. A good performance last night can make up for a lot of that, and help overcome some of the advantages that all incumbents necessarily have.

Romney got a full five minutes less in airtime than the president, and often had to struggle to get rebuttals in. Jim Lehrer was, frankly, superfluous. I would much prefer a Lincoln-Douglas style debate, or even a simple conversation. Put the two men on stage, sit them down with a timer, and let them simply talk directly to Americans. Jim Lehrer contributed nothing (and, by the nature of his position, could contribute nothing), and detracted much. It’s time we change the way these debates work.

There’ll be a postmortem today at the White House and in Chicago over Obama’s strange out-of-body appearance in the first presidential debate with Mitt Romney last night.

This was not the president we knew. Someone on Twitter remarked that it was weird to see him without a teleprompter. The man who can electrify audiences, even on the campaign trail, looked tired, distracted and listless. During most of the 90-minute debate he retired behind his podium, taking notes while Romney spoke. When it was his turn to speak, he addressed moderator Jim Lehrer, not the challenger for the White House.

According to all prognosticators, there is a great deal at stake with respect to tonight's first presidential debate. Many students of history and politics are having difficulty understanding why President Obama is still leading in the polls with persistent high unemployment, anemic GDP growth, a foreign policy that is in flames, a $16 trillion national debt and general despair about the future run rampant in this country. If Romney is capable of highlighting these obvious nightmares and is able to resist pressure from the media and Obama to talk about irrelevant and diversionary issues, he should be able to make substantial progress.

The word on the street is that Mitt Romney has been rehearsing some little zingers he will throw at President Obama during the imminent debate. Perhaps Romney has secretly sojourned to the Actors Studio in New York to study his method. When he tries to trick the president with the zingers, should Mitt's practiced smile face the camera, or look away? When Romney practices projecting the sincerity of his concern for the 47 percent of Americans he recently insulted, is Mitt smiling or looking serious during rehearsal? Is there a calcUlated tear that may trickle down his cheek when Romney offers his zinger to show his passion for helping the jobless (presumably including those made jobless by Bain Capital)?

When Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate in August, Democrats couldn't wait to attack Ryan on Medicare, and Ryan couldn't wait to fight back. Everyone — myself included — said Romney's choice of Ryan signaled his intention to run a campaign of contrasts, to be bold and, yes, to be specific. But at least at this point, that isn't happening.

Watching Paul Ryan whine about the injustices of the supposedly evil liberal media, while other conservative and partisan Republicans whine about the supposedly evil rigged liberal polls, I thought of Ayn Rand. Didn't Mitt Romney recently castigate much of the nation for failing to take personal responsibility? Give Ron Paul credit for this: Agree with him or not, at least he does some justice to the philosophy of Rand and the concept of taking responsibility. As for Paul Ryan, if Ayn Rand ever heard Ryan's whining about the media, she would give him a serious spanking and demand a refund of her campaign donation.

Mitt Romney and Republicans are in big trouble because the Republican brand has become disastrously unpopular. Romney is not the cause, he is the symptom. As I wrote in my last column, “Why Romney is losing,” Republicans have created a reverse-Rorschach syndrome in which large masses of voters consider GOP derision, originally directed against liberals and Democrats, to be directed at them.

Today’s example is Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri. Leading Republicans disowned Akin after he opined about "legitimate rape.” Then they reversed to support him, and he insulted women again, suggesting Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is "unladylike.” Does war on women ring a bell?