Obama vs. Romney

Many people expected Obama to come roaring back in his second debate, after he showed a rather listless performance on the first. I was quite skeptical of that expectation. I thought debates were like a football match: once it comes to pass, no amount of desperation can give you back the edge you lost, by luck or design.  I expected Romney to come prepared and spirited in the second debate as well, so that the best performance Obama could achieve is a draw. 

My expectation, however, happened to be outright wrong when Obama came fired up and proved his worth as a matchless communicator. As most voters agreed, I think Obama won that debate. Before the debate, some people said that the election will be lost if Obama’s performance was as bad as the first one. According to one reporter, the same people commented after the debate that, if Obama had performed in his first debate as well as he did in the second, the election would have been over then. That leaves the debate score so far between the two candidates at one-one.

What made all the difference? I think, first and foremost Obama’s complacency was a major reason for his failure during the first debate. Being an incumbent who has been in office for four years, and hand having an increasing lead in the polls must have made Obama the lazy guy we saw in the first debate. When quite suddenly all the lead in the polls disappeared, and the chance of winning his second term became as uncertain as a flip of the coin, Obama became the feisty debater we saw in the second debate.  It is just amazing to see that wherever you go a human performs better when he gets a shove.

Then, the second reason is of course that Obama loves town-hall type meetings. He has frequently mentioned his love for talking to people face-to-face (barring Governor Romney, of course). In the first debate, Obama showed his low interest to engage Romney in a real conversation, perhaps knowing very well that their differences are too big to reconcile. Luckily for Obama, the second debate gave him a much-needed audience whom he could directly address.  

No doubt, the debate involved a lot of low politics. Romney once characterized Obama as talk-only (“I know the president is good at communicating his positions.”) Obama did not hesitate to attack Romney for investing in China, and even worse for having a large pension. The two candidates thus seemed happy to bolster their positions among their entrenched supporters at the cost of winning the much-needed vote of independent and undecided voters.

In a stark contrast to his first debate, Obama said NO quite many times: “That is not true, Governor.” And yet, he took every chance possible to talk about the Governor’s plans in the ways he preferred, (mis)characterizing him as a flip-flopper, an out-of-touch rich guy with only the interests of the rich at heart. Obama played a calculated game; many times he tried to have the last say in a topic, and called on the moderator to stop Romney from going back and responding to Obama’s last comments.  He sometimes ignored Romney’s question, and twisted topics in ways that favored his arguments. He appeared to be a master player who knows his game, and one who is there only to win. Indeed, he was displaying some of the qualities of a good basketball player, which he must have honed when playing for his high school team in Hawaii. The firm positions he took in some cases, and the cool attitude he displayed while making them clear is reminiscent of the young Obama’s basketball career, described as follows from his biography:

“[H]e never bullied or became belligerent on the court, even while stating his case and standing his ground. He was not always right, but he almost always won the argument, and he did it without making anyone mad.”

Coming back to Governor Romney, he indeed made several of the points that helped him win the first debate. He articulately listed the string of promises Obama had failed to deliver, and called the president’s records a disaster. Unfortunately, his plans for cutting the deficit were seriously challenged by one of Obama's most successful lines of attack: “Now, Governor Romney was a very successful investor. If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal and neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.”

More importantly, the Governor’s arguments lost the touch of brilliance they carried in the first debate. For obvious reasons, Romney has put all his eggs in one basket, and the economy was nearly the only thing he is here to fix. Even about the economy, his best arguments seemed to involve nothing more than spouting endless numbers that show the economic performance he wished to achieve. It is doubtful if anyone understood the singnicance of these numbers, let alone the likelihood of their achievement. 

  

Second the Governor appeared out of touch, and indeed insensible to the subtleties of social policy in most areas other than the economy. The way he answered questions regarding women’s rights was not formative policy wise. The awkward statement about the binder full of women soon became more memorable than any other useful thing he said. 

I could clearly feel my preferences shifting back to Obama after this debate, revealing the power of debates in changing minds. Indeed Romney has managed to erase any gaps he had with Obama since his successful first debate. The success of Obama’s second debate seemed to have small if any effect on the polls. Apart from the Gallop poll that shows Romney leading by a wide margin, all other polls show that the race is essentially a tie. It seems the presidency will go on unrewarded until election night. As the sudden shift after the first debate showed, Americans can be quite astute at changing their minds and picking a hero in a flash. So perhaps we should remain open for more surprises during the third debate and the remaining few days before the election.