How the President Lost the Argument

Debates are usually fact based discussion where there is a moderator and each participant respects the moderator and the time for which they are allotted to speak. Normally in a debate, the participants answer the question asked with supporting facts and respond to their opponents’ comments with additional facts to support their point of view. What you saw last night in the Presidential "Debate" was not in fact as it was called, rather an open forum where two candidates rattled their campaign stump speeches, one candidate double talked and over talked everyone and the other spoke in too much detail that went far above the heads of most. This in fact was not a debate, yet at the end a winner was declared and that winner was Mitt Romney.  What is consolation prize for winning this contest, a day of good media coverage and possibly a bump in the polls. This race will likely tighten after last night and remain close from now until Nov. 6th. Whether or not you support Mitt and his policies, you must admit he really needed a day of good media coverage.

If you are a political junkie like me, then you would watch the debate between just about anyone and be able to dissect it. But this one was difficult for all the reasons listed above and more. You see the President and Mitt were not debating issues or facts or even plans for the country. They were debating two things: Performance and expectations. The lead up to this debate was all about who would perform better and who then in turn would defy expectations. Performance was all in control of the candidates. Mitt performed well, the President did not. Then there are those expectations. How pesky they are. You see Gov. Romney was expected to struggle through this debate and not expected to be able to box with the President on details. Most pundits expected him to perform as best he could. Therefore the bar was low. He took a flying leap over that bar and soared to a win in the real debate (Performance and Expectation). President Obama on the other hand is the great orator. He speaks so well, folks think he is super duper smart, he commands a room, he is poised. Hence, the expectation was that he would perform well in the debate. He did not perform well. He fell short of expectations. He therefore lost. I know for some of you reading this, that last line is a hard one to read. I can imagine the eye roll, teeth kissing that just went on (I know you guys pretty well). But here is the hard truth, in a debate about performance and expectation the President lost. When we get to those things that are seemingly unimportant to debates now - facts, the President had them on his side. Had this been a position paper submission, the President would have crushed Romney. Alas it isn't and he didn't. But let's talk about why he didn't.

Let's keep it all the way real, Willard Mitt Romney is totally crushable. Anyone who changes positions as much as he does and says the kind of condescending, narrow minded, limited things he said is easily crushable. That is if they don't get to speak back. Mitt fought for a chance to respond to everything said about him. He challenged the Presidents assertion of facts with lies. He repeated buzz words for his base like Food Stamps several times. He emphasized the "Creator" several times, he spoke louder and with what sounded like conviction. The fact that he didn't speak in truth didn't seem to matter. “A wise man once told me don’t argue with fools, cause people from a distance cant tell who is who.” (Maybe the President is listening to more Jigga than we realized)  Mitt appeared to have won the argument (which is what that was because no one moderated it) because the President refused to jump into the fray and argue with him. 

Entitlement is defined as having the right or feeling of claim to something.   The man who despises entitlement suffers from a strong sense of it himself.  He felt entitled to speak, even after his time was up. He felt entitled to over talk both the President and the so-called Moderator.  He felt entitled to tell lies in the face of truth and do so with a seemingly straight face.  And he feels entitled to be President (something I find way more offensive than those 47% who feel entitled to food and housing).  That is what Mitt suffers from, entitlement.  Yet in his feeling of entitlement to be heard, he came off as more in control of his message, more secure in his belief and more in command of himself than he has ever been.  He exercised his entitlement yesterday and it gave him a win. 

The President suffers from something as well.  He suffers from a sense of intellectual superiority.  He is highly skilled, highly intelligent and bases the majority of the things that come out of his mouth on fact and deep conviction.  He doesn’t like to bend because he truly believes he sits on the side of right.  Whether or not you agree with the side he sits on, you cant argue that the man doesn’t believe whole heartedly that he is on the right path, doing the right thing for the common good.  He believes this so much that he doesn’t do well in debates with people who he believes to be inferior to him intellectually or those without conviction.  The reason he could debate Hillary Clinton and compete with her for all those months and then hire her is because he always felt she was a worthy opponent. They sit generally on the same side of right.  So in the end, he can rock with her.  The reason he and John McCain seem to still have “beef” is because he believed through his win he proved his superiority, yet every time he sees McCain he is calling him inferior.  That is not something that works for this President.  And that showed last night.  The President lost the debate because he appeared annoyed by Romney (because he was).  He lost the debate because he was using these silly things we call facts and specifics and folks (who are his supporters surprisingly) were tweeting for him to dumb it down.  The President kept looking at the camera, getting annoyed with the American people too.  You could sense through the screen every time he looked directly at the camera that he was saying “come on, I KNOW yall are smarter than this, this is just common sense and I am right.”  He gives the American people so much credit that he speaks to us as if we are all as smart as he is.  He believes common sense beats needless complexity all the time.  He thinks facts beat lies every time.  He really is that eternal optimist that we voted for in 2008.  That is why he was so disgusted that he had stand on the stage next to Mitt Romney who has made political career out of saying whatever it takes to get elected, then doing whatever it takes to get along and leaving a job before he can be fired.  That fact alone annoys the President.  Even through all his debate prep, he couldn’t hide that.  So he looked down, he scribbled notes, he smiled, he shook his head.  So many moments came and went where I thought the President was going to give us a Mortal Combat moment and seize Gov. Romney’s heart right from his chest with a killer come back line.  I even fantasized that he would just walk over to him and push him on the floor.  But, alas, none of that happened.  The President let his intellectual superiority, his need to live above the fray and being President for four years (when is the last time he had to really debate anyone about anything, he is the President you know) get the best of him.  And no matter how many facts he had on his side, he just refused to jump into the fight with Mitt.  So Mitt swung wildly and aggressively and that is all people saw.  The President stood outside the ring watching, thinking, who is this clown?  Mitt never made contact with the President’s jaw so there was no chance of a knockout.  But he took more swings and that got him the win and yes in the realm of a debate this was a win. 

Now the President needs to go back and decide how he wants to deal with this fight next round.  As much as he wants to, he cannot stand outside the ring next time.  And as much as it may not come naturally, he needs to punch and punch hard.  But he needs to do it with the precision, grace and facts that he is comfortable asserting.  It doesn’t always take many hits to knock out an opponent, especially one with a glass jaw like Mr. Romney.   Sometimes it is just one well-timed, precisely aimed hit.  If for some reason you doubt the President can pull this off, just take a look at his track record.  He has lost debates in the past, in fact he lost the first two out of three debates with Senator McCain in 2008.  Yet today he IS the President.  That should tell you all you need to know. 

The next two debates will also be about performance and expectation.  Yet after the win last night, Mitt has now raised the bar for himself and will be expected to do even better than last night.  The question will be whether Mitt is just getting on a roll or if he hit his peak.  The next debate will answer that question.  And hopefully a few additional ones about actual issues folks care about.  After all they are both asking to be the President of the United States not best debater.