Personally, I am not very worried about the debates. People like Joe Biden and he’s a pretty good debater. He probably had the best line of the 2008 debates when he came up with that thing about Guiliani, a noun, a verb, and 9/11. He did a great job against Palin in what was frankly an otherworldly and starbursty situation. As for the presidential debates, the last two shouldn’t be a problem. The second debate is a town hall forum with a Long Island audience of “undecided” voters. That’s home field territory for Obama. The last debate is on foreign policy, where it will be nearly impossible for Romney to make any progress on discussing the economy. It’s the first debate that will focus exclusively on domestic issues that offers Romney his chance to shine. Except, you know, he wants to destroy Medicare and take away your home mortgage deduction to finance a tax break on rich people and corporations.
Are you worried?
“He did a great job against Palin in what was frankly an otherworldly and starbusty situation.”
I think you meant starbursty but then again, maybe not.
I am not worried. The media will sin it as a Romney win, the immediate after debate polls will indicate the viewers thoguht Obama won. Then it will all be forgotten, unless either makes a major mistake.
Actually, I don’t even plan on watching the debates.
Ditto here. I would only watch it if I were doing active blogging this year and then only as a responsibility to blog readers.
The debates don’t count much and more of my time is occupied with downticket races and phonebanking.
I look for followup though and hope there are one or two good zingers from Obama and Biden.
I rarely if ever watch any of the televised things. I’ve become spoiled by DVR. I hate commercials, I hate pundits and I’m spoiled by instant replay (I hear a good line and then I re-watch. I’ll admit, I played the “I’m no longer a candidate, I’m the President line” from Obama at the convention more than once).
What I will usually do if I’m not at work is follow liveblogs or livechats or twitter at blogs with commenters I trust.
Then I may go back and watch what I recorded at a later date, especially if I can’t do any of the things I said above.
Not worried. Mitt will tie himself into knots trying to please his various incompatible condtituencies. If he is reasonable the wingers will get upset. If he is nuts then normal people will turn away in disgust. And if he tries to fact check Obama during the debate, Obama will destroy him just as he did the republican congressional caucus at their retreat 3.5 years ago.
I’m actually surprised there hasn’t been more kicking back from the Nat’l Homebuilders and Realtors on the mortgage deduction. They’re both pretty staunchly Rep but people are having trouble qualifying for the inventory that’s on hand, without the mortgage deduction sales will suffer.
It will be interesting to see if Obama hits the debates hard with specifics leaving Mitt to wallow in his shadowland of unspecifics.
I must have drank too much KOOLADE in the last 9 months.
Mitt AINT the sharpest tack, nor “quick” on his feet. Obama is too smart and cool, and has had better debate “competition” with Hillary and Mr. Wilson than Mitt has ever faced.
Ryan Vs. Biden: Ryan is a much stronger opponent than Sara P( the size of her brain; the EA would be wasted space), but so is every sane person in America. Ryan’s “imaginary” numbers will be shown to be the “pixie Dust” the Republicans feel the other 47% are too Stupid to understand. Ryan will be angry; Joe will be JOE!
Stronger than Palin, yes. But Joe had to tread lightly to avoid cries of being unkind to a woman. He doesn’t ahve that restraint this time around.
The thing about Obama is that he’s like the MIchael Jordan or the MIchael Phelps of politics. That means no big mistakes almost ever, insane concentration, and rarely losing. I’ll watch them because it’s a little social event, and a part of me always worries.
The man who can’t open his mouth without saying something stupid vs. the most talented orator of our time? No worries. The “zombie-eyed granny starver” vs. the big-hearted, down-to-earth charmer? No worries.
The thing that boggles my mind–even now, after so many years–is that so many wingnuts still believe that the debates will cripple Obama. They are still so convinced that he’s a charlatan and a fake and who knows what else. They are so very sure that Romney will somehow “expose” Obama’s “lies” about…what, exactly?
It’s beyond through the looking glass. I don’t even know what to really call it anymore other than pure delusional insanity. I really don’t–and I don’t mean to just gripe about it because I don’t know what to do about it or how to help. You can’t talk to them about it because they won’t listen–but that’s all I’ve ever been good at: the one-on-one stuff.
It kind of frightens me to think about what the diehard wingnuts might do or how they might react if the president wins in a blowout like BooMan is anticipating. They own too many guns to go quietly.
It depends on how many of the gun-toters would be riled up at Romney losing. If it were one of their guys, it would be a different matter. They can pin this one squarely on Romney. Just like establishment Democrats did with McGovern and Mondale.
These days considering the moderators is as important as considering the debating skills of the candidates. As Al Gore found to his sorrow.
The only thing I’m curious about with the Obama/Romney debate is to see when Romney hauls out “There you go again” and to see how badly he fumbles the delivery.
Think Obama will pre-empt him?
Didn’t he already do that? Wasn’t that part of his DNC speech?
it was a part of Clinton’s speech. Clinton quoted Reagan in his convention speech.
Oh right, that’s where I heard it. Thanks.
Aha, OK.
I still bet Romney will try to haul it out. Or if not that, some other cargo-cult Reaganism.
I’m terribly worried. I keep getting unpopped kernels at the bottom of my popcorn batches, and I’m going to need every available one.
Guard them closely ~ the popcorn crop here really suffered as a result of the Summer of Mordor we had here. Should have bought popcorn futures, but I guess I don’t think enough like a job-creator to catch those things except in retrospect.
I wouldn’t say I’m worried. I do think there are potential traps for both Obama and Biden.
As James Fallows detailed in a story for The Atlantic, Romney is a skilled and practiced debater. He’s good at absorbing lots of data and information. He does his homework. He’s good at preparing his lines and delivering them. His one major weakness is in responding to the unexpected. If neither the moderator nor Pres. Obama hits him with something he’s not prepared for, then Romney could easily win a debate or three.
Ryan may be a zombie-eyed granny starver, but he’s also the kind of pol who, under the right circumstances, could make Biden look old, past his prime, and out of it. Biden successfully debated Palin because he was so disciplined; he’ll need a similar level of discipline to deal with the (somewhat different) challenge Ryan presents.
“He’s good at preparing his lines and delivering them”
Where? All I ever see is his increasing loudness. He equates loudness with pointmaking.
Kinda like Nick.
I’m wondering if his ability to memorize facts might partly explain these weird episodes when Mitt blurts out the truth in stark contradiction to the message of his campaign, so the campaign has to immediately walk back whatever he’s said. The most recent I recall is when he was appearing with Ryan and he stated correctly that Obama had not raised taxes in his first term. Ryan blanched, because the approved Repug line is that Obama has raised taxes 19 times. Mitt may maintain a store of actual facts separately from that for strategic lies and the wall between at times at times breaks down. Would be fun to see that in the debates.
Where? In debates—when he’s had time to prepare and practice.
At least, that’s Fallows’ conclusion after watching tape of every campaign debate Mitt’s been in: 1994 v. Kennedy, 2002 v. O’Brien, 2008 and 2012 v. other Republican presidential contenders.
Booman, do you know if these debates will have instant after-the-debate polls like in 2008?
Personally and with nothing but gut feeling, I suspect that Romney will do fine, but not well enough to matter. I keep going back to what I’ve said in the past. I think people still underestimate Obama’s debating skills. The always bring up the Philly debate with Hilary which from then on influenced all his other debates with Hilary…Obama sexist towards Hilary and of course the PUMA phenomenon. Then the “that one” with McCain, but in those cases all the punditry scored those debates for McCain with the exception of the “that one” debate. And low and behold when non-Village idiots were asked to score the debate, Obama won them all.
So I expect more something like this for Romney:
High Expectations for Romney in Debate
I’m looking forward to Obama needling Romney to the point where Romney calls him uppity, or even a ni-CLANG!
I’d like to hear Obama (but won’t) suggest that any Presidential candidate with money stashed overseas is at least un-American, probably unpatriotic, and heading towards treasonous. It’s like betting against your own team. That might be the kind of charge Romney hasn’t prepared for.
I only watch bc I liveblog them, and my friends enjoy reading it; I’m a direct news-line for about 100-200 people who otherwise don’t hear about shit.
It won’t be as fun as liveblogging the GOP debates, but should be fun nonetheless. Romney has a thin-skin, I want to see it broken.
Same as with me. I have a good bit of friends who follow, but I do a running commentary on my FB page and I tell anyone who don’t wanna get all the updates to unsubscribe from my feed until it’s over.
Um okay. It is a stressful job, but I would hope no matter how ambitious you may be that you’d not run for POTUS if you don’t think ur mentally up for it… I’m just sayin’
Ann Romney: If elected, “mental well-being” Mitt’s biggest challenge
So Halperin is as much as shill for Romney as the next person, so what’s his bag on this statement about “giving” POTUS the edge. Maybe Halperin’s just hedging his bets, or he’s heard something, or he’s helping to play up the expectations game for his friends at the Romney camp. Espcecially, since I’ve seen in almost every darn interview and segment he’s done on MSNBC that he always tries to go out of hi way to say gotta win this, maybe the Romney camp said, hey, “stop it! you’re putting the expectation too high”.
Now all of a suddent he says this:
I’m not worried about the debates either, although I’m thinking I might just watch only the first and the last one…. I think the first debate has the potential to be one of the most watched ever. I think this because of the MASSIVE amount of press and ads flying back and forth between two candidates who have NEVER really been in the same room at the same time, and one candidate who no one has ANY clue what he believes. I can’t wait, and Obama is gonna clean Mittens clock.
With Hillary, Obama had to worry about being seen as attacking a white lady.
With McCain, he had to constantly show respect for the War Hero and NEVER suggest McCain was a confused old geezer.
This time he’s up against a draft-dodging, tax-evading, flip-flopping “self-made” elitist snake-oil salesman who got rich by not caring how many lives he destroyed along the way.
Hmmm, I wonder how it will go.
BTW, I heard today that John Kerry is playing the part of Romney in Obama’s debate prep. Good choice.
ummmmm….No snark, but why is Kerry a particularly good choice?
Personally, I would’ve chosen three: a center right democratic state senator from AL or GA, a copycat fanatic from Colorado and a moderate democrat from a red district in the upper midwest. Now THAT is a debate prep!
As a fellow MA pol, Kerry knows all of the faces and insecurities of Romney from over the years. And it doesn’t hurt that Kerry also comes off as a rich Ivy League elitist (the real Romney) and hangs in similar social circles.
Of course some variety can help as well, and I’m sure they’ll have strategists who think like Romney’s handlers, dreaming up other possible Romney responses to everything. But Kerry makes a good stand-in.
hmmmmm…sounds like you’re right. Thanks.
Obama’s not a great debater in the way that he’s a great speaker, but he’s still pretty damned good. By the end of the primary campaign he was holding his own against Hilary Clinton, who is very good behind a debate podium, and he destroyed McCain.
Romney is not a bad debater, and he’s certainly not awful at it the way he’s awful at retail politics. He actually did pretty well in most of the GOP primary debates (and I know because I watched way too freaking many of them), though he swallowed his foot memorably on a couple occasions.
So I think Obama has a bit of an edge, but I still think the most likely outcome is a tie.
The thing is, a tie isn’t nearly enough for Romney at this point.
Whenever I think about Romney at the debates, I think of that video where Romney tries to redirect the chant from “Ryan! Ryan!” to “Romney, Ryan!” He couldn’t even bear a cheer for his own running mate without making a fool of himself. How will he bear standing beside his opponent, being criticized or accused of being wrong?
When he feels upstaged, he loses all sense of audience. Same could be said for Ryan at the AARP event. Faced with “Boo!” he couldn’t stop himself, but just hammered on with his talking points.
Both of them cannot face direct opposition.
Worried about the President handling himself in a debate? I’d be more likely to worry about a shark in chummed waters…
What I remember most from Romney’s previous debates are things like:
“I’m Running For Office For Pete’s Sake, I Can’t Have Illegals”, “We ought to double Guantanamo”, self-deportation and the $10,000 bet.
I don’t believe the hype about his debating skills.
Can anyone show me where Mitt has performed well in a debate?
So the first debate tends to get the highest ratings and set the one – with special exceptions for a freak show situation like Palin last time around. Jim Lehrer is the moderator and 4 years ago he kept trying to get the two candidates to talk to each other – instead of alternating speeches he tried (unsuccessfully) to make it an exchange of ideas.
I suspect that the first debate is going to focus a lot on two contrasting views of the facts. At a bare minimum you have the dueling plans on health care and taxes. Likely you’ll also have dueling representations of the economy and job losses under Obama (take away the first two months of unemployment free fall that Obama inherited and the numbers aren’t bad – include them as they do in Romney ads and they are horrible).
The real questions are how the candidates are prepared to fight for their version of the facts – which creates the first impressions for the audience – and second how the press plays it afterwards. In the 1992 VP debate Quayle claimed to quote from an exact page in Gore’s recent book and Gore denied it – it was a complete lie but except for Molly Ivins no one in the media commented on it, so the audience was left with two different stories and no way to know who was right – but the specificity helped Quayle in terms of perception.
Today we have armies of fact checkers but their strongest bias is to make it seem like both sides are equal. This has historically played to conservative’s advantage – on issues like global warming or tax breaks for the rich all they want to do is cloud the issue and create doubt. During campaigns like Bush-Gore they want people to ignore policy and focus on character – as they’ve defined it in the media.
I think that will be true here as well – the conservative side needs to cloud the facts because when people get what the GOP house-passed Ryan plan actually does to Medicare they go very negative on the Ryan ticket. Likewise when they understand Romney’s tax plan or understand what we lose if ObamaCare is overturned they’ll go very negative. So Romney’s strategy is to somehow paint a negative picture of Obama on the economy and health care (actually, to avoid health care as much as possible and get back to economy – the more they talk about that the worse for Romney) and to create the impression that both sides have their own facts, and somehow create the perception that Obama is in over his head and Romney is the more competent for economics.
For me, at a minimum, Obama has to avoid the kind of “spin” that is typical of convention speeches – where you selectively choose beneficial facts while not disclosing the full picture. The problem in this context is that if Obama does this then the “fact checkers” will use those elements of “spin” to counter-balance Romney’s blatant falsehoods and make them seem equal.
Then I’d say the second thing he needs to do is to call Romney out on his easily verified lies on the campaign trail. No, not the “apology tour” thing – first that’s foreign policy, for the third debate, and second if that topic comes up it hurts Obama even if he wins the point. I’m referring to the “Obama has cut defense” lie and the “government size as drastically increased under Obama” lie. Obama would also do well to point out more than once that he kept his promise to lower taxes on all but the top 5% and did so in his second month – and hasn’t raised taxes since then. He also should take credit for the payroll tax holiday.
Obama would also do well to address the 47% in a simple, elegant way. Something like: “53% in 2009 paid federal income tax, yes. Another 28% also paid taxes on their 1040 IRS forms – social security and medicare. If you ask those people they probably don’t know that none of their taxes were technically income taxes – but they do know that they worked hard and paid their federal taxes. Of the remaining 19%, 10% were retired and receiving social security and medicare – benefits they earned from a lifetime of taxes. The last 9% were students and the under employed.”
Obama has an opportunity if he plays his cards well not only to seal the deal with his campaign in the first debate but also to get the middle voters to link the GOP as a whole to their policies – and that will help the downticket races.
Ultimately I have to agree with Boo that I’m not worried – Romney really doesn’t have a good card hand to deal with. He has to muddy the facts but he can’t fall back on his background (the only achievement he has that reasonates with voters was RomneyCare) or on his personality. But I do worry that all Obama will try to do is hold serve, when he could go for the kill against the GOP.