Stephen Green reported live, drunkblogging last night, the first presidential debate:
7:03PM Wow. Obama looks mad, now that the subject is the ill effects of the law bearing his name.
I mean, I CAN BURN YOUR SOUL WITH MY EYEBALLS.
7:04PM From the peanut gallery: “You can stay on your parents’ Medicare.â€
7:23PM It’s been more of the same while our servers struggled to handle the load. And that is: Obama, peevish, scripted. Romney, relaxed, and owning the stage like one of the “big, swinging dicks†from Wall Street, which Obama both despises and relies upon.
And that’s the trick tonight, isn’t it? Obama has always relied on the big money men in private, while disparaging them in public. But what happens when he comes up against one of them in the most public way possible?
Now we know the answer, and it ain’t pretty.
The president appeared small and petulant and reactive. Romney looked presidential and secure and proactive. There was only one president on the stage tonight, and he doesn’t (yet) hold the office.
My high school debate coach was a diminutive, brilliant woman named Susan. All of 5-foot nothing, she had enormous glasses, a high, raucous South Carolina accent and a mind like Google for obscure facts. Once, during a break in a debate competition where I’d blown an argument, she said something totally incongruous that snapped me out of a growing funk.
She cocked a finger and beckoned me to lean down. She whispered, “Stop thinking about making points. You know the arguments. You just go in there and knock his pecker in the dirt.” …
Romney should walk on to the stage in Denver knowing he’s arguing against a man who is held aloft on a creaky, tottering artifice of broken jobs promises, failed policies and a promised age of social and economic miracles that never came. President Participation Trophy isn’t the giant, transformative figure of 2008: he’s got a record now, and it’s ugly.
Charles Lipson, Peter B. Ritzma Professor in Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago
My Yale classmate Charlie Lipson has some good advice for Mitt Romney in tonight’s debate.
Take advantage of the fact that Obama’s debating skills will be rusty. “Even the best athletes, if they take off for awhile, become a little rusty. He does sometimes make mistakes when he’s not reading from the teleprompter, and he has a notoriously thin skin, which could allow some of the less appealing parts of his personality to come across. The big advantage to Romney is that the news media is so openly opposed to him and spins everything that the real advantage is that the debate is actually watched by people, so it’s less mediated. A lot of times peoples’ attitudes toward the debate don’t form for a day or two. So the chance of NBC and CBS and the New York Times to spin the debate afterwards and make it kind of appear to be a foregone conclusion about what happened is not entirely missing.”
+ “Raise the issue of the deficit, but the key for Romney is to somehow connect the deficit to concrete and real problems that America is facing today—and will be facing unless it is solved. The tradition, until a couple of years ago, until the Tea Party, was that the deficit was politically irrelevant—at least electorally irrelevant—and I think that the Romney campaign has not really done an effective job of showing how the deficit problems are harming ordinary Americans. President Obama’s statement the other day that he’s responsible for only 10 percent of the increased deficit during his time in office is deeply disingenuous. If Romney is unable to attack that effectively, he’s missed a grand opportunity.â€
+ Lay out just how sick the economy is, despite an uptick in consumer confidence. “Normally at this point you get what’s called a V-shaped recovery, so you get four percent annual growth. The fact that we’re getting 1.5, plus or minus, it shows that something is deeply wrong.†[I mention to Lipson that I’m told that President Obama believes the economy is going to come “roaring†back and that what keeps him up at night is the prospect of Mitt Romney taking credit for Obama’s policies.] Lipson says: “He should sleep easier. At four years after the crisis, we’re still in absolute economic stagnation. We’re not producing enough jobs each month to meet the number of new entrants into the work place, and so real unemployment is actually rising. Yes, the economy could come back, but it’s not going to come roaring back. There are no external engines in the world economy that can help pull America up. China is growing far slower than it was growing a couple of years ago, and Europe even slower than America, and many of the key economies in Europe have slipped into a double-dip recession. I think there are very serious crises ahead.”
+ “Point to the fact that the big programs that Obama has launched, the stimulus and health care and Dodd Frank didn’t create jobs and added huge amounts of regulatory burden and uncertainty to the economy. He’s got to tie this slow growth to Obama’s policies. If he can’t do that he won’t win the debate.â€
The Nation’s David Corn revealed at Mother Jones this “secret video, in which “Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters.” and in which (supposedly) “When he doesn’t know a camera’s rolling, the GOP candidate shows his disdain for half of America.”
The far left seems to think that the startling revelation that Republicans, including Mitt Romney, look down upon the democrat philosophy of entitlement and government dependency is a terribly effective attack meme. Sure, spongers and looters are going to be offended by being identified as what they are, but they weren’t really going to be voting for Mitt Romney anyway.
Paul Rahe observes that Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate defines his campaign and justifies his candidacy.
In choosing Paul Ryan as his Vice-Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has opted to go for broke, and he has indicated that he is a serious man — less concerned with becoming President of the United States than with saving the country from the disaster in store for it if we not radically reverse course, willing to risk a loss for the sake of being able to win a mandate for reform.
I have been unsparing in my criticism of Romney’s political record. I unsay not one word about that. If we were to judge him honestly by his conduct as a Senatorial candidate in Massachusetts and as that state’s Governor, I believe that we would find him sadly wanting.
I have also consistently been of the opinion that, of the declared Republican presidential aspirants, Mitt Romney was the least unacceptable. In his private capacity, he is a man of excellent character; as a businessman, he was accomplished in the extreme; and, as a candidate, he consistently displayed the discipline required. There were others in the race who had good qualities, but they lacked one or more of the crucial qualities that Romney possesses.
I also hazarded a guess — that current circumstances might make a genuine conservative of Mitt Romney, that his understanding of the fiscal crisis we face might very well force him to think more deeply about the moral roots of that fiscal crisis, which is to say, about the inner logic of the administrative entitlements state and the moral as well as the fiscal bankruptcy produced by that inner logic. I was accused of wishful thinking, and the accusation was just. For my wish was, indeed, father to the thought, but this does not mean that the thought was wrong.
Governor Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate suggests, in fact, that my suspicions were correct. For by making this choice, Mitt Romney is declaring war. There will be no evasion, no triangulation, no attempt to mask what is at stake in this election. Instead, Romney and Ryan will directly confront Barack Obama and call him to account for putting us on a ruinous course.
This will alter radically the dynamics of the race. The money spent by Obama trying to demonize Governor Romney will prove to be money entirely wasted. The election is not going to be about Mitt Romney. It is not going to be about the sexual revolution. It is not going to be about Bain Capital. It is going to be about the failed policies of Barack Obama, about their dangerous character, and about the sober, sound alternative the Republicans represent.
This will help the Republicans in Senate and House races immeasurably, for it will give Romney and Ryan coattails — now, without a doubt, the candidates in these other races have something concrete on which to run: repeal Obamacare, pare back the entitlements state, reform our system of taxation, and put our fiscal house in order. No one will doubt the capacity of the Republicans to rule.
I have predicted that Romney will win by a landslide. The choice of Paul Ryan means that Romney has chosen the path that will maximize the significance of his victory and its impact on the races for seats in the House and Senate. As in 1980, this is going to be a national election — in which local particularities count for much less than usual.
The Romney campaign wants you to download its mobile app to be among the first to find out who Mitt is going to pick as his running mate, but if past history is any guide, you might want to instead be looking at Wikipedia — and whether any of the leading contenders’ entries are being suddenly brushed up.
Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page was updated at least 68 times the day before John McCain announced her selection, with another 54 changes made in the five previous days previous. Tim Pawlenty, another leading contender for McCain’s favor, had 54 edits on August 28th, with just 12 in the five previous days. By contrast, the other likely picks — Romney, Kay Bailey Hutchison — saw far fewer changes. The same burst of last-minute editing appeared on Joe Biden’s Wikipedia page, Terry Gudaitis of Cyveillance, told the Washington Post.
Judith A. Klinghoffer read a recent biography of Mitt Romney, The Real Romney, and drew the remarkable conclusion that Mitt Romney is the contemporary equivalent of Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy.
I, a 2008 McCain voter, found myself in a position similar to that of Elizabeth Bennett as she was contemplating Fitzwilliam Darcy’s portrait, as a son, husband, father, friend, businessman, governor, “how many people’s happiness were in his guardianship! – How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! – How much of good or evil must be done by him!†Increasingly, I came to realize that the man not only can be trusted but that he did not have “any inappropriate pride†but just enough to make sure he achieves his goals without sacrificing his honor. As in Darcy’s case, by his deeds you shall know him.
Poles refer to an ultra-conservative Lithuanian as an old żubr, “a bison.” This European bison would be pretty close to my idea of an ideal Romney appointee to the court.
Paul Waldman, at the (left-wing) American Prospect, says it’s time to start panicking, libs.
if there’s anything that ought to make you afraid of a Mitt Romney presidency, it’s this. First of all, if Romney wins he will be under enormous pressure to make sure that anyone he appoints will be not just conservative, but extremely conservative. Remember what happened when George W. Bush tried to appoint Harriet Miers: the right wing had a category 5 freak-out, not because they thought Miers was going to be a liberal, but because they couldn’t be absolutely, positively sure that she wouldn’t be a down-the-line Republican ideologue forever more. Unlike Romney, Bush had no particular need to prove to them that he was a real conservative, but the pressure was great enough that he eventually withdrew her nomination and nominated Samuel Alito, who was exactly what they wanted.
And that will be a shadow of the pressure exerted on a President Romney. So when he gets his chance to make an appointment, there is just no way he will do anything other than select someone pre-approved by the Republican base.
, and drew the remarkable conclusion that Mitt Romney is the contemporary equivalent of Jane Austen’s 
