Role Reversals

It seemed like an unequal contest, actually.  One candidate was confident and prepared and more than capable of mustering facts and figures and statistics at easy recall to build his case, while the other seemed entirely psychologically numbed by the polite exchange of views at the first of the campaign debates that took place on Wednesday evening in Denver, Colorado.

Mitt Romney, left, and Barack Obama at the presidential debate. Photo credit: Win McNamee/Getty Image

Sixty-seven million viewers witnessed the debate.  And those who missed it live could always pick it up on podcasts, after the fact.  It wasn't boring.  It was, in fact, an exchange well worth watching.  Revealing as it did an impressive performance on the part of the Republican presidential challenger, Mitt Romney.  And, unfortunately, a somewhat befuddled-appearing Barack Obama.

As Governor Romney refuted President Obama's assertions on the Republican contender's tax initiatives and continually repeated his version of "no new taxes", the president seemed to falter, bemused that his strategy wasn't working, face to face.  Not his strategy necessarily, but the one that his handlers persuaded him would present the winning scenario.

The massive $16-trillion deficit hasn't been trimmed.  The debt is staggering.  The economy remains fragile.  The unemployed are becoming more desperate by the day.  Medicare isn't happy news, even as the president repeated over and over again his treasured "Obamacare", tripping it lovingly over his tongue; his legacy gift to those who placed their trust in him.

They're both courting the middle class, each claiming that through a stable, employed and comfortable middle class the country will be won, and each claiming to have the support of the middle class.  Mitt Romney promises his presidency will rely heavily on bipartisan agreements.  A sore point, since this was a promise made by President Obama, and a more partisan-fractured Congress would be hard to recall.

They were both in agreement that high wage earners, America's wealthy class, could sustain increased taxation.  Governor Romney promised to cut programs that would add to the deficit.  "I'm not going to keep on spending money on things we need to borrow money from China to pay for."  Good one.

The rejoinder was that the deficit/debt was inherited in the guise of two costly foreign wars that never, ever, seemed to end.  Those two wars, said President Obama, "that were paid for on a credit card ... and then a massive economic crisis."

"You have been president for four years and you said you would cut the deficit in half and you haven't done it.  We still show trillion-dollar deficits every year."  Governor Romney had President Obama on the defensive and it showed.  Gone the aplomb, his lecturing points interspersed with long, hesitant "aaand"s, betraying insecurity.

This was not his finest hour.

"There is no question in my mind that if the president were to be re-elected you will continue to see a middle class squeeze with incomes going down and prices going up.
"You will see chronic unemployment.  We have 43 straight months of unemployment above 8%.  If I am president, I will help create 12 million new jobs in this country."

This represented a stark reversal of then-candidate Obama's confident assertions of "hope" for the future that he never quite managed to deliver.