Who won the Debate?

[stegosaurus]

I think people are supremely over-stating the greatness of Romney's performance and equally under-stating the disaster that was Obama's. Ironically, it was Obama who had a Windows Vista powered robot-like malfunction. Paraphrasing:

Obama: "Your tax plan cuts taxes by 5$ trillion for the wealthy"

Romney "Untrue. (proceeds to explain how the claim is false)".

Obama: (shaking his head, eyes a million miles away): "Your tax plan cuts taxes for the wealthy by 5$ trillion, how can you do that and reduce the deficit?".

Mitt Romney, to my surprise, was able to deconstruct Obama's strongest talking points with relative ease. I came away with the impression that Obama had not prepared for this debate beyond memorizing a few half-baked talking points and applying them to keywords.

That said; Mitt Romney's performance was mostly safe and when judged on it's own merit rather than in the context of competition with the President's - it was simply an above-average outing, good but not stellar or memorable.

As a Republican, I'm worried that this may have been his Mondale-Reagan moment. The narrative of 1984 was turned on it's head when the wonky, boring Mondale made a fool out of the typically charismatic, well-liked Reagan. Then Reagan got his act together in the second debate and...

In closing, Republicans need to remember that we just witnessed Obama at his worst vs. Romney at his constant. It would be ill advised for Romney to assume that he will be across the stage from the same person in the next debate.

[stegosaurus]

As a Republican, I'm worried that this may have been his Mondale-Reagan moment. The narrative of 1984 was turned on it's head when the wonky, boring Mondale made a fool out of the typically charismatic, well-liked Reagan. Then Reagan got his act together in the second debate and...

In closing, Republicans need to remember that we just witnessed Obama at his worst vs. Romney at his constant. It would be ill advised for Romney to assume that he will be across the stage from the person in the next debate.

Thats actually a really good point. The standards are so low, so even if the President comes in and matches Romney's performance --its going to be seen as a win.

Exactly. Speaking of low standards; I wonder how much confidence his advisers placed in his ability to properly prepare. Team Obama was unusually forceful in tempering expectations for this debate. Flash forward to the debate where Obama delivers an unenthusiastic, unprepared performance. This means one of two things:

1) Barack Obama simply lacks depth of knowledge (doubtful).
2) Barack Obama's big weakness is playing defense and answering criticism, and the his staff came to grips with this too late. (more likely).

From a Republican perspective, I worry that with more time and emphasis, Obama can master the art of properly responding to direct criticism and apply that mastery to his typical style. That is not a given, however. In short, it's entirely dependent on the degree of Obama's mental fortitude. It's always been said that he is cool and unshakable, we will know for sure in the weeks to come.